Description

Double album

Crashing Guitars was recorded at the Nobelhallen in Karlskoga, Sweden on the 16h of September 1994, The famous pop due had released their Crash! Boom! Bang! Album and started their Crash Boom Live Tour just ten days earlier in Helsinki Finland. So this album captures Marie and Per early on the tour, a tour that would go on for the rest of the year and become their longest and most successful tour of their career. The band in 1994 was a huge colossus where they had added Micke “Nord” Andersson and Mats Persson to the band line-up. Both accomplished instrumentalists, Nord excelled on a variety of guitars plus steel guitar and mandolin, but also gave the new Roxette a much more vocal profile. The new arrangement also shook old songs to life. The nine songs that were already included three years ago were now performed in almost all cases in new, refreshing arrangements. Listen To Your Heart with only Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson on stage, It Must Have Been Love had been given a country twist, Spending My Time became a quiet moment at the piano with Marie and the psychedelic pop of Joyride had turned into rock dangerously close to hard rock. In addition, the synth-pop Cry, from the Look Sharp record, was completely remade into a delicious acoustic slide blues. The spectacular was now toned down, the lighting sparingly simple and the rumbling rock music had been highlighted. At the same time that Per Gessle’s role in concert Roxette had noticeably grown. Up until now, Per has been in the shadow of stage and singing professional Marie, but he sang more and better this Friday night. With great vocal support, not least from the new guys, Per made, for example, I Love The Sound Of Crashing Guitars with extra boost in the choruses into a heavy, heavy Neil Young-inspired rock song completely without Marie’s help. Per is probably mainly responsible for Roxette’s more boyish profile on the current tour. But many of the rockier sequences also sometimes fell into a hard rock traditional and unexciting tempo (The Big L, Dangerous, Sleeping In My Car) but I liked Lies with its grand chorus. Even the ballads had their inevitable slumps (Almost Unreal, Go To Sleep) this evening and the imaginative Crash! Boom! Bang! was unexpectedly pale on stage. Another failer for the night was the choice to do Go To Sleep as the encore. It wasnt the best choice as the grand finale ended in a sleepy style instead of going out with a bang. However overall this was still a massive show and thanks to this rare album you get a chance to go back in time and relive the music of Roxette live at their prime.

Track list:
1. Mission Impossible-intro
2. Sleeping in My Car
3. Fireworks
4. Almost Unreal
5. Dangerous
6. So You Want to Be a Rock n Roll Star-The Byrds cover
7. Crash! Boom! Bang!
8. Listen to Your Heart
9. The First Girl On The Moon
10. Harleys And Indians (Riders In The Sky)
11. Lies
12. The Rain
13. I Love The Sound Of Crashing Guitars
14. It Must Have Been Love
15. Fading Like A Flower (Every Time You Leave)
16. Dressed For Success
17. The Big L
18. Joy ride
19. Spending My Time
20. Cry
21. The Look
22. Love Is All (Shine Your Light On Me)
23. Hanging On The Telephone-The Nerves cover
24. Go To Sleep