LONDON, UK (Top40 Charts/
Rednex Official Website) - The whole
Rednex band will get exchanged from January 1st 2009. The new band will consist of the previous members Scarlet (JulieAnne Tulley), Dagger (Anders Sandberg) and Ace Ratclaw (Tor Penten) and more. The current band, lead by Mary Joe (Annika Ljungberg), will from that date no longer have the permission by the
Rednex owners to keep performing for Rednex.
The new band have already started rehearsing for an upcoming club tour in Europe during January and have also started recording a new album that will be released next spring through a newly invented and undisclosed sales and marketing tactic including virtual worlds. They will also perform with a "Wild West" musical that is currently in its casting phase and is planned to premier next fall in Germany.
"I am very excited to be back in Rednex", says Scarlet. "The music business is in a big and chaotic change at the moment. We have a lot of new ideas in the band so it will be a lot of fun to create the future and shake it up a bit. A little turbulence is something that we in Rednex always welcome."
During her 4 years of absence from Rednex, she founded the Rednex Tribute Band, which came to be one of the main reasons to the change of the band. The owners of Rednex have mostly been positive to tribute bands even though they do not contribute economically. However, the owners have constantly encouraged the concert promoters to clarify who is performing, the real Rednex or a tribute band.
This has led to several conflicts in Rednex's history, such as last year when Annika Ljungberg tried to sue Scarlet's tribute band, even though they had legal rights to perform. Awkwardly enough, Annika had been in the opposite situation and performing as Rednex Revival Band in 2003, one year before making a comeback in Rednex whilst Scarlet was the official Rednex singer, and had at the time gained support to do so from everyone in the Rednex family including Scarlet. This adverse behavior from Annika Ljungberg led to rage and upset within the Rednex group.
"It was an experiment to let Annika get power over Rednex, since we were doing other stuff at the time", says the Rednex owners and founders via a press release on rednexforsale.com, "but when she created ill will by suing people and also getting rid of Dagger and Ace, two of the best performers that we ever had, we lost trust in her ability and intention to maintain the welcoming attitude that Rednex stands for."
Annika made a comeback in 2004 after 7 years of absence in Rednex and soon thereafter got the power to run Rednex and represent the trademark through a contract ending January 1st 2009. "In spite of Annika's mismanagement and lack of judgment, Rednex kept producing hits and selling out gigs around the world during her period", continues the Rednex owners. "So we somehow better understood the value of Rednex and that we need to take better care of it, and the first thing that we will do is to bring back the positive and explosive party atmosphere that has always been a part of Rednex."
The owners also claim, through an official letter from their attorney, that Annika acted illegally by not sharing the contracts that she signed for Rednex and not consulting the owners before a release, which she had obligations to do according to the contract.
The last and only time that Rednex exchanged all band members was in January 2001. Rednex has, since the start 14 years ago, featured a record-breaking total of 15 band performers, not to mention the many vocalists and musicians that actually play on the records. Their first hit in 1994 was the party-classic "Cotton Eye Joe" that went No.1 in 15 countries. They are one of the 10 most sold Swedish bands all-time with a dozen international Top 10 hits, the latest one being "Football Is Our Religion" which went to No.1 in Sweden in the summer of 2008.
Rednex have, thanks to their unique country-techno music, which lacks comparison in the music business, been a frequent favorite in Hollywood in the last years. They were featured in the Top 10 movie "Barnyard" two years ago and have in the last year been featured in Snoop Dogg's "Hood of Horror" and "My Name Is Earl".
The owners of Rednex announced the whole band for sale on eBay in 2007 for 1,5 million dollars. There have been a couple of offers but the band has yet to make world history by being the first famous pop band to be sold. Now the price has risen to 1,9 million dollars, possibly because of probable income from the musical.
Annika Ljungberg is invited to keep playing Rednex songs in another name than Rednex, but for those who wants to see her perform as Rednex, the last chance will be on New Year's Eve 2008. The location is not determined, but will be announced shortly. The first performance of the new band is not made official yet.
