Musical fountain in Budapest plays The Look by Roxette 3 times a day

The musical fountain on Margaret Island in Budapest, Hungary plays The Look by Roxette 3 times  a day. The fountain provides a multimedia musical show since 2017 and this year Roxette got on the setlist. Woohoo! Watch it HERE!

The fountain basin has an area of 1,000 square meters and a total of 154 nozzles are lit by 227 colored lamps. You can sit under the plane trees and enjoy the attraction from 19th April until the first frost (~ end of October), each day from 10 am to 10 pm. Shows are 15 to 60 minutes long and start every hour from 11 am. If you want to hear Roxette, you have to be there at 3 pm, 8 pm and 9 pm.

Setlist of the session starting at 3 pm:

  1. Roxette: The Look
  2. The Dave Clark Five: I Don’t Know
  3. Simon and Garfunkel: Cecilia
  4. The Beatles: I Feel Fine

Setlist of the session starting at 8 pm:

  1. The Rolling Stones: Let Me Down Slow
  2. Herman’s Hermits: No Milk Today
  3. The Searchers: Saturday Night Out
  4. Guns N’ Roses: Sweet Child O’ Mine
  5. Roxette: The Look
  6. The Dave Clark Five: I Don’t Know
  7. Simon and Garfunkel: Cecilia
  8. The Beatles: I Feel Fine

Setlist of the session starting at 9 pm:

  1. The Rolling Stones: Let Me Down Slow
  2. Mozart: Eine kleine Nachtmusik
  3. Liszt: Liebestraum
  4. Radics Gigi: Budapest szerelem
  5. Herman’s Hermits: No Milk Today
  6. The Searchers: Saturday Night Out
  7. Johann Strauss: Radetzky March
  8. Guns N’ Roses: Sweet Child O’ Mine
  9. Johann Strauss II: The Blue Danube
  10. Roxette: The Look
  11. The Dave Clark Five: I Don’t Know
  12. Ákos: Hazatalál
  13. Vivaldi: Four Seasons – Spring
  14. Simon and Garfunkel: Cecilia
  15. The Beatles: I Feel Fine
  16. Film: Budapest tánclépésben
  17. Film: Nagy Magyarok

You can see the complete list of the songs played during a day HERE.

It’s not the first time a Roxette song is used for the attractions of a musical fountain. I know Listen To Your Heart was already used in Prague, Czech Republic 2010 and Kislovodsk, Russia 2017. Probably, there were / are more fountains where you could / can enjoy our fave band’s music.

Don’t give it a miss when you are in Budapest anytime between April and October this year!

Watch the video HERE! (The kid in the video doesn’t belong to me, but he was too cool. Came to the front only when Roxette and The Beatles were playing. Haha.)

 

Roxette XXX Tour – Budapest, Hungary (Budapest Arena) – May 19 – #30

The 30th concert of the XXX tour happened in Hungary’s beautiful capital, Budapest. When Roxette played Budapest the last time it was 1st June 2011, almost exactly 4 years ago. Per even mentioned it before they started playing Spending My Time. HERE you can check his talking. Back then he was so much on a high that he wrote this in his concert evaluating post: ”Yep! Super crowd in Budapest as expected! Thanx all of you 10 11 12000 for screaming singing shouting waving. We love you, Budapest! Let’s get married!!” Well, the arena wasn’t sold out, but it was very much crowded (I would say there were even more people than in 2011) and we all did our best to let this long engagement come to a marriage tonight. I think we did it perfectly right. Budapest crowd was a very loud and active audience.

While Eskobar, the support act was on stage, Per posted:

BUDAPEST BACKSTAGE: Marie, Dea and Chris are singing Love Is All and Milk And Toast And Honey. What’s happening? /P.

It got lots of us thinking about how awesome it would be, if they added those 2 songs to the setlist. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen in the end. So we now need to hear / watch the backstage video of these 2 pearls. At least we hope it got recorded by Mr G.

When Roxette entered the stage, we expected Marie and Per to be in white outfits again, but it was only Marie who kept her white clothes (jeans and shoes as well) partly. Per got back to black. Sleeping In My Car was the opening song as usual and towards the end Micke N-S went on stage and tried to repair(?) something on Per’s guitar. You can see that action in THIS video (from appr. 2:35).

roxette_in_budapest_01
Photo by Patrícia Peres

Each and every song sounded fab tonight and the crowd loved them all. The whole band was in top shape and so was Marie’s voice. She was singing her heart out and she even tried to look into the eyes of all the familiar faces in the front row and wave to them. She was awesome! Per at the same time was charmed by the crowd’s activity and he showed his energetic side with his Gessle moves during the whole show. After playing How Do You Do! he said into the mic: ”That felt good!” Oh we enjoyed it, too!

Before the band introduction, Per asked Marie how she was doing and she said ”I’m feeling fine. It’s great to be here.” PG: ”You’re a great crowd! Thank you very very much! We hope you’re having fun tonight!” If we were having fun? We had a blaaast! Although we missed very much Per’s thank you in Hungarian (köszönöm).

After the band got introduced, Chris started playing a local tune which first we didn’t recognize, but I think he started it in a teasing way rather, because when we realized which song it was, he got a fab crowd reaction. It was an old Hungarian rock band’s, Omega’s song (Gyöngyhajú lány) which was even covered by Scorpions (White Dove).

roxette_in_budapest_02
Photo by Patrícia Peres

Then came Joyride and of course there were balloons. Some of them ended up in the front part of the stage and while Per was rushing through there, he was kicking them back towards the crowd. It was pure fun!

Marie asked the audience again several times to sing along more It Must Have Been Love and Listen To Your Heart. She was so lovely when she showed she wanna hear us.

There was a slightly new conversation between Per and Magnus before Crush On You. HERE you can check it out. You’ll get to know some info about Magnus’s ABBA lipsync secrets and that Per made an album here in Hungary titled ”Hooked on Hungary”, but he decided to release Have A Nice Day instead. Haha… 😉

The setlist was the same as at the past few concerts, 17 songs. The closing song was The Look and it was strange that this time the background cells were closed and the projection of the colourful Roxette sign went to the curtain. Might be because of some damages the stage set suffered in Bucharest. It looked perfect anyway.

Per & Co after the show:

BUDAPEST UPDATE: Fab show tonite. Thanx everyone for making so much noise!!!! Always a pleasure being here!!!! Love as always, P&Co

We are happy to have Roxette back anytime!

Next gig is on Thursday (21st May) in Prague, Czech Republic.

 

Articles and photos

zene.hu -> the best review of the concert: review, photo gallery
acmwallet.hu
metropol.hu
mno.hu
shockmagazin.hu
mymusic.hu
langologitarok.blog.hu
utolsoejjel.blog.hu
kultura.hu

Instagram: 1; 2; 3; 4;

Videos

Sleeping In My Car
How Do You Do!
It Must Have Been Love
The Heart Shaped Sea
Fading Like A Flower
Joyride intro (Gyöngyhajú lány)
Listen To Your Heart
The Look

Setlist

roxette_in_budapest_03
Photo by Patrícia Peres

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

Extra:
Listen To Your Heart
The Look

 

New Per Gessle interview from Hungary

During the past months many interviews with Per popped up in several countries. Anyone in for a little Hungarian this time? Piece of cake. OK, if you’d like to skip the lesson, just read the summary in English below.

Lángoló Gitárok is a well-known Hungarian music blog. Ádám Magyar, one of the LG bloggers did a quite nice interview with Mr G, having some interesting questions to him. There is nothing really new for a hardcore Roxer in it, but still, I’m always happy to read anything Rox-related in Hungarian newspapers or on websites. And yeah, I could read about / listen to Per’s thoughts and views on music 24/7. I know there are many more out there sharing this feeling. 😉

rox_int_langolo_gitarokIn the interview, to the question what motivates him being constantly on stage Per replied he’s not constantly on stage, but is constantly working. He writes, re-writes and re-re-writes songs, planning or he’s just in the studio. Touring is another part of the creative work, but he really likes it, because it feels wonderful to stand on stage in front of tons of people who love what they’re doing.

To the question what inspires him when writing songs he replied writing songs is just natural for him, since he started writing already as a teenager. He could not live without writing, it’s an important part of his personality. Per is writing constantly, but it doesn’t mean he finishes all the songs or that the audience will get to hear all of his songs.

Per says today’s mainstream pop music is very one-sided and he blames it on the major record companies and radio stations. He thinks it’s much easier to follow in the footsteps of an already successful production than to do something fresh and innovative. His favorite songwriters are those who still try to move out of the ordinary frames, while writing great melodies and doing interesting albums. He says he loves well-written songs.

Of current music trends Per says sometimes things don’t come through, because he thinks those songs don’t speak to him. But that’s just the way it should be. Pop music should always reflect the actual era and so it does.

To Lángoló Gitárok‘s question, if he ever recognized the impact of Roxette on today’s music Per replied he is not used to think about it at all. Music works like you hear something, you find inspiration in it and then write something new.

Lángoló Gitárok asked Per what kind of music he is listening to nowadays. He says he is listening to different kinds of music. He returns to Joni Mitchell or 70’s pop songs quite often, but he also likes new stuff, such as Lana Del Rey, Röyksopp, José González, Nine Inch Nails and Daft Punk. He finds French bands usually very good. But according to Per, there are good songs of Katy Perry, Tove Lo or Ellie Goulding, too.

To the question what he thinks of the future of music Per replied pop and rock music have changed a lot in his life. When he was a child, music played a huge role in their daily lives, but today there is much more competition in the entertainment business. There is the internet, the fantastic computer games, etc.

The point is that the possibilities are endless and this is a huge difference compared to earlier times. Sometimes I feel that the role of music in everyday life in today’s society is not as dominant as it was decades ago. On the other hand, more people listen to music today than ever before, and it‘s amazing how much easier it is to access music. Of course, pop and rock music will live on, but who knows what role they will play in the future.

Per talks about his great memories from the tours. He says they are very lucky and grateful that they could attract so many people to their shows all around the world over the years.

To the question when he thinks he will retire from music he replied:

There are no such plans, as it has just started for me.

When asked about his free time, Per mentions he likes car sports, especially F1. He talks about his hotel being also an entertaining thing to deal with. He tells he’s interested in architecture and art in general.

But actually, I’m an incredibly boring person. I spend 99% of my time with my family and music.

Regarding travelling Per says he loves Europe and when he’s travelling he feels really European. Australia is a very good place, especially Melbourne. Brazil and Argentina are also super. His favorite cities are probably New York and London, he has a lot of his friends living there.

Lángoló Gitárok asked Per whether Chris plays local songs also in other countries or it was only Hungary where he played a local tune (Tavaszi szél) in 2011. Per explains Christoffer plays some local tunes every night. He says Chris is a great musician and learns extremely fast. He’d never be able to do what Professor Lundquist is doing.

Per mentions he was in Budapest only a couple of times so far and they only came to play here, but he saw that Budapest is a beautiful city and of course, he is excited to be there again.

Regarding the new album Per says it will be out in autumn and that they plan to make a classic Roxette album, but at the same time they want it to sound fresh.

Regarding further plans for the future Per says he will follow his gut feeling.

Thanx a lot for this interview, Lángoló Gitárok!

Roxette plays in Budapest 19th May. Tickets are selling very well, but there are still some available HERE.

World Tour 2011: Budapest, Hungary – June 1 #31

Comment from Per Gessle

Yep! Super crowd in Budapest as expected! Thanx all of you 10 11 12000 for screaming singing shouting waving. We love you, Budapest! Let’s get married!!

Setlist
01. Dressed For Success
02. Sleeping In My Car
03. The Big L.
04. Wish I Could Fly
05. Only When I Dream
06. She’s Got Nothing On (But the Radio)
07. Perfect Day
08. Things Will Never Be The Same
09. It Must Have Been Love
10. Opportunity Nox
11. 7twenty7
12. Fading Like A Flower (Every Time You Leave)
13. Silver Blue
14. How Do You Do!
15. Dangerous
Band presentation
16. Joyride (introduced by “Tavaszi szél“)

17. Watercolours In The Rain
18. Spending My Time
19. The Look

20. Listen To Your Heart
21. Church Of Your Heart

 

Budapest 1992 bootleg

Roxette - Live in Budapest, 1992. On July 8, 1992 Roxette played one concert on theirs Summer Joyride ’92 European Tour on Ice Stadium in Budapest, Hungary. This gig was recorded by a preson who was sitting in the audiance. Now, thanks to Hungarian fans at Roxvideo.uw.hu, we are able to download the whole bootleg show.

Try to download just one file in a time or add the download links to a download manager (such as FlashGet or any other of your preference).

Hotblooded
Dangerous
Fading like a flower
Church of your heart
Sleeping single
Spending my time
The heart shaped sea
Cry
Knockin’ on every door
The big L.
Things will never be the same again
It must have been love
Dressed for success
The Look
How do you do
(Do you get) Excited?
Joyride
Perfect day
Listen to your heart

Thanks to bianca and sweepi (@ R2R forum) for informations.