Patrícia Peres

Roxette XXX Tour – Auckland, New Zealand – February 7 – #16

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When the news started spreading in May 2014 that Roxette would tour Australia and New Zealand, all Kiwi fans must have been over the moon. They have been waiting for long since the last time Rox would have performed there in February 2012. Per fell ill on his flight from Stockholm and they had to cancel the show. Earlier, Roxette visited New Zealand for a promotional visit at the end of the 80’s, but never performed there. Roxette kept their promise to come back and Per now luckily avoided eating strange stuff on board or maybe it was his airline PJs that kept him healthy this time.

Before the show, fans could check the merch stand as usual. Besides the new XXX water bottle you’ll find an XXX baseball cap and the Tour Program as new stuff. The tour program looks extremely hot with fab pics inside. The scarf they have now looks like it’s made of a different type of textile than what we could get in 2014.

Before the gig, the audience could see a sign that said: ”Tonight’s concert (and possibly audience) is being filmed at the request of the artist. Enjoy the show!” Maybe it’s for a new project or just to see how the new stage design works with the audience or any other reason. I hope we’ll get to know it one day and most importantly, see at least a part of that recording.

Vector Arena was fully packed, everyone was sitting impatiently while waiting for Roxette. There was a support act, Ekko Park starting at 7.30 pm. Roxette was set to hit the stage at 8.30 pm, but they entered with appr. 20 minutes delay. During the support act and the beginning of the show the background elements of the new stage design were still “rolled up”, but already during the first song the audience got to see the new stuff in action. There were cool lighting effects and lyrics appeared on the background every now and then, as well as the band’s name. It was quite colorful and looked stylish and fresh. Stunning like Pelle’s beard, to quote PG. 😉

We thought New Zealand can be warm enough for Per to leave his glam rock jacket behind, but he kept it for the first 3 songs. Marie kept the tradition of being barefoot. Both of them and the band were in great mood and they were very energetic. There were some light mistakes here and there in the lyrics, but who cares when you get the crowd on their feet and make them sing along and stand until the end of the show. Marie was sitting during 2 ballads, The Heart Shaped Sea and Perfect Day, but then she got up again and rocked on. The crowd went nuts at many songs and Roxette was bringing down the house in Auckland.

To many Roxers’ big surprise, there were fab changes in the setlist. However, one can miss Real Sugar and Fading Like A Flower, 3 of the songs that many fans wished for appeared on the setlist. First of all, Crush On You! Sounded awesome live again after so many years! You can check it in this video. Then Almost Unreal was performed as well. These 2 songs were already cool additions, but they kept something more for the extras. From Watercolours In The Rain when it’s only Marie and Dea on stage there was a transition into Paint. What a wonderful version it was! Even if it wasn’t the complete song, it’s just amazing they added it. Check it out here! Awesomeness is the word! We know it’s not too easy to have a new setlist too often, so it’s much appreciated that there are these extra marvellous changes. So huge thanks for listening to what hardcore Roxers asked or voted for on the XXX Tour poll (already 4 songs out of the top 10 or album top 3 have been played since we run the poll, including Real Sugar!)

Per got a new set of guitar picks for the New Zealand – Australia leg of the tour. And he used them, making many in the crowd happy to catch them. The phrases “THROW THIS AT CHRIS” and “WHERE AIR PER? / PER AIR HAIR!” are simply hilarious.

Per & Co after the show:

AUCKLAND UPDATE: Yeah! Super gig tonite in front of around 6000 wonderful NZ ppl!!! First time for us here, we felt very welcome!!! Thanks all of you who attended the show. New stage production (which made us all slightly nervous from time to time), a couple of new tracks in the set list and and brand new hardcore guitar pix couldn’t stop this Saturday from being a winner!! Vids to follow tomorrow when I’m awake. Cheers everyone… Love from P&Co

Next gig is on Tuesday (10th February) in Brisbane, Australia.

 

Articles and photos

Instagram: 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6; 7;

13thfloor.co.nz (review and photos)
musicnation.co.nz (photos)
libel.co.nz (review and photos)
livenation.com.au (photos)
thebreeze.co.nz (photos)

 

Videos

Crush On You
Paint
The Look; another The Look vid
Listen To Your Heart
It Must Have Been Love (part)
Almost Unreal

PG interview via phone on TV4 (in Swedish)

Instavideos:
How Do You Do! (with lyrics appearing)
Almost Unreal

 

Setlist

Sleeping In My Car
The Big L.
Stars
Spending My Time
Crash! Boom! Bang!
Crush On You
She’s Got Nothing On (But The Radio)
The Heart Shaped Sea
Perfect Day
Almost Unreal
How Do You Do!
7Twenty7
It Must Have Been Love
Dressed For Success
Dangerous
Joyride

Extra:
Watercolours In The Rain / Paint
Listen To Your Heart
The Look
Queen of Rain

 

 

Thanx a lot for your cooperation, Celestte Williams and Alexis Schettler! Huge thanx for the extra videos, Celestte!

Per Gessle – the book fair pop quiz sound recording

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PG_book_fair_20140926
Pic by Patrícia Peres

You surely remember last year’s Göteborg Book Fair either you could personally be there or not. On 26th September Per, in between 2 signing sessions, took part in a very entertaining pop quiz that was led by Sven Lindström. Another participant of the quiz was the other lonely boy, Nisse Hellberg. 4 months after the event, the book fair team decided to share the sound recording of that seminar, so now everyone can enjoy it. A short summary of the day as chapter 1 you could already read here at RoxBlog in this article and 1/3 of the seminar you could already watch as a video summary in this RoxBlog article. The seminar was of course in Swedish, but it is worth listening to it even if you don’t speak the language. How these guys love music shines through their talking. Always! Oh and you can also hear how Per loves to win. Because he won. Of course.

Hopefully, chapter 2, i. e. the interview Jan Gradvall did with Per on 28th September will also be uploaded as a sound recording at least. Until then, enjoy this little pop quiz!

 

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/188095909″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]

Sneak peek of Roxette’s XXX stage design

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What Per already said about the new stage design is that it was built in London, Patrick Woodroffe and Stufish designed it, it’s very expensive, it’s 8 tons of equipment (excl. band members) and it looks as stunning as Pelle’s beard, so we’re gonna love it.

Patrick Woodroffe (who appears at the end of the apple pie party video) has lit several artists over the last 40 years, e.g. ABBA, AC/DC, Bob Dylan, Lady Gaga, Depeche Mode, The Rolling Stones, etc.

Stufish created stage design for The Rolling Stones, U2, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Elton John and Simply Red among others.

This evening, Soundforce Scandinavian AB, the company that helps the band with sound and video technology shared a photo from the rehearsals. There is still much left to speculate until we see the stage set in action on 7th Ferbuary in Auckland, New Zealand where it has its premiere. Since there don’t seem to be too many physical elements (or maybe we just can’t see them all on the pic), the stunning factor will surely be the digital and lighting parts of it, so all the techniques they use to make the background move & shine. Exxxciting!

And of course, another stunning factor will be the band itself. Hard to wait to see them live again very soon! 2 weeks left until the XXX tour goes on!

 

Photo by Soundforce Scandinavian AB
Photo by Soundforce Scandinavian AB

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Update on 25th Jan: Soundforce was probably asked to remove the photo from their Facebook page. They were a bit too early posting it it seems.

Update on 24th Feb: Woodroffe Bassett Design shared some photos from the rehearsals. HERE you can check them out.

Would it be fun to have Roxette concerts on USB stix?

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We already informed you about Roxette’s one and only Norway concert in 2015 being sold out. When I was checking the organizer’s Facebook site, I saw an interesting thing. Roxette’s concert is on 13th June in Trondheim and Mark Knopfler plays there one day before them. This fact is not quite interesting, but I realized Mark Knopfler records all his shows and gives the fans the opportunity to purchase high-quality, live soundboard recordings of every show on a guitar-shaped USB stick or as mp3 / FLAC download. Digging deeper in this topic, many more artists are providing such a treat.

This USB stick doesn't exist. It's just an illustration.
This USB stick doesn’t exist. It’s just an illustration.

Wouldn’t it be cool to have the professional sound recordings of the concert(s) you attend during the XXX tour? Since Roxette play 100% live, each concert is very much different to the others, even if the setlist doesn’t change much or not at all from one concert to another. On one hand, all concerts are most probably recorded anyway, so it would be just a nice extra to copy them on some sticks and provide Roxers with the possibility to buy them. On the other hand, Chris wouldn’t have the chance to mix all concerts one by one since it would be simply too much and maybe the PERfectionists they are, it wouldn’t feel comfortable for them to release such sticks.

Either way, let’s play with the thought it’s possible. Let us know about your opinion!

 

[yop_poll id=”19″]

 

The tour goes on in 18 days! Either we get live recordings or not, we are looking very much forward to all 2015 shows and more!

 

Any Per Gessle birthday party today?

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Another year passed and Mr. G became 20454 days old today. Wishing a splendido birthday to Per! The past year was again full of fun, joy and treats in many forms and most importantly, we got some more gorgeous & cool music from him. Cheers to another busy year!

Do you have any plans about how to celebrate Per’s birthday? You can choose more than 1 from the list below. If you choose ”Other”, we would be glad to read about your plans in a comment.

 

PG_1_year_20150112_rs
These photos in the collage were shared by Per during the past year at the uncountable number of Facebook pages he is handling. We are ready for even more pics until his next birthday, aren’t we?

[yop_poll id=”18″]