P, C & C order room service (II): View from Öresundbron

Per was asked to write music for the opening of Öresundsbron, the bridge connecting Sweden and Denmark. The inauguration of the bridge was on Saturday, July 1, and the instrumental track “View From The Bridge”, written by Per with help from Clarence Öfwerman and Christoffer Lundquist, was performed at the conclusion of the ceremony. The opening ceremony was broadcasted live on SVT1 and TV4 and via satellite on SVT Europa.

Oresund or The Sound (Danish: Øresund, Swedish: Öresund) is the strait that separates the Danish island Zealand (Sjælland) from the south Swedish province Scania (Skåne). Its width is just 4 km at the narrowest point (between Helsingor, on Zealand, Denmark, and Helsinborg, Sweden).Oresund is one of the three Danish Straits that connect the Baltic Sea to the Atlantic Ocean (via Kattegat, Skagerrak and the North Sea) and is one of the busiest waterways in the world.

Construction began in 1995 and the last section was constructed on August 14, 1999. The Oresund Bridge has been inaugurated on July 1, 2000 by King Carl XVI Gustav of Sweden and Queen Margrethe II of Denmark.

The bridge was opened for traffic later that day. Before the inauguration 79,871 runners competed in a half distance marathon (Broloppet, the Bridge Run) from Amager (in Denmark) to Skane (in Sweden) on June 12, 2000.

The bridge connects Sweden with Denmark, and includes a lower level for trains. The one-way toll for a car will cost 275 SEK while the train will cost between 70 and 140 SEK.

Per was in Malmö and was interviewed in Aftobladet and the Swedish TV. These are his words:

"It is more like a combination of Brian Wilson’s sling guitar and Ennio Morricone’s pomposity. It has been funny to try out in a new genre, but I am not interested in big productions in the future. Actually, I’m kind of glad when this is over. I am more of a rock’n’roll guy. We (Clarence, Christoffer and me) have worked on the composition on computers and I haven’t even heard it performed with real instruments yet"

Per himself has not been performing in the ceremony — the 8-minute musical piece has been performed by the Orchestra of Malmö Music Teather and Denmark Radio Pops Orchestra.

"View from the bridge" is the first non-Roxette work of the P,C&C Team (Per, Clarence and Christoffer) since The World According to Gessle. I think it is really amazing to see Per involved in new original challenges. Christoffer, for example, is now working in Brainpool's new rock opera.

LJdM

I did “View from the bridge” with Per Gessle and Christoffer Lundquist. It’s good, at least the demo is good. We didn’t like the result. We wrote it and made it as we wanted it to sound. But the Danish people changed it. Christoffer and I went down to Denmark for the rehearsals with the orchestra and were like “what’s this? We didn’t write this?”. Everything had been changed, it was still nice, but the arrangements were messed up. We had a meeting and called Per and told him “we don’t think you want to have your name on this”. They had added drums, we only had orchestra and percussion.

The conductor, he was British, didn’t want to speak to us, he never joined the meetings. We released their version in the end. It was kind of strange, it was the first time we had done something like that, so we didn’t know what to expect. But, of course, this doesn’t mean we don’t want to do this again. I actually think Per should record this one in the proper way, as we created it, and release it. We should put the demo somewhere.

Clarence Öfwerman

P, C & C order room service (I): Brainpool is working on a rock opera

According to Expressen and The Daily Roxette, the band Brainpool has been working on a rock opera for 6 months already. They have left their record company, Epic.

David Birde is now working by an advertising agency. He is responsible for the opera’s libretto and explains it in Expressen:

“The opera will be set in the present and will satirize and criticize the economy-centered society that has grown so strong during the last 12 months”.

The rock opera is due to be ready next year. The band is hoping that Philip Zandé would be the director. The music of the opera will be first released as a CD.

Brainpool is a guitar-pop band coming from Lund, southern Sweden. Brainpool was first “found” by Per’s record company Jimmy Fun Music. Brainpool’s members, especially bassist Christoffer Lundquist and Jens Jansson, have been working with Per and Roxette since Per’s solo album in 1997. In fact, Brainpool's work could be delayed for some time as Christoffer Lundquist could tour with Per Gessle, Marie Fredriksson and Clarence Öfwerman promoting Roxette in the United States this summer.

LJdM

Not only were we constantly terrified of being criticized and disliked. We also carried around a musical self-image that wasn’t quite accurate. We thought our sound was rawer and harder than it actually was. Our music was, on the contrary, quite wimpy, something I’ m proud of today. I think it only adds to its qualities. But our sense of identity was probably all wrong. My mother is an extreme case. Once when she held a seminar at University, she received standing ovations because she was so brilliant and she burst out of the room in tears because she was convinced that they were making fun of her! At the height of Brainpool’s career I had a similar feeling of that the audience at any moment would see through us. That they suddenly would realize what idiots we were!

Once we’d lost our fame, commercial aspects weren’t relevant and we could afford to be a little more experimental. But even then the music industry wanted us to keep producing hits and with everyone constantly interfering, it just wasn’t any fun anymore. It became clear that the only option the band had, was to do it our own way and have as much fun as we could in the process. That’s when we decided to leave our record label and music publisher.

We had already decide to go ahead with it but it was a somewhat bizarre incident what coaxed us into taking it seriously: we heard rumours that Tore Johansson from Tambourine Studios also had plans of writing a rock opera. That made us panic a bit. You can’t be the second established artist to write a rock opera, especially not in Sweden. You’re either the first to do it, or you don’t do it at all! So we sat down in a bar to gather our strength and then David Birde called a journalist to announce that Brainpool was about to write a rock opera. The idea was that once we made our plans official we would have to complete the project!

Christoffer Lundquist
- Junk Musik

When we first started out in the mid 90’s, our genre of music was very popular. Once that musical era had faded away, people were no longer interested in guys playing pop music. We’ve been making music together since the age of 19 or 20. It would be really strange to give all of that up without any real reason. If one were to randomly pick people out of the population and ask them about us, most of them would probably not know who we were or that we still exist and a handful would describe us as the band who released “Bandstarter” in ’95.

The most common procedure is to release a pop album and receive some reviews and get it played on various radio and TV stations and then it’s either a bestseller or a commercial flop. And that’s it. It’s become natural to view pop music as a short-lived consumer product and expect bands to churn out new records, preferably every year. To a certain extent this was what we wanted to avoid. Instead of just producing a new hit song, we wanted to write something lasting and more self-contained. A work of art, if you like, even though that sounds ridiculous!

Jens Jansson - Junk Musik

It all started with the audience losing interest in us and soon after that the media weren’t interested either. And before too long the record label and our band were fed up with each other. You pretty soon realize that you’re not desirable anymore.

When you have a record contract, you can just go along with whatever is expected of you. In our case we started off with trying to live up to the expectations but later on we broke with all of that. Neither of which was very wise but it’s all very hard to handle.

There’s no point in clinging to the hope that you’ll somehow regain your popularity. Most bands that find themselves in that situation usually break up and form new bands, or quit playing music altogether. The reason we continued as a band was that we still enjoyed playing together and rather obstinately hung on to each other, as well as the band name!

It all started as a joke: “one of these days we’ll write a rock opera!” The “rock opera” genre is still very repulsive to a lot of people but back then just about everyone hated the idea of us writing one. It felt good to tell people of our plan, because they just couldn’t understand why the hell we –of all people – wanted to do this! Why couldn’t we just quit the band and get ourselves proper jobs? And then to add to their frustration the damn thing took forever to complete! Everyone around us was expecting us to give up.

David Birde - Junk Musik

Nice days for P, C & C new team (IX): Roxette's Salvation and Lundquist's 30th birthday

There are not many news from Per Gessle and Roxette since last summer. They have had some promo performances in Europe, backed up by musicians Christopher Lundquist, Clarence Öfwerman and Per Pelle Alsing.

Last 29th November, Salvation, the last single outtaken from Have a Nice Day, was released, but there has been no promotion. I adore See me, an old song sung by Marie in 1993 and the second song in this single.

The same day in November, a special edition of Roxette's latest album was released in most Spanish speaking territories and in some other countries (e.g. The Netherlands and Germany). This limited edition includes the following Spanish recordings: Quisiera volar (Wish I could fly), Alguien (Anyone) and Lo siento (Salvation).

In September, Per Gessle confirmed it once more: there wouldn't be a Roxette tour coming up in the next months. According to Olle Berggren and Martina Karlsson, from Roxette Service, late on little Christmas eve, Per Gessle sat with Clarence Öfverman in the now legendary Tits&Ass studio outside Halmstad and thought about the future with Roxette.

On January 16, 2000, Christoffer Lundquist will be 30 years old. We can read some of his words about his childhood.

LJdM

It's been a too much ballads during Roxette's career and the latest album, Have a Nice Day, had almost only ballad singles. I think I underestimated our absence when we took a break. There has happened a lot within the music industry while we were gone. This time it will be more up-tempo songs, more pop and more guitars. Dangerous if it gets too much like Celine Dion I recently thought about bands that have come in our footsteps, like Savage Garden. They are totally stuck with ballads. Think it's time to break that trend now. If you want to keep up with things in my age you need younger help from the outside (Chris Lundquist from Brainpool, Jimmy from April Tears, ...). A positive pop bomb. That's the thing I'm best at.

It's good to be back home. Home is where I wanna beeeeeee. I have been on the road so long. In January 2000, we'll continue the studio sessions and, hopefully, that's what's gonna take most of our time in the next 6-8 months or so. We'd love to have a new album out for Christmas 2000, and finally get a tour together. If everything goes well with the new records we're planning a tour with start in the beginning of January 2001. But if now the USA would wake up and we get a good record company where they maybe wants us to be available for radio and TV during that period, in that case we'll delay the tour a bit more.

Per Gessle

My parents got me and my sister when I was 6 years old to play violin. And I hated that. I hated every second of it, and I never practiced, never did anything, was horrible, but I sort of discovered it was nice to play notes and find them for yourself, and make up little tunes, so when I was maybe 10 or 11 I skipped the violin and finally dared to tell my parents I didn’t want to do that anymore, and I got an old guitar from my aunt, who also introduced me to the Beatles. I probably started to compose at the age of 10, when I got the guitar. That’s the reason for playing for me, to try to make your own music or play your own stuff. I didn’t study music. Never, the three years of violin when I was 6 to 10 is all my music education. From then on I’ve done nothing but playing, try to write arrangements, I am a totally single-minded person, that’s the only thing I do.

I actually only play guitar and bass, you know, reasonably well, the rest is sort of just cheating, but since I buy so many instruments, I have the possibility to practice with them. I play a bit of decent flute, half-decent saxophone, clarinet, I got an oboe, that was fun for a year and then it was too hard, so I skipped that. I have so many different instruments in my studio, but they are all kind of keyboard instruments.

Christoffer Lundquist

Helena Josefsson is a bandstarter too (XII): No more ewing.1?

We have no news and it seems ewing.1 has disappeared.

We have heard that Magnus Tingsek has formed his own band Great 78 (remember that ewing.1 members were born in 1978 in Lund). Magnus Tingsek could tour with his brother Anders' band Loosegoats (photo), that released her new album, Plains, Plateaus and Mountains. Rivers, Lakes and Seas, last March 1999.

Loosegoats

Jens Hellgren (guitar) is working with Mathias Olden and Mattias Friberg in their band Logh (photo), and Mattias Jeppson could have joined Logh too.

Logh

Helena Josefsson has released a new single with Plastic soul in 1999. Anyway, it seems she wants to concentrate on the band The Good Mornings.

LJdM

Helena Josefsson is a bandstarter too (XI): The Good Mornings, with Dan Bornemark

Helena Josefsson has begun working in a new project of the composer from Malmö Dan Bornemark (photo). The band will be called THE GOOD MORNINGS and also includes the guitarist Jens Ståhlstierna. They are recording some songs. Let truth reveal the Beast, for example, will be a tribute to the band Gentle Giant.

Dan Bornemark has composed symphonic music for children and remastered some Gentle Giant's stuff.

LJdM

Helena Josefsson is a bandstarter too (X): Plastic soul's gigs and single

The band Plastic soul - Helena Josefsson (singer), Johan Duncanson (guitar), Fredrick Whitling (leadguitar and keyboards), Olof Martinsson (bass) and Per Blomgren (drums) - has had an intense year.

Firstly they have had some Summer gigs. The most important are: Mera Hitlåtar 99 (Handen 1999 - 06 - 05) and Augustibuller Festival (Lindesberg 1999 - 08 - 13), two important Swedish indie Summer festivals. Plastic Soul also played in the Kalas-tour in Ribersborg, Malmö, in the summer, a succesful gig that allows them to be booked to Malmö's Popstad Festival next February 2001.

And they have recorded and released their first single Uneasy (1999). It seems they are going to release an album soon with the company Stockhouse.

LJdM