The Daily Roxette met recently with Steve Johnson, art director for Edel America Records (EAR). Steve has created the cover for the upcoming EAR release of “Wish I Could Fly,” and is also working on the new “Don’t Bore Us… Get to the Chorus” album.

His design for the single, shown here in an exclusive preview, is a complete departure from the approach Karl-Magnus Olsson took with the “Have A Nice Day” album and singles. The photos Steve has used were taken by Jonas Linell for the original “Don’t Bore Us…” album, but he’s used a computer image manipulation program to combine two of them in a fresh way.

As of this writing, the CD packaging is at the printers, and the staff at EAR is eagerly awaiting the first advance shipment.

Image courtesy of Edel America Records.

EMI Sweden’s long-awaited Website is finally active. Standard “press release”-type information is included about Roxette and Marie Fredriksson.

• EMI Svenska AB (English pages not yet active)

The European Commission is coming under increasing pressure to conduct a full antitrust investigation into a proposed $20 billion merger between Warner Music and the EMI Group. Composers from five Nordic countries have lodged formal objections with the commission against the venture. They believe Warner-EMI would control nearly 50% of all music publishing in Sweden and 70% in Finland.

Warner-EMI would be the world’s largest music company with combined revenues of $8 billion, 2,000 albums released annually, and more than 2 million song copyrights.

The chat with the members Gyllene Tider has begun on Aftonbladet’s site. To access the chat, type your name in the text field and press “Börja chatta” button. Everything is in Swedish, but they will probably accept your questions also in English. The chat is moderated.

Gyllene Tider’s old demo songs are now available on Aftonbladet’s site in Real Audio format. The songs are “Cilla, 16 - söt som socker” (“Cilla, 16 - sweet as sugar”) and “Nu går det av bara farten” (someone please translate :-)). Both tracks were written for “Moderna Tider” album, but the record company decided not to release them. Some other unreleased tracks written for the same album are “Min tjej läser Playgirl” (“My girl reads Playgirl”) and “Gå hem innan du lägger dig” (“Go home before you fall”).

All five members of Gyllene Tider, Per Gessle, Mats Persson, Anders Herrlin, Micke “Syd” Andersson and Göran Fritzon, will be participating in the live chat.

• Aftonbladet’s Gyllene Tider Special

Two songs by Gyllene Tider never released before will be available for download on Aftonbladet’s web site this afternoon. The songs have been picked up from Gyllene Tider’s old demo tapes.

Gyllene Tider will be also chatting live this evening.

• Aftonbladet’s Gyllene Tider Special

Gyllene Tider will be chatting live on Aftonbladet’s site tomorrow at 5pm CET (UTC+1). Please note that Sweden is observing daylight saving time which means one added hour to normal time.

More information will be posted as available.

• Aftonbladet

This August, look for Roxette on VH1’s “Where Are They Now?” where the group discusses their career in the 90’s and their future plans for America. They’ll also be showing the “Wish I Could Fly” video. VH1 is owned by MTV Networks.

Former chart-toppers try to rebuild U.S. following
By Michael Ansaldo
Rolling Stone

“When the greatest hits album came out in Europe in ’95, we decided not to have it released in America because we didn’t really have any communication at all with EMI,” says Roxette guitarist/vocalist Per Gessle. “So we just decided to hold it back and see what happened.” Read more…

According to Expressen, Per will be one of the co-owners in a new Swedish company concentrating in live music broadcasts over the Internet. The company, Cell, established by “IT baron” Christer Sturmark, has some very well-known co-owners to help in the start-up: ex-ABBA member Björn Ulvaeus and singers Peter Jöback, Tomas Ledin and Meja Backman

• Expressen’s Swedish article