Well, now that you think that this year is almost over, you’ve seen plenty of Gyllene Tider concerts and everyone is preparing for the holidays. Still there is a reason to come back to Halmstad/Sweden just two weeks before X-mas: a book release party. It may have occured to the regular reader of this magazine that long-term expert and journalist Jan-Owe Wikström and his colleague and photographer Anders Roos have worked on and published a behind-the-story book about Sweden’s cult band Gyllene Tider. Thomas Evensson has written a short summary about the book a few days ago, so I'll spare you details. All you need to know is: go get the book. It is incredibly interesting, it has astonishingly great photos inside (something you rarely see although advertised in many other books) and it looks pretty cool under the X-mas tree. Remember, you can still win your copy here on The Daily Roxette if you enter our current contest before Friday.

So, what’s a book release party of this magnitude like?

Lots of elderly people in their Sunday bests? The writer sitting in an old creaking arm-chair, reading chapters from the book while everyone sits and concentrates? Au contraire!

Most of you know Leif’s Lounge, Halmstad’s famous nightclub in the basement of Hotel Tylösand and be told that had you been there you would have liked it. There were around 200 invited guests who stood around chatting, and you got a voucher for free drinks at the bar. Svante Karlsson, in Sweden a famous singer-songwriter who is friends with Mats Persson sang songs of Gyllene Tider and others. Of course, Wikström and Roos were there, Swedish media covered the event and yes, the boys of Gyllene Tider themselves came along. You could talk with each of them, have your photos taken, everything in a relaxed atmosphere.

After a short introduction, the usual press photos were taken and then came the part that deserves respect: All five Gyllene guys sat there for almost two hours and signed the books for you so that each and everyone in the room got their personal memory. Still after that, someone brought boxes with dozens of Gyllene Tider books and they all got signed by all the band members, probably to be sold or auctioned later.

During the event, The Daily Roxette got hold of Marie Dimberg, Per and Marie’s manager. She told us that a release date for the upcoming GT live DVD is not set yet. Though, the version to be broadcast on Swedish TV this Friday might make it to the DVD (roughly 74 minutes,) one way or another. In other words, we need to be patient. The long-awaited video for "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother" will be published, but not in the near future. Marie explained that it would not be a good timing to have the video get released now that the hype around the movie (Small Apartments) and the corresponding soundtrack is slightly over. ‘Surely we’ll find a chance to show it’,  she added. The presales for Marie Fredriksson’s tour in 2014 is doing great. Those who have not yet had the chance to purchase their ticket may be glad to hear that TDR will run a competition for tickets in January 2014.

7 photos taken by Justyna Bereza have been added to this article. A video of the event is in the pipeline.