The Covers Project is an interesting concept of collecting a database of cover songs and then building “chains” of them. As their introduction says, a “cover chain is a set of songs in which each song is a cover of a song by the band who covered the preceding song.”

  There are no Roxette songs found yet, but I added Per’s Ramones cover “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” to the database. Every few hours the system builds new chains starting from each of the artist in the database. Currently, the longest chain is 40 songs.

  Update: It seems that the algorithm creating the chains had a bug and mixed up the band making the original song and the band covering it. Now it’s fixed. Unfortunately this also means that Per’s cover chain shortened from 30 to 1…

• The Covers Project
• Per Gessle’s cover chain

A German-language website named MUSIC-CENTRE is now online. You can find many news, lyrics, pictures and much more about Roxette and 11 other artists like Bon Jovi, Britney Spears, Orange Blue, Enrique Iglesias, and Shakira.

http://www.music-centre.de

According to Official Roxette Fanclub’s roxettenews.com, Per’s Ramones cover “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” will be released as a single. No further details, such as release countries or dates, were given yet.

  Roxettenews.com also offers a 30-second snippet of the song.

Per Gessle will perform his cover of the Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” on the April 20th installment of the Swedish television program “Bingolotto.” The song is Per’s contribution to the Ramones CD tribute album “The Song Ramones the Same” - due out on April 15th. The show is broadcast on TV4.

NEW YORK - EMI will ax 1,800 staffers worldwide — nearly 20% of its work force — has cast off a quarter of its 1,600 artists, and will take more than $340 million in charges in an aggressive bid to return the stumbling British music group to fighting form.

  The drastic cost-cutting actions, announced last Wednesday by EMI Recorded Music chief Alain Levy at a conference for investors in London, are the culmination of a worldwide evaluation of EMI’s operations initiated when he took over the company six months ago.

  Levy said half of the 1,800 job cuts have already happened or will happen by the end of the month, while the other half will be completed by the end of September. Roughly 400 of the layoffs will come from the U.S. operation, where EMI has languished in last place among the five majors and its key labels, Capitol and Virgin, have struggled to generate new hits for the better part of a decade.

  Levy said almost half the planned $140 million in annual cost savings will come from the North America region because salaries and operating overhead are far higher here than in other territories.

  “This is not just a cost-cutting exercise,” Levy said at the conference, also attended by chairman Eric Nicoli and EMI division chiefs from around the globe. “This is reshaping EMI for the future and positioning it for growth with a much lower cost base.”

— This article by Justin Oppelaar and Erich Boehm.

BONN - It took some time, but it’s online now: The TDR-supported demos-from-fans project known as “Fanism!”

  The idea, born here in The Daily Roxette’s “SmallTalk” section, was that fans wanted to record their own demo versions of Rox-songs as a very special tribute to Per and Marie. Bands like Gladstone, Kix and Melancholodic communicated via the pages of TDR. The result is a collection of 14 songs from Roxers all around the world!

  While the project was originally intended to be released on CD, the high cost of distribution made the musicians decide to create a website instead where all of the songs are available for high-quality download.

  The readers of TDR suggested names for the project and after a comment from Per, “Fanism” was chosen. Besides the songs and pictures of all of the artists, there is an opportunity to give a feedback by signing the Fanism online-guestbook. We invite you to take a look at www.fanism.org and listen to songs like “Here Comes the Weekend”,
“Sommartider” and “First Girl on the Moon.”

• “Fanism” site

STOCKHOLM - For perhaps the first time since 1996 when he gave Gyllene Tider 5 “+” symbols out of 5, Aftonbladet’s Per Bjurman has written something very complimentary about Per Gessle. No fan of Roxette, Bjurman’s praise is about the cover version of “I Want To Be Your Boyfriend” that Per has recorded for the forthcoming tribute album “The Songs Ramones The Same” that will be released in March.

  Under the headline “It’s Nice When Gessle Translates Ramones,” Bjurman compliments Gessle’s contibution.

  Anders Nunstedt, writing for Expressen, also had very positive things to say about the song.

  “The cover is sensational…” he writes, “…reminiscent of the summer Westcoast pop that Gessle created so charmingly at the beginning of (his) career.”

  Nunstedt also mentions that Per was recently at the opening reception for rock photographer Anton Corbijn’s exhibition “Mortals” and at the premiere here of the new, Swedish version of the Benny Andersson/Björn Ulvaeus musical “Chess.”

• Aftonbladet’s article (In Swedish)
• Expressen’s article (In Swedish)

STOCKHOLM - Marie and Per, along with their spouses, attended the premiere of the musical “Chess” (by Benny and Björn of ABBA) at the Cirkus Theatre, located in the Skansen ecopark here on Saturday, February 23rd. Also in attendance and seen talking to Per was Thomas Johansson of EMI.

  Marie was wearing a shiny brown jacket with a white, glittery blouse underneath. Per, looking thinner than ever, was dressed in a grey/black/brown long-sleeved shirt and tight black trousers.

RECIFE, BRAZIL - A Brazilian band called Capim Com Mel has recorded a Portuguese version of “It Must Have Been Love” in a musical genre known as “Forró” – a characteristic style of music
from the northeast region of Brazil.

  Along with a previous rap version of this same song, this is perhaps one of the most unique covers of a Roxette song that’s ever been made. It’s not a piano-based, but rather an accordion-based version. The song’s name is “Como Esquecer” (“How To Forget”), and you can listen to it via the link provided below.

• http://geocities.com/gusgasgo1/como_esquecer.wma

STOCKHOLM - Fashion model turned jewelery designer Efva Attling celebrated her 50th birthday party yesterday evening, and among the 250 or so guests were Per and his wife Åsa. There’s a small picture of the Gessles arriving at the party on the Aftonbladet site.

  Efva and her partner, singer Eva Dalhgren, are Sweden’s most famous lesbian couple. They are very good friends of Marie Fredriksson, who is believed to have also attended the party with her husband.

• Aftonbladet’s article (In Swedish)
• Dahlgren-Attling.net