(UPDATED) - According to CAPIF Argentina the new Roxette compilation “Hits!” enters at # 11 in Argentina.

  The “Hits!” album also entered the UK top 40 last week at #22, but lost eleven places to be at #33 this week, This has been expected by fans mostly due to lack of promotion, which this week came in the form as only one TV ad, which was shown at 23:00 GMT. “One Wish” has also been heard on a number of radio stations in the UK now, as reported by some fans.

  Sweden’s top 40 is a chart based on both airplay and single sales in Sweden, and “One Wish” is now at #2 on the chart. The Scissor Sisters are still #1 for the fifth week in a row with their “I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’.” Topp40 is hosted by radio station RIX FM.

  In Austria “One Wish” climbs from #74 to #56 and “Hits!” enters the album chart at #8.

rox-kuryliw, Daniel Alvedahl and Klaus Binder contributed to this article.

• Capif
• Swedish Top 40
• Austria Top 75 (albums)
• Austria Top 75 (singles)

SÖDERHAMN - As you may and may not know, roxette.se and sister sites have been down since Saturday. TDR has spoken with the site administrator David J. Elfström Lilja who rips his hair in frustration. The sites are down due to technical issues that seem to be hard to solve.

  David lets TDR know that the demo, “One Wish,” promised to be online early this morning is now up on Per Gessle’s myspace account. This is temporary, but Roxette wants to show the fans that they won’t go back on the promise. The demo is from May 20.

• Gessle’s space

NEW YORK/BUENOS AIRES - Most anniversaries are rather private celebrations, but when Per and Marie announced they were getting back together again for Roxette’s 20th anniversary… fans around the world wanted to join the party.

  In the first of several special surprises The Daily Roxette has planned for the Rox20 party, that go beyond the articles and interviews that you are accustomed to seeing here, TDR is pleased to present a Flash-based video feature for Roxette’s new single “One Wish.”

  “Of course our idea in producing this was to pay tribute to Roxette’s 20 years together,” says Managing Editor Lars-Erik Olson, “but it was also our idea to somehow show that fans are invited guests to this party as well. Marie recently pointed out the role that fans have played in their career, and almost from the very beginning of this project, we were hoping to find a way to honor (by letting one fan represent a thousand fans) our loyal readers – and Roxette fans in general – with this video.”

  Produced and directed by Jorge Diaz and Lars-Erik Olson… The Daily Roxette is proud to salute Roxette with another look at “One Wish!”


NOTE: If the progress bar “freezes” at 82%… please just wait it out… it will, after a short wait, continue to load.

• TDR’s “One Wish” video (Link for Europe)
• TDR’s “One Wish” video (Worldwide link)

Read more…

LJUSDAL - So finally it is here, the mystical, mythical and long spoken about RoxBox – full name: The RoxBox - Roxette 86-06. I have it in my hand, it is a hefty piece, very well manufactured. The box contains four fully-crammed CDs, a thick, attached booklet and a DVD of "all Roxette's videos" (which certainly can be debated…) and the legendary MTV Unplugged show from 1993, in full!
Let's start with the box itself. It's made like a book, with the four CDs attached two to each cover, with a very lovely booklet in-between. So where is the DVD? It's in a cardboard sleeve at the very back of the booklet. Not a good place to put it, I would say, as the DVD is double-sided and DVDs are easily scratched. The booklet is written by well-known reporter Janne Gradvall, who has a definite stamp-of-approval from Per. Gradvall is a Swedish pop journalist with a long and genuine background, respected by many of Sweden's pop stars and music business people. The text has been translated by Sven Åke Peterson. The text itself is very informative and has tons of bits and pieces of nice Roxette trivia. I also like the translation, most of it at least. What is a "dropping-bottle" really? I would call that a "drip" or "drip-feed," but hey, that's me! The photos in the booklet are both familiar and unfamiliar, all in truly nice quality. What I miss in the booklet is an explanation from Per and Marie why they selected the tracks that made the box.
Now we get to the DVD(s) and unfortunately I can't say that I'm overjoyed about them. I say "them" because in reality there's two. The disc is a "flipper" (two sided). Don't get me wrong, it's absolutely fabulous to finally get the missing tracks of the Unplugged concert. I'm glad that someone convinced MTV to let Roxette use them. But why, oh why, do it in this poor quality?? I'm sure the original Beta masters were used to render the DVD, but the Mbit/s is only 6.16 which is VERY poor (and it gets worse). The sound is available in both Dolby Digital and DTS stereo, which is fine, however the bonus tracks have plenty of audio clicks and glitches. That may come from the original source material though. Oh well, the Unplugged concert looks decent on a regular 29" TV, but is hard to view at all on a 42" plasma.
Regarding the "video" side of the DVD, it contains 37 Roxette videos, not all videos ever made. And frankly, I doubt we'll ever see that compilation. The bitrate of the video side is an appalling 3.57 Mbit per second! That, my friends, is about as low as you can go on a DVD. And it's quite noticable while watching; for instance in "She Doesn't Live Here Anymore," where the whole picture is pixelated most of the time. I can buy perhaps that the earlier videos have low quality sources, but this is way beyond that. It's not acceptable for a company to release the third lousy (quality-wise) video compilation in a row… Other companies release good DVDs all the time, why not EMI? Read more…

STOCKHOLM - Roxette’s new compilation on behalf the 20th Anniversary: “A Collection Of Roxette Hits! - Their 20 Greatest Songs!” debuts this week directly inside the Swedish album chart at #2.

  The “One Wish” single remains steady at #4 after three weeks on the singles chart.

• The Hit List (mostly in Swedish)

NEW YORK/BUENOS AIRES - As the celebration of Roxette’s 20 years together continues, this coming Monday is set to be a special day. Along with a previously unreleased demo being available to listen to on Roxette.se, an exclusive new “One Wish” animation, created for The Daily Roxette by Jorge Diaz and Lars-Erik Olson, will be premiered here on TDR.

  “Originally, we were planning to ask permission to co-premiere the new single on TDR and we needed a simple Flash video to house the music stream,” explains Managing Editor Lars-Erik Olson. “Of course all of us on the staff have been excited about Marie and Per reuniting for Rox20, and we’ve had various special projects planned for some time now.

  “Our readers have seen our exclusive Rox20 features and interviews, and there are surprises like this yet to come. This video animation, which grew into a much bigger project than what we had first planned is, hopefully, just one of these special projects that our readers will enjoy.”

  “We had already started when the Åkerlund video came out,” he continues, “and of course we loved it. This is not at all – as with discussions about cover art in the past – a situation of thinking that we could come up with a better idea. They are two very different types of productions (full-motion video vs. Flash animation), with two very different budgets.”

  We asked Jorge, who lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to give us some insight on the project:

  “Well, the first thing that came to my mind was to showcase all of Roxette’s career, but we understood that Jonas was also going to do this in his video… so Lars came up with the idea to make a ’daydreamer’ video. We spent a lot of time trying to find the right direction, and ended up with this lyric-based idea.

  “It took about two months… we spent a lot of time working on it. We previously worked together on a TDR video for Peter Jöback’s version of Per’s ’Varmt Igen,’ and knew that we wanted to do something like that again as soon as we found out that there would be new songs.

  “’One Wish’ is a great song! It has a lot of power and Marie’s part is amazing. Lars and I wanted to take advantage of the strong downbeats, and I think it’ll be a long time now before I can hear the song without counting off ’1, 2, 3, 4… 1, 2, 3, 4…’ in my head!”

HAMBURG - An Internet site based in Austria, along with a German online retailer, have listed a “Roxette - Live in Concert” DVD (German version) reportedly due to be released in June 2007 by Black Hill Pictures GmbH.

  Reached at his office in Hamburg, Andreas Dautzenberg, the managing director of Black Hill Pictures, tells The Daily Roxette that “this must be a mistake. This is not on our release schedule and we are not in negotiations with Roxette.”

  Black Hill releases about 80 titles a year, of which 25 percent are music videos.

• Geizhals’s Roxette DVD page
• Computer Universe’s page

STOCKHOLM - The following message has just been published on Roxette’s official website, Roxette.se:

You don’t like Mondays???

Well, Roxette certainly do!

Starting Monday October 30 (and continuing until Xmas) Roxette.se will give you the opportunity to listen to some extremely rare Roxette demos, straight from Señor Gessle’s hidden vaults.

Every Monday we will bring you a new special track, never before released. And yes, they’re all in stereo and no, you can’t download them, only listen to them.

Enjoy!


P&M

NEW YORK (UPDATED) - Satellite radio station Sirius will be free to listen to all over the world on October 25 and 26 with stars from around the world participating in the free global radio event.

  Per Gessle, who has a regular weekly show called Nordic Rox on The Spectrum (channel 18), will be a guest DJ on Big ’80s (channel 8) where original MTV VJs – and current Sirius DJs – Mark Goodman, Nina Blackwood, Alan Hunter and Martha Quinn will share their biggest ’80s moments. Another Swede, Ace of Base’s Ulf Ekberg, will guest DJ on The Pulse (channel 9).

  Special editions of Nordic Rox, including an exclusive interview with Roxette’s Per Gessle by original MTV VJ Mark Goodman, and interviews with ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus and the Hives’ Pelle Almquist will be aired on The Spectrum (channel 18).

  Nordic Rox is on Wednesday between 12.00-15.00 CET.
To be able to listen you have to register.

  Sirius has more than 75 channels of talk, entertainment, sports and commercial-free music and is launching the internet service for $12.95 a month.

  Update: Per Gessle’s shows will be re-run tomorrow, Thursday. Interview at 13.00 CET and his show at 18.00.



Ron Wienand contributed to this article.

• Register here
• Nordic Rox info page

NEW YORK - Capitol Records, part of the EMI group, will be releasing Roxette material in the United States this holiday season. In an exclusive interview with The Daily Roxette that appears on our Features page, Per provides details about this new U.S. record deal and opens the door even wider to the possibility of new Roxette music in the near future.

  Per speaks candidly with TDR News Editor Thomas Evensson about a number of other topics of interest to our readers in this interview, including Per’s take on life: “I like to keep my head busy,” he says.

  Along with this exclusive interview, you’ll also find a first-person account of the appearance of Roxette at Bravo Magazine’s gala anniversary event in Hamburg, Germany this past weekend. Written by TDR reporter Kirsten Ohlwein, the story takes you behind the scenes into the press room, where it was obvious that Roxette’s perfomance was the most anticipated event of the evening.