VIENNA - The Daily Roxette, along with other members of the media, participated in a round table discussion yesterday with Per Gessle who was in Vienna as a part of his Son of a Plumber promotion tour. Amongst the others present, were reporters from Austrian radio stations Krone Hit Radio, Radio Arabella and Welle1.

  We met a talkative Per at the hotel Das Triest in the center of Vienna to talk about the release of SOAP in Europe, which is being positively received. "I'm really pleased because people like the record a lot!" he says with a big smile.
  He went to explain why he released the album, which is very personal. "It all started when I transfered my album collection to my iPod, it took about six months, and I found many songs I had forgotten about, songs I grew up with, it brought me back to my childhood '60s, '70s… and I decided to make a tribute to that era."

  Why Son of a Plumber?
  "My father was a plumber, his name was Kurt. He has a song on the album, because he was the fastest plumber in the west. I think you have be older to be able to make this album, have to have this history and background behind you. I couldn't have done it like ten years ago, you have to have this experience. I didn't make any demos, I always make these complicated nice arrangements for my demos, here I played songs to Clarence and Christoffer, if they liked it, we worked with it."

  You can hear from the album that you had a happy childhood.
"I have an older brother so I spent a lot of time on my own, listening to pop. I had 100 LPs when I was ten, all the money I earned selling newspapers and such, everything was for records, records, records. Then as a teenager I started to write songs, but couldn't play anything, I had the melodies in my head, then I started to play guitar, and started my first band"

  Did you choose the first single?
  "Actually I let EMI choose which single they wanted to release first. In Sweden it was 'Jo-Anna,' and I think here it is 'Jo-Anna' as well, but other countries chose 'Mr DJ.'"

• Per at Ö3 studios
• Welle1

Read more…

MADRID/HELSINKI - In Spain, EMI has launched a Spanish Son of a Plumber website. Currently the website only hosts the same promotional material that has already been published in English.

  EMI Finland announced today that Son of a Plumber will visit Helsinki on April 8. Per Gessle and his band will be playing on the live TV game show Huuma. The show is broadcast at 20:00 EET on MTV3.

• Sonofaplumber.es (in Spanish)
• Huuma (in Finnish)

STOCKHOLM - The video of “Hey Mr DJ (Won’t You Play Another Love Song),” directed by Daniel Börjesson, will be finished on Thursday and will have its world premiere on TV4’s Nyhetsmorgon on Sunday.

  “All of the band is in the video, except Jens who was sick. Gabriel and his friends are in it too, they play strings and horns in some sort of orchestra,” Per explains. Per also describes the video to TDR and he says it tries to capture the spirit of the “Party in My Head” sequence of the short film. Christoffer wears a top hat for instance. “The whole setting is a freak show, there’s a knife thrower (me), Clarence is a weight lifter, Helena is a puppet on a string, kinda cool really.” Daniel has also edited together a video for “Jo-Anna Says” with footage mainly taken from the short film. “Also great, to my surprise,” Per adds.

  Nyhetsmorgon starts at 08:59 CET and ends at 11:00. The agenda of the show will be posted on TV4’s website, but usually not before midnight the day before. Per will be a guest on the show appearing at approximately 10:15 and he will present the new video.

• Nyhetsmorgon (In Swedish)

STOCKHOLM - Bad Hair Day is back, this time with… well, we'll let The Plumber himself tell.

Liar! Yes, I know… but I thought I told the truth when I told you I didn't have any more demos from the SOAP-project. But look what I found! The first version of Jo-Anna Says with a totally different verse (Clarence hated it!). I re-wrote just in time for the real recording… Sorry ‘bout this f##k-up… but better late than never…

Cheers,

P. (no brains left…)

Sthlm, March 16, 2006

PS. By the way, just came home from a couple of days of promo in Germany & Switzerland. I had a blast. Great day yesterday, I did 14 (!) interviews in Zurich and Jo-Anna is happening on the radio!!! Hallelujah!

• Download here (Son of a Plumber.com)

ZÜRICH - Per will chat on a Swiss website Bluewin tonight, between 18:30 and 19:30 CET. Apparently, you will be able to choose between a text chat and a video and voice chat. The site will also host live webcam images from the event.

• Bluewin (In German)
• Chat with Per

STOCKHOLM - The Plumber is back from wherever he was at (vacation again?). In a fresh message on his site he announces that the European promotion will commence next week. Per will travel to Germany and play “Jo-Anna Says” on the show “Chartbreak-Hotel.” After that he will go to Switzerland to meet the press for a day. “All in the name of colourful entertainment!” as he states it.

  Per also wishes to remind everyone about the Formula 1 season that starts on Sunday.

  Per finishes off his message with “And more to come…”

• Chartbreak-Hotel

STOCKHOLM - According to a message from Per at Son of a Plumber’s site they shot a video for “Hey mr DJ” last night. “The idea was, as always, vague but interesting…. psychedelica meets Alice in Wonderland in a freak show environment,” Per says and continues “Clarence did a great job lifting weights in a silly costume, Magnus got knives thrown at him (scary….) 10 kids, most of them from Gabriel’s school played violins and trumpets and drums, all looking very handsome and jolly…. Helena played a puppet on a string, Christoffer wore a top hat and I wore a tie. And the coffee was good.”

  The video is expected to be ready late next week.

STOCKHOLM (UPDATED) - Monday February 13 a promotion single of “Hey Mr DJ” will be released, to radio stations only. It will contain the original version of the song plus two fresh remixes. The first remix is called Love-For-Sale and is made by Clarence, Christoffer and Jimmy Monell (aka Shooting Star), the second is remixed by Jimmy and thusly called Jimmy Monell Treatment. While the first remix is very radio friendly, the second will probably do best on the dance floor.

  This single will most probably not be released commercially, however, there is a fair possibility that the remixes will be available as downloads at for instance CDON and iTunes.



In cooperation with Son of a Plumber.com, TDR presents these snippets:

  Update Feb. 20: The single will be released commercially after all, as a physical single (0946 3591432 0) on March 1st and as a digital single on March 13th. The cover art is shown here.

• Son Of A Plumber

STOCKHOLM - Per has just announced that on April 3rd two new digital releases will come out, namely “Son of a Plumber (iTunes Edition)” with three extra tracks added; “Keep the Radio On (This is the Perfect Song),” “A Girl Like You” and “Plonk”, the two latter never before released. Ronnie Lane’s nickname was “Plonk”…

  The second release is the EP “Dancing Plumber Vol.1” with the following line up:



1. Hey mr DJ (Love-for-sale remix)

2. Hey mr DJ (Jimmy Monell Treatment)

3. I never quite got over the fact that the Beatles broke up (Jimmy Monell Short Treatment)

4. I never quite got over the fact that the Beatles broke up (Jimmy Monell Long Treatment)



  While the first release is an iTunes exclusive, the second will be available via other digital stores (at first only in Scandinavia).

COPENHAGEN - SAS Scandinavian Airlines has added “Jo-Anna Says” to its playlist of songs featured on the onboard music system’s “Scandinavia” channel.

  Other songs being played this month include a-ha’s “Analogue,” Eva Dahlgren’s “Snö” and Kent’s “Dom som försvann.”