STOCKHOLM - Per Gessle’s recording of “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” for the Ramones tribute album will be released as a commercial single in Scandinavia on May 27 and to the rest of Europe on June 10.

  The vinyl 7” and the CD-single will include Per’s version of “Sheena Is A Punkrocker” and the 12” vinyl will have yet another track; Per’s version of “Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment”.

  Per has just returned from Antwerp where he checked out a special performance of Night of The Proms.

EMI, one of the world’s big five record companies, has seen profits slide 40% in what it termed a “challenging year”. The company, home to Roxette and other artists such as Kylie Minogue and Robbie Williams, has been beset by falling sales and piracy problems like the rest of the music business. According to BBC News, the company has also made its own mistakes, “including heavy debts, underperforming artists, and a £38m bill for extricating itself from a massive long-term deal with Mariah Carey.”

  In March, we reported about EMI’s plans to cut 1,800 jobs.

• BBC News article

LONDON - EMI Recorded Music has acquired Mute, one of Europe’s leading independent record companies, extending an existing licensing relationship that Mute has had with EMI’s Virgin Records for over 15 years.

  Founded in London in 1978 by Daniel Miller, Mute has consistently been at the forefront of artist development with an artist roster that includes Moby and Depeche Mode - whose last albums sold 8 million and 2 million each respectively. The acquisition includes Mute’s catalogue and its operations in the UK, US and Germany.

Eleven years ago this week, Roxette’s “Joyride” ascended to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The chart topping single was the group’s fourth #1, following “The Look,” “Listen To Your Heart” and “It Must Have Been Love.”

  To commemorate the occasion, Billboardradio.com has included “Joyride” in its weekly streaming audio feed. The song comes about 15 to 20 minutes into the countdown.

• Billboardradio.com

STUTTGART - The weekly newspaper Stuttgarter Stadtanzeiger has a big story about Roxette’s appereance at Nokia ’Night of the Proms’ in this week’s edition (based on the organizer’s press release). You can read the scanned article – in German – at http://www.music-centre.de

Two dutch fans, Daniël and Jaap, are organising a roxette fanmeeting on November 27th in Rotterdam, Holland, before the Night Of the Proms concert of that day. No further decisions about the meeting are made yet, but the organisers are encouraging fans to buy tickets to the standing places so that all fans gather together also during the concert.

• Fanmeeting website
• Night of the Proms

We received this press release:

After some time of preparation, a new Gyllene Tider site is born. Hopefully this will be the Ultimate site! Behind it is a team of web-experienced Gyllene Tider fans, not affiliated with EMI, EMA or any other official Roxette-related business.

  The site will contain everything a great site should have, including a FAQ, news, bios, a newsletter, a nice discography, a forum, polls and lots more. In time the site will grow and new features will be added along the way. There will be no download area to start with, and when it does happen, it won’t contain MP3s and such.

  When and if GT plans to tour, GylleneTider.com will have all the info needed. Make GylleneTider.com your favorite stopping place.

  Welcome one, welcome all! GylleneTider.com is here to stay!

• GylleneTider.com

News story in Hallandsposten, later confirmed to Official Fanclub’s roxettenews.com by Roxette’s management, reveals that the band is working on a Greatest Hits album with a couple of new tracks. New songs may be released even as soon as this spring, but some releases will have to wait until autumn.

  According to Per, an entirely new album will not be released in this situation as there is “a lot of turmoil at the record company.” We reported earlier that Roxette’s record company EMI cut 1,800 jobs in March this year.

• Roxettenews.com article

Roxette will be the headline act this fall for “Night of the Proms,” an event that began as a student party and has evolved into a series of concerts performed in three countries: Belgium, Holland and Germany. Roxette will be accompanied by the symphonic orchestra Il Novecento.

  The biographical information on the Night of the Proms website states “The band broke through in the late eighties with numerous hits in the top of the charts. Among them were worldwide hits like “The Look”, “Dressed for Success,” “Listen To Your Heart,” “It Must Have Been Love,” “Joyride,” “How Do You Do!,” “Sleeping In My Car,” “Run To You,” “Crash! Boom! Bang!,” and “Wish I Could Fly.” Sixteen years later the band can show impressive sales figures (more than 40 million albums and 15 million singles sold) and look back on some very successfull world tours.”

  “Their seductive mix of pop tunes full of irony and obvious “power ballads” today still sound as fresh and catchy as in those days, when their songs first started to get airplay.”

• Night of the Proms website

STOCKHOLM - “Absolute Number One” is a new double-CD where the biggest hits through time in Sweden are collected. It includes 43 #1 hits from the Swedish “topplistan,” including two from Gyllenne Tider. This is the first of four volumes, and covers the period from 1975-83. Volume Two will be released later this year.

  Marketed only in Scandinavia, you can see the complete track listing at Ginza.se, an online store that ships only in Sweden and Norway.

Flávia Rocha contributed this item.