"It was actually your beloved Per Gessle who initiated the compilation," said Brainpool's David Birde in an exclusive interview with The Daily Roxette regarding their forthcoming greatest hits album.

  "Apparently he was at home, listening to our albums and was once again struck by how good we were," David tells TDR. "He started to mail us, coming up with a running order for the album. Eventually he wore us down and we said: 'OK, you'll get your compilation if…'

  "'If what?' was Per's instant reply.

  'If you write the sleeve notes.'"

  Per agreed and so the album, titled "We Aimed To Please," will have an introduction written by him.

  The members of Brainpool, including the former lead singer Janne Kask who left the band in 1997, are very happy to be able to present such a huge bulk of material. For example, there will be all of Brainpool's videos on a bonus DVD that also contains the demo tape recording that gave the group their deal with Jimmy Fun Music, Per's record company. It will also contain "the horrible 'Bandstarter' demo recorded in a hotel room in Stuttgart during the Roxette tour and much more," muses David. Brainpool was Roxette's supporting act during the Crash! Boom! Bang! tour in 1994.

  "The actual CD contains all our singles, plus the songs that would have been singles if we had released more," David continues. The compilation will be sold at the price of a regular CD. All songs are commented by David and Janne and the artwork by John the Fisherman is, according to David, "an orgy of Brainpool nostalgia!"

  David also tells us that the two new songs, "A Different Life" and "Let Me Win," were originally written for Belinda Carlisle in 1995 but never made it to her album. "They have been hidden away in Jimmy Fun's vaults until now, so they are very exclusive."

In 1997, when Janne left the band, Brainpool was near breaking up. The band looked for a new singer, but never hired one. "It didn't take long for us to realize that it would be impossible to let another person join," David explains. "It would have to be the three of us, or split up. At first we thought about changing our name, but that turned out to be difficult - Sony Music had already paid for the recording of 'You Are Here' and they wanted us to keep the name. We had to choose between ditching the recordings and lose our record deal or go on calling ourselves Brainpool. We cowardly chose the latter."

  Even though Janne is now working with the band, they have no plans to reunite. "Well, if we wanted Brainpool to be just like in the old days we would definately need Janne, but I think that we are equally uninterested in reliving the past in that way. Those days were great fun, but we are older and there are other bands now that are much better at doing what we were so good at for a couple of years in the mid-nineties. There is a time for everything… Right now we are pleased to have completed the compilation," says David.

  When TDR has David on the hook we also ask how he feels about downloading music, since their publishing company Junk Musik releases singles only in digital format. "We embrace the new technology that makes it possible for each and everyone to spread their music all over the world. The major labels have themselves to blame when they shout about illegal downloading. Instead of holding back, they should have jumped on the train years ago."

  Next Brainpool will do some promotion for the new album. "We will do a couple of interviews in Stockholm all four of us and hopefully we'll go out in the night, get really drunk and remember our heydays!" says David. "After that - it's time for Janne to write some hits, and for us to go home to Skåne and dream up next bizarre concept album!"