Unfortunately, that Roxette 30th Anniversary tour (European leg) is coming to an end also means that we have to say bye to Eskobar. After yesterday’s show in Halmstad, it’s just 3 shows left with Eskobar as special guest, so we wanted to take the chance to thank Daniel, Frederik and Jocke for making the time before Roxette’s show feel shorter, for cheering the audience up and for performing such great versions of your songs, you have been a great opening act!
I was very happy when I found out Eskobar would be the support act for Roxette during their European tour. I have liked the band since early 2000ies and I had never seen them live. And I was sure that Roxette fans and audience in general would like them too, who can resist their melodies?
After having seen them 4 times now and the reaction of the audience at the shows and also on social media, I think it is safe to say that the guys really enchanted us! Many have bought their albums, share their music and leave very positivecomments about Eskobar everywhere. We have also got many messages of people asking if Eskobar will join Roxette in the possible continuation of the tour in other parts of the world, what Eskobar will do next, where to buy their stuff and more. So we thought of putting all the information in one article.
But before that, we also got a message from Eskobar for all of you:
Now that this tour is coming to an end we would like to send the biggest thank you to Per & Marie, but also to Christoffer, Clarence, Magnus, Dea & Pelle in the band, everyone in the amazing crew, the drivers & the bosses and everyone else. What a fantastic experience filled with so much laughs, jokes, BBQ, great music and wonderful people. Also a very big thanks to everyone all over Europe who took their time to watch Eskobar support Roxette. We have felt extremely welcome in every city thanks to you all!
Great music lives forever!!!
//Eskobar
Future plans, new album, tour, beer?
Eskobar’s upcoming album will be released in the upcoming months. The guys are also planning to release a live album recorded during this tour. And would also love to go on tour in the near future. If you want to stay up-to-date, check out Eskobar’s Facebook page, all information will be shared there.
We don’t know if Eskobar will be the support band in possible future Roxette shows in other countries. Of course, many of us would love to see that so.. let’s just keep our fingers crossed (not only for Eskobar but for more Roxette shows in 2016!).
Frederik‘s beer Svinninge Bullet is also available in Sweden at Systembolaget, so if you are there this summer and you like beer, give it a try.
Past and discography
Eskobar has released 5 albums so far. You can buy most of them online on CDON but also Bengans or Ginza.
2000 – ‘Till We Are Dead
2001 – There’s Only Now
2004 – A Thousand Last Chances
2006 – Eskobar
2008 – Death In Athens
If you want to get more of their discography – Eskobar has released about 20+ singles… try your luck in second-hand stores or check Amazon out.
And in our interview from May you can read about how they started and their career so far.
Videos and rare stuff
Eskobar also has a YouTube channel with videos to their singles as well as unreleased songs and demos from “The Complete B-side collection 1999-2006”.
And of course, if you search by Eskobar, you will find videos of performances and concerts. Here is a selection of videos you may want to check out:
Starlight, from the upcoming album
Performance and interview from 2008
“Someone new” featuring Eva Dahlgren
Once again, thank you for your music and wonderful performances!
As we already wrote about it earlier, a Roxette movie is coming. According to Hallandsposten (1; 2), the Roxette Diaries behind-the-scenes documentary directed by Jonas Åkerlund will premiere in August at the Way Out West Festival. The festival is between 13th and 15th August 2015 in Gothenburg, Sweden.
As you know, Jonas got exclusive access to a huge amount of private videos filmed backstage during Roxette’s world tours, in studios, during PR tours and at other places. He received the videos in April 2014 and now he created a story about Roxette. The first updates were about tapes from 1988-2001, but later Per said what you’ll see in the movie is from 1986-1995. Now Hallandsposten mentions 1988-2001 again, but he used our article as reference, so it’s probably 1986-1995 in the end. Let’s see what happens.
Watch the fantastic trailer on Mr. Åkerlund‘s website HERE!
Hopefully, the movie will be available soon to a wider audience, too.
Last time Roxette played in Halmstad was 5 years ago, so it was high time for them to do their 6th Halmstad Rox show of all time. Many international Roxers thought they would love to see the band playing in their hometown, so some bought a ticket for only this show in Sweden, others are there at more Swedish shows, but definitely didn’t give the Halmstad gig a miss. There were fans from the US, Argentina, Russia, Spain, the UK, Poland, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Switzerland, Austria, Greece and probably more.
The waiting in front of the venue started in the morning and local people were smiling at us during the day, taking pictures of us, posting it on Facebook and wished us a great evening. Lovely! Even the police guys driving by every now and then showed thumbs up for us from their car. SVT, Hallandsposten and P4 Radio were also there with us. They did some interviews with the fans and shot some cuts. (See links in the Articles and photos section.)
This time there were approximately 100 early entrance ticket owners, but only a bit more than half of them showed up by the time the entrance started. There were also fans who didn’t respect those who were waiting there all day and wanted to do the trick at the inlet. Fortunately, Show Security Sweden was there again to support us and Atli (head of the security team) made it clear how the entrance should work and those who wanted to cheat faced a very correct and fair security supervisor. He got applauded by us for his fairness. The whole security team was very polite and helpful this time, too. Thanks a lot again, Show Security Sweden for assisting us! You rule!
Once we were inside, we found our spots in the front rows and couldn’t wait for the show to start. God was good all day and night and there was no rain at all, but sunshine.
Tonight there were 2 support acts. Besides Eskobar it was Mariette who got on stage first. Her performance started at 19:30. We wished for a far much better crowd in Halmstad than the Kalmar gang and already during the support act performances one could see the audience would be more active than the usually reserved Swedish crowds. Mariette and her band did a great job, the Swedes loved them and yes, I think the international fans liked them, too.
Eskobar hit the stage after Mariette. They communicated even more with the audience than in Kalmar and there were more crowd reactions to their songs than in the previous Swedish city. They enjoyed being on stage and playing for us to the full. Daniel even thanked for the cheering to the ”international guests” before performing Freedom. For Someone New they called Mariette back to the stage and performed the song as a duet. It sounded marvellous!
Pic by Patrícia Peres
After setting up the stage and instruments for Roxette, those almost 15000 people in the audience couldn’t wait anymore to hear the first tunes of Sleeping In My Car and have much fun during the next almost 2 hours. When Roxette came up on stage you just saw on both Marie’s and Per’s face that it was going to be a fantastic show. Being on home turf, enjoying their home crowd was all written on their faces. The band was in great mood and in top top top shape. Everyone was really on a high. Marie was shining like a real star! She was the pearl and the audience painted their love all over her world. You could feel everyone was grateful to see her on stage and cheered her during the whole concert. Per was very much into being on stage tonight. His presence was incredibly strong with all the Gessle moves and his way of performing. Both him and Marie acted a lot with the crowd, having eye contact with the fans in the front and animating them during the sing along parts which turned out to be very loud tonight. The band was also very active. Christoffer was running around like hell with his guitar, having his cool ”fights” with Per, getting kicked in the ass by Per again. There was now a new funny moment, when Per touched Christoffer’s hat while starting with Crash! Boom! Bang! Magnus was having his Baladas en español moments while charming us with his bass playing. Dea was animating the audience very enthusiastically and she was supporting Marie the lovely way she always does. Regarding Pelle and Clarence, who are always in the background, I just want to mention that without their amazing drum and fabulous keyboard playing this band is just nothing. They enjoyed being there on Örjans Vall’s stage very much.
One of the highlights of the night was It Must Have Been Love with the ’80s band intro from Per, remembering the funny hairdos and shoulder pads from those years, as well as the fantastic bands like Roxette, Milli Vanilli and Modern Talking. Another highlight was Watercolours In The Rain / Paint. Marie and Dea together can only mean a perfect duet!
Pic by Patrícia Peres
All the international fans brought their balloons, so there were many and people in the crowd loved playing with them during Joyride. After the song the band went off the stage and the only strange thing during the whole show to me was when there were those appr. 5 minutes while they were away. It felt like the audience wasn’t sure they would come back and wasn’t sure they should be cheering. We in the front were very loud, as usual, but it took some time until the rest of the crowd joined in shouting ”en gång till” or screaming. Fortunately, the band heard it quite well, so they got back to us and oh what a Listen To Your Heart performance it was as the first extra song! How Marie ended it was out of this world!
The uptempo songs, mainly How Do You Do!, She’s Got Nothing On (But The Radio), Dressed For Success and Dangerous got the audience dance and clap along during the whole songs while singing along loud and The Look at the end left the crowd wanting more. When Per said goodbye at the end of the show, he shouted in the mic in Swedish: ”See you soon again! We are very sure about it!”
Marie got 2 heaters on stage and this time it was again BoJo himself who tested if they worked well. In the end only one of them was working during the whole show. But the weather was really nice and rather warm, so we hope that 1 functioning heater was really enough for Marie.
Many in the crowd expected Gyllene Tider to appear on stage as a surprise, but those who are following Roxette and the related artists closely knew that Micke Syd had to be on stage with his Syd & Ekman project at another place, so it was predictable the fab five won’t be seen together in Halmstad tonight. BUT! We weren’t left without a GT tune! Christoffer played ”När vi två blir en” as the local intro to Joyride and it got a fab crowd reaction. We all loved it!
HALMSTAD UPDATE: Yea! Very nice show at Örjans Vall. Very nice indeed. This place is so cool, just by the water, and tonight our home crowd was in terrific shape. Around 15000 joined the joyride and made a lot of beautiful noise! Vids tomorrow! Cheers, P.
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
Watercolours In The Rain / Paint
Fading Like A Flower
How Do You Do!
It Must Have Been Love
Dressed For Success
Dangerous
Joyride (intro:När vi två blir en)
Do you remember this very special moment when Marie Fredriksson, being back then in Sydney, made a satellitte connection with Robert Broberg to sing “Everything disappears”? Yesterday we learnt Robert Broberg passed away in the age of 75 after long battle with Parkinson. Marie commented on this to TT press agency:
A great artist and a lovely man who will be missed. I have great memories from our collaborations and I am glad I got this opportunity to work with him.
Robert was truly fab! One of my favourite Swedish albums ever comes from his heart and mind, “Tjejjer”. Still have it on vinyl. Have to put it on now! /P.
Hallandsposten (Jan-Owe Wikström) did an interview with Per in relation to the Roxette concert in Halmstad tomorrow. It’s going to be the 6th time they play in Halmstad. After 1988, 1989, 1991, 1994 and 2010 tomorrow it’s time for them to play again in the band’s hometown. It will be their first time at Örjans vall though.
According to the interview, the tour will continue in 2016, however, nothing is planned after the September concert (company gig) in Warsaw. Per says since they turn 30 next year, the tour should last until then and they haven’t played South Africa, Asia, North America and South America yet on this tour. At the same time it is Marie’s health they are depending on, how much she can do.
Screenshot is from the making of video of The Look 2015 remake
Regarding the tour Per mentions it’s quite typical nowadays that as no artist can earn money on album sales, they go on tour. When Roxette played in Madrid, there were posters from Katy Perry via Mark Knopfler till the Foo Fighters. Since there is this big competition, he says it’s fantastic that they still have sold out shows and can sell 8000-18000 tickets per concert. In Halmstad there will be approximately 15000 people in the audience. The plan for the 5 concerts in Sweden was to sell 50000 tickets altogether and it seems it will work.
Per tells Jan-Owe the tour is one of the reasons why the new album is delayed. The other reason is the EMI – Warner merger. There are too many new people and Per wants to work with people he likes and who respect their history and the new songs. 5 songs off the new album are ready and as Per says, it is 65-70% of the total album. This would mean the album has 8 songs? Hm.
With Addeboy vs. Cliff, who mixed the 2015 remake of The Look, Per wrote some songs together. He says to Hallandsposten that it’s hard to find people who are talented in what he is not too good at, ie. programming.
There are still unknown collaborations on the new album, but Per told Hallandsposten he and Mats MP Persson wrote some songs together now for the first time since long and they might turn up on the new album. Mr. G says he would never be able to write “Fading Like A Flower” today, simply because he has moved on as a songwriter.
Regarding the changes in music consumption Per says nowadays it’s less important to people who wrote the songs or who plays the drums. Today’s pop music reflects the society today, so most of it is made on laptops where everything can be fixed in the end.
This time he says again that social media is a unique way to get close to the fans.
Jan-Owe Wikström asked Per what is left to do after that he has done almost everything with Roxette, Gyllene Tider, his solo projects and soundtrack. Maybe a musical? Per can imagine that there could be a musical built on Roxette’s, Gyllene Tider’s hits or his solo songs just like ABBA’s “Mamma Mia” and the Queen musical, but only if the right way is found. Something new. Maybe with Jonas Åkerlund as a director.
From the Hallandsposten interview it turns out that Per is still writing his diaries after each show, so it’s not only the Facebook posts he writes about them. And they film a lot. Probably, a lot more than what we get to see after each gig on Facebook.
I was very happy when I found out Eskobar would be the support act for Roxette during their European tour. I have liked the band since early 2000ies and I had never seen them live. And I was sure that Roxette fans and audience in general would like them too, who can resist their melodies?
