Per Gessle was asked a short comment on Roxette’s future by Aftonbladet. “We are waiting until Marie knows what she wants to do and how she’s coping. But the next thing is that we’ll update the DVD with the latest singles,” Per says.

  Roxette unveiled their first - and so far the only - DVD release in 2001, aptly titled “All Videos Ever Made & More - Roxette The Complete Collection 1987-2001”. The DVD contains the 35 “official” music videos they had released, five previously unreleased video clips and two documentaries.

• Aftonbladet article (in Swedish)

The traditional World Music Awards will be held in Monte Carlo on October 12th. Roxette will receive an award for being the best-selling Scandinavian act of the year 2002. Their only new releases during that year were “The Ballad Hits” compilation and the single “A Thing About You”, but Roxette still beat other artists by selling over one million copies.

  Roxette received the same award in the year 2000. Back then, they also performed live in the gala. This year Per and Marie are not attending.

• Aftonbladet article (in Swedish)

OSLO (UPDATED) - Per Gessle performed at Oslo night club Rockefeller yesterday night in front of crowd of a thousand fans.

  The set list for this concert was quite similar to the one played during the tour through Sweden. Per started off with “Kung Av Sand” and went through most of the songs included in his last album “Mazarin” and, of course, Gyllene Tider songs. Some old solo songs, such as “Speedo” or “Regn” that were played in the first concerts in Sweden, were left out. The set list:

Kung av sand

Vilket håll du än går

Gungar

Inte tillsammans, inte isär

(Hon Vill Ha) Puls

På en promenad genom stan

Timmar av iver

Flickan i en Cole Porter-sång

Jag tror du bär på en stor hemlighet

Smakar på ett regn

Här kommer alla känslorna

Födelsedag

Spegelboll

Juni, juli, augusti



Extras:



Om du bara vill

Tycker om när du tar på mej

Det är över nu

Gå & fiska

Sommartider

Tomorrow Per will give the last concert of his summer tour in Club Tavastia, Helsinki.

  Update: Click the picture on the right to see the band’s original song list in full size.

Ketil Nordgaard and Felicity Brown contributed to this article

• Article in VG (in Norwegian)

STOCKHOLM - Per’s Swedish tour this summer was a huge success, as we all know. Expressen has some statistics to back this up. A total of 157,000 people saw Per live in concert during his Sommar-Mazarin tour. Here is a list of the concerts and their number of attendance:

• Halmstad, Jul 7: 13,000
• Helsingborg, Jul 30: 12,000
• Skövde, Aug 1: 8,000
• Finspång, Aug 2: 8,000
• Varberg, Aug 3: 12,000
• Malmö, Aug 5: 10,000
• Göteborg, Aug 6: 22,000
• Kalmar, Aug 8: 9,000
• Jönköping, Aug 9: 7,000
• Karlskrona, Aug 10: 7,000
• Stockholm, Aug 12: 17,000
• Sundsvall, Aug 14: 6,000
• Leksand, Aug 15: 9,000
• Karlstad, Aug 16: 7,000
• Eskilstuna, Aug 17: 10,000

Per thinks one of the highlights was the mid-August concert in Stockholm. “Over 17,000 wonderful people showed up. Playing in Stockholm has always been tough for a country boy like me, but eventually it was an excellent concert,” says Per.

  “The tour was fantastic, but all too short,” Per said to Expressen. “I hope there will be a follow-up.”

• Expressen article (in Swedish)

LONDON - EMI Group Plc, the London-based head office of Roxette’s record company, has returned to the negotiating table with Time Warner. According to sources, EMI is refreshing the offer they made earlier this year to take control of Time Warner’s music branch. The rumor has it that EMI is offering Time Warner 1.5 billion Euros.

  At the same time, Time Warner is in talks with German media giant Bertelsmann about joining forces in music business. The joint venture of Warner Music and Bertelsmann’s BMG would create the world’s second biggest music company.

  Time Warner, Bertelsmann, Warner Music, BMG and EMI have all declined to comment.

• Reuters article

STOCKHOLM - Journalisten.se, the online magazine of The Swedish Union of Journalists, reports that The Swedish Press Council has decided that the newspaper Expressen “violated good journalistic practice” in its coverage on Marie Fredriksson’s illness.

 The Swedish Press Council is a self-regulated organization that monitors matters of press ethics in Sweden. Any member of the public can file a complaint to the Press Council and the council then undertakes an inquiry. A newspaper that has been found to violate good journalistic practice is expected to publish the written decision of the Press Council. It must also pay an administrative fine.

 The Press Council isn’t a court of law, but its decision may have some weight in the trial. In her lawsuit, Marie is demanding compensation of 500,000 Swedish krona from Expressen.

• Journalisten.se article (in Swedish)
• The Swedish Press Council

OSLO - Per Gessle will appear on the Norwegian TV2’s talk-show “Senkveld med Thomas og Harald” (Late Night with Thomas and Harald) tonight. As the name indicates, the program is hosted by Thomas Numme and Harald J. Rønneberg, who will also interview Hege Schøyen, Kjersti Holmen and Alex Rosén during the program.


“Senkveld” runs between 22.15 and 23.15 CET and, according to TV2’s website, it will also be broadcast online, after logging in.

• Norwegian TV2 - Senkveld med Thomas og Harald
• “Senkveld” Web-TV (Login is required)

HELSINKI - The winners of The Daily Roxette Per Gessle Mazarin summer tour contest have been chosen. The lucky winners are:

Tickets to the Oslo concert

• Marius Ellingsen, Norway
• Håkon Gundersen, Norway

Tickets to the Helsinki concert

• bandquitter, Lithuania
• Riina Perttala, Finland

We also had a surprise for the four runner-ups: they will receive a copy of Per’s “Mazarin” CD! Here are the winners:

• C. Greatbatch, Australia
• irvye, Canada
• Michaela Hertle, USA
• Majsan75, Austria

The Daily Roxette would like to thank Capitol Records Norway, EMI Finland and Welldone for making it possible to have this contest.

NANTERRE - Unfortunately not. EMI is not allowed to release defective CDs, a French court decided. But EMI wasn’t forbidden to release copy protected CDs per se.

  Last week’s ruling is a victory for UFC. A French consumer rights organization, which has been protesting against copy protected CDs for years now, because copy protected discs won’t play in a lot of car stereos, computers and portable players.

  Furthermore, UFC says the record companies only release copy protected discs in Europe, because in the US they’re afraid of getting sued. But now it seems they are no longer safe in Europe either.

  The case was set up around a release of EMI France, the new CD of French singer Alain Souchon, according to press agency AFP. The judge ruled in favor of UFC. EMI is obligated to compensate the buyers of the CD. This means that EMI must refund customers who have bought CDs they can’t play, or provide them with a full-working copy.

  On the other hand, a consumer who reported EMI Australia to the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) for the same thing, got turned down.

• The Register
• The Age

STOCKHOLM - It was a relaxed Per Gessle who visited the second to last episode of the TV show “Ola 21:30” the other day. He had just gotten back from France. They joked around and blind tested Leif’s Lounge’s “own” beer Leif’s Lager (which in reality is Krönlein’s Three Hearts Lager) with two other brands. “Do I make my own beer?” Per decided incorrectly that Carlsberg was the correct one, and judged Leif’s Lager “Ewww, I sure hope this isn’t the one…”

 When asked, Per claimed he tries to be a good father. Per is not afraid of dropping Gabriel “He’s six you know” Per joked. He also said that his own father maybe wouldn’t have liked him to become a musician. Per’s father, Kurt Gessle, died in 1978, the same day Expressen published the first article ever about Gyllene Tider. “My mom recently told me that dad would probably have freaked out if he had known I had become a musician.”


 They also played a little game. Ola asked Per what this was: “Now (pause) now (pause) now,” every four seconds. It didn’t take long before Per knew what it was about. When the “Joyride” album was hot, a copy of it was sold every four seconds. “But how did you know that,” an amazed Per asked the host. “I told you, I know things,” Ola answered mysteriously.


  Per also took a few questions from the 10-12 people small audience. Among the questions was “Will you do a digital concert on the net, like David Bowie, now that you’ve finished touring”? Per’s answer was no, he wants to continue touring.

  At the time of the show’s taping the stabbing (and later, murder) of Sweden’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Anna Lindh, hadn’t yet occured so this was not discussed in the show.