Documentary

Look Sharp! 25 radio documentary on the shortlist at the Swedish Radio gala

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You surely remember the fabulous radio documentary of Tara Moshizi and Tove Meyer related to Look Sharp!’s 25th anniversary. Here you can read our summary of the docu, which was broadcast on New Year’s Eve last year. Now this great radio documentary got on the shortlist for The music program of the year at the Swedish Radio gala.

Stora Radiopriset is organized by the Radio Academy, which is a nonprofit organization in alliance with major radio companies. The aim is to annually reward and pay attention to Sweden’s best radio productions. This year there was a record number of nominations, namely 260 programs were nominated. On 18th September it will turn out if the Roxette docu is the winner of the category.

Keep your fingers crossed, Roxers! Good luck, Tara & Tove! You would definitely deserve this great prize.

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Gyllene Tider – Dags att tänka på konserten – DVD is out!

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We had to wait a year to be able to relive the sommartider of our lives, but now here it is! Gyllene Tider’s Dags att tänka på konserten was released on 23rd July. I would say it was worth the waiting. Even if it’s ”just” a DVD (I mean no Blu-ray around – who knows why…), the quality is great and what we can see on the DVD is simply fantastic. It contains a complete concert (24 songs, 1 hour 36 minutes), a documentary (1 hour 6 minutes) and 3 videos. Photos on the cover and in the DVD booklet are by Anders Roos. He’s the photographer who took those amazing shots for the Alla tiders Gyllene Tider book, which was written during the tour.

 

Concert

The stage scenes are from Skövde, but the crowd scenes are mixed from 2 concerts. Besides Skövde, some crowd cuts are from Eskilstuna, so if you were there at the last 2 concerts of the tour, there is a high chance you will see yourself.

What I felt when watching the concert was that I was there in Sweden again, on a summer night, being part of a loud crowd, seeing 5 energy bombs on stage. And it left a constant smile on my face during the whole show. Judging by what I saw, Skövde concert must have been one of the Top5 most energetic gigs. From the 2nd song the crowd was more reactive and I must say it’s amazing to see everyone doing the coreography Micke Syd shows during Min tjej och jag. When you are in the crowd in the front you can’t see such things and it must feel so great to see this reaction from your crowd when you are on stage.

Another fantastic thing to see is young and old (let’s say from 15 to 70) singing along to old and new GT songs. It’s unbelievable what music, THIS music can do to people.Too cool!

Camera angles are great, too. Grumpy Productions did a fab job. You might remember the posts (1; 2) on Gyllene Tider’s Facebook page about the camera techniques they used in Skövde. Looking good!

I left it for last, but it’s definitely one of the most important points: T.H.E. S.O.U.N.D. I.S. P.U.R.E. A.W.E.S.O.M.E.N.E.S.S.! Hats off to Christoffer Lundquist who did the mixing! So now we are in need of a live CD! Anyway, wasn’t it the case that we get one? Hm.

Documentary – Gyllene Tider sommaren 2013

It’s the same that was broadcast on TV4 last December. A fantastic one! You can read my review of it if you click HERE. Love to have it on DVD.

Videos

Man blir yr and Det blir aldrig som man tänkt sej are the official videos we already saw. Regarding Allt jag lärt mej om livet (har jag lärt mej av Vera), even if I didn’t really expect that it would be an unknown video, something new, it would have been a nice surprise if it weren’t the Humorgalan performance from May 2013.

 

One more thing I must add is that towards the end of the concert part I felt the same I felt at the end of each gig last summer: I don’t want this come to an end! But the good thing with the DVD is that you can play it as many times as you wish. This one is definitely something I’ll play several times in my life.

If you haven’t bought / ordered your copy yet, do yourself a favour and get yourself this DVD. If you attended any of the concerts, the reason why is to relive those magic moments. If you couldn’t attend any of the shows, you’ll have the chance to jump and sing along in front of your TV now. Here are the links from where you can order the DVD: Bengans, Ginza, CDON.

 

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Look Sharp! 25

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RXB_radio_docu_04As we already informed you about it earlier, Tara Moshizi and Tove Meyer – who are also Roxers –did a documentary on Look Sharp!’s 25th anniversary for Swedish Radio. This great docu ”Look Sharp 25 år – Så tog Roxette över världen” (= Look Sharp! 25 – This is how Roxette took over the world) was broadcasted today, but interviews with Clarence and Anders were done in September, with Per in October and with Marie and Ms Dimberg in November.

Actually, most of the stories we already heard during all these years, but it was still really nice to listen to all of them again. In the documentary they are talking about the times before Look Sharp!, the breakthrough, the success of The Look and other singles off the album.

 

Per explains he was already a pop star in Gyllene Tider before Roxette was established and Marie had a great solo career and worked closely together with Lasse Lindbom. When they asked Marie about how she remembers Per from those times, she said he was an unbelievably nice person and easy to work with, they had fun together and had a big dream.

Clarence thought Marie was a great singer, but he wasn’t really fond of Per’s style. Anders told he didn’t like Neverending Love, he thought it was ridiculous. How he is humming it in the docu is priceless (check it out at 11:19).

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Roxette LIVE – Travelling The World

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I never thought I would buy something what is able to play a Blu-ray because of Roxette and not because of my fave actors. I also never thought I would buy it earlier than an LP player… But it just happened. And it was all worth it. Actually, the long long long long long waiting for the DVD / Blu-ray / CD was worth it, too.

As per the Blu-ray, I like how it looks like. I mean not the front cover, but how it is structured, the way the CD and the Blu-ray disc are placed in the case. Well, too bad that all the DVDs and Blu-rays seem to be produced in Germany (or at least most of them), since now we are all having this unnecessary and not too sexy stamp on the front cover. When I first saw it, I hoped it was a sticker which I could easily remove, but unfortunately, it’s printed as part of the design…

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I started with watching the Gessle cam stuff & the guitar tech’s secret life from the Blu-ray as I thought most of the other 2 parts I already saw on TV last year.

The Gessle cam videos are still fun. What I like the most is that on the Blu-ray they, of course, have much higher quality than what we can see on Facebook. Even if you already saw most of them (yes, there ARE new ones), you can smile and laugh at what the guys & ladies are doing in the studio or backstage. Per was wrong when he corrected us that the ”So, Christoffer?” part is not 3 minutes, but 30. It’s really ”only” 3 minutes, but it’s a hilarious mix! 🙂

Then comes 12 minutes of ”Studio Work” from the recordings of ”Travelling”, the album. Scenes are from AGM and Atlantis studios with Clarence, Christoffer, Magnus, Pelle, Marie and Helena. Oh, and of course, Per. But you can mainly hear his voice and see him not too often. We got used to this during all these years.

The 3rd Gessle cam video, ”Travelling” is the longest, almost 30 minutes. It’s from several countries: backstage, soundcheck, food, some ”Jesus loves you!” and some more ”So, Christoffer?”, Clarence & Pelle & Magnus ice skating, band, Marie & Per, crew, etc.

The 4th extra is a 5-minute-long video of ”Mikael Nogueira-Svensson – The secret life of a guitar tech”. Micke N-S took care of the gear of Per, Pelle and Magnus during the tour. He’s talking about his job and shows interesting things backstage, like the Blue Swede Sex Machine is having problems all the time. He says he’s like a nanny for the musicians. 🙂 While talking, he is restringing a guitar.

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After these videos I watched the documentary, ”It All Begins Where It Ends – The Incredible Story Of Roxette”. Most of it we could already see last year, but finally, Helena and Dea got their well-deserved part in the docu. Actually, this is the only difference I could notice. And it’s great as it is. No changes were needed besides the backing vocalists’ part. Oh, yes! Another important change is the subtitles. The English subtitles work well.

 

 

 

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”Roxette LIVE – Travelling The World” I saved for last. Chris did an awesome job with the live mix, but we already said that when we saw it on TV. At the same time, I still get dizzy from the constant cuts and I thought a year should have been enough to change them, but Favela kept them as we saw it in the TV cut of the live stuff. No clue why. Whatever. Crowd scenes are still mixed, but at least those confusing titles with mentioning cities and countries are gone. There are now more relevant scenes between the songs than what we saw on TV: backstage moments, fans running to the front row, the drum kit getting dressed for success, etc. Besides these, now it’s more like a real complete show. Awesome to see those 9 songs too, which were not in the TV cut, but made it to the DVD. This way we can enjoy e.g. Marie’s touching performance of ”Perfect Day”, some more of Per’s left leg dance in ”How Do You Do!” and their lovely moments in ”Things Will Never Be The Same”. Richard Gere and Julia Roberts are cut out from the final ”It Must Have Been Love” part, however, Marie and Per are still cut in from the video clip twice. But that’s fine. Getting this front row feeling and reliving the moments of the tour, one starts / continues longing for a new tour.

 

Last but not least, I love having the songs on a live CD, too. Some fans hear Marie from far away or have other problems with the sound on the CD, but my ears are not too sharp for that I assume, since I’m fine with the sound itself. One funny thing is that the preview pic of the live CD is not the final cover, but another sleeve we saw when we were guessing which the final design could be. If I have to choose between the physical release and the digital one, I go for the digital because of having ”Silver Blue” and ”Church Of Your Heart” as bonus tracks there.

All in all, if you ask me what took a year to release this material after we could see most of it already in December 2012, I’m not sure I could tell you. Maybe choosing what to include in the extras from the tremendous amount of Gessle cam videos was a bit time-consuming or doing the subtitles. No clue. But it doesn’t really matter now that it’s in my hands and I could watch it and listen to it. I could do it 24/7. More than that, I want a Roxette tour! NOW!

 

Gyllene Tider sommaren 2013

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TV4 broadcasted an approximately 70-minute-long cut of Gyllene Tider’s summer tour. Unfortunately, it is available only in Sweden, but here you can read a short summary of it and see some screenshots.

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It’s a fantastic documentary with tons of live footage from several shows, mainly Skövde, Eskilstuna, Stockholm and Ullevi, Göteborg. Grumpy Production did a great job! The whole program is nicely cut, it’s of very high quality and contains a great mix of interviews with band members, their travelling around Sweden, joking and having fun backstage, performing live on stage, crowd scenes, the walk to the stage, short interviews with fans and Ms Dimberg, Thomas Johansson, Micke Syd’s mum and dad, Mats Olsson journalist, etc., the stage decoration being cut into parts and signed by the Golden Guys, then given to fans at the last show and we can see some meet & greet scenes. One can even get to know the recipe of a perfect cocktail from Micke Syd. Oh! And the yellow radio has an important role again.

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My gosh! Even without seeing a complete concert in this docu you can relive the tour. You feel you are back in time, it’s summer, you are standing in the front row and going crazy for Gyllene Tider, singing along, jumping and shouting. Awesome!

 

The songs (no complete songs, but almost) you can hear & see performed live:

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  1. Juni, juli, augusti
  2. Sommartider
  3. Gå & fiska!
  4. Man blir yr
  5. När vi två blir en
  6. Ljudet av ett annat hjärta
  7. (Kom så ska vi) Leva livet
  8. Det blir aldrig som man tänkt sej
  9. (Dansar inte lika bra som) Sjömän
  10. Det hjärta som brinner
  11. Min tjej och jag
  12. Kung av sand
  13. Ska vi älska, så ska vi älska till Buddy Holly
  14. Flickan i en Cole Porter-sång
  15. Det är över nu
  16. Dags att tänka på refrängen

 

You can hear some other short GT tunes as well, however, I missed Flickorna på TV2 and Billy from the live footage, but something must be left for the DVD, too. 😉 No release date is set for the DVD yet, but hopefully, we don’t have to wait too long. Provide us with a live CD, too, please!

 

PS: You can see PG wearing glasses in the docu for a short while. And I’m not talking about sunglasses. 😉