YEAR 2009 TRIP REPORT - VENICE. HOW MUCH ART CAN YOU TAKE?

YEAR 2009 TRIP REPORT - VENICE.
HOW MUCH ART CAN YOU TAKE?

I spend all my money on travelling and buying records. One of my top destinations in the summer of 2009 was Venice. No, not the one in L.A. with Muscle Tendencies and Suicidal Beach, but the real thing in Italy. The trip I made together with my friends Jack and Jackie who are rich Americans. Jack is a famous professor in the field of gender studies, and he owns a fancy boat which took us around.


This was very helpful since as you might know you cannot go around Venice by car. Partly because of all the streets being made of water, but mainly because you would inevitably run over lots of tourists even if you drive very carefully. They are everywhere. One of the highlights of the trip was the Biennale. For some reasons several of the pavilions there full of animals this year. The German one had a speaking kitchen cat. The environment did not really look like a kitchen but apparently there is such thing as a kitchen cat. But most of them cannot speak.


You can check out this link http://www.deutscher-pavillon.org/ and get a great description in very British English of what it was all about.

But also the Hungarians had little furry creatures in the house.


Instead of animals the Scandinavian pavilion had a great house with a pool which turned out to be a crime scene. The victim of the crime could be found in the pool.


As I am not into too complex art which I cannot understand my favourite part of the Biennale was the Finnish pavilion. The Finns do not consider themselves to be a part of the rest of Scandinavia, so they had their own thing going. It was a Finnish Fire & Rescue Museum which they had transplanted to Venice. Besides two gazillion little things and photos that had to do with firemen around the world (all compiled by just one guy), they had great exhibits of nuclear war emergency action paintings from the former Soviet Union. Educational paintings of nuclear bombs exploding over Russian cities, then firemen moving in to put out the fire and save the citizens from their bunkers. These paintings looked like nuclear war wasn't all that bad at all. Yet a little more grim that the old US "duck & cover" routines. I will not post pictures here as I intend to steal some of that stuff for label artwork in the future.

Other good exhibits included this record player which was the only installation in that room. As far as I remember this was not a country specific thing.


I also really loved the sign below. When you have your pavillions full of stuffed animals, record players with red vinyl LPs and other weird looking stuff, I guess it is necessary to stress such things. Also the word "touch" is quite hard to spell it seems.

THE SKATE CLASSIC VINYL FIND

THE SKATE CLASSIC VINYL FIND

Yeah, sometimes it pays to get up early. Recently I found these goodies at the flea market for a rather fair price. But before you get overly envious, the ex-owner stored those in an extremely humid environment in basement in Brasil so the records are not exactly mint anymore, with the exception of the NO MERCY which is the best of the three anyway. So I spent my weekend re-discovering the greatness of some old Venice skate bands. Too bad the guy did not also have a mouldy copy of the first BEOWÜLF LP for me to complete the package. That record has got to have some of the worst lyrics ever. It is also a runner up for best non-SUICIDAL TENDENCIES band from that era. Out of the three bands NO MERCY, EXCEL and BEOWÜLF the "Widespread Bloodshed" LP is my favourite. At the time they were Mike Muir's best band and way better than the SUICIDAL TENDENCIES stuff and if I remember correctly the guys were recruited to the ST team as the band headed for more (rock) stardom.


I remember when an old friend of mine in Berlin had the "Welcome to Venice" compilation and taped it for me. This must've been around 1986 and we were eagerly waiting for new SUICIDAL songs after their stellar first LP. On the "Welcome to Venice" compilation they are one of the weaker bands and it was the first time for me to hear the other three (EXCEL, NO MERCY, BEOWÜLF). Back then EXCEL was my favourite. Almost ten years later when I was touring in Europe with the Vancouver band STRAIN and we spoke of the musical greatness of NO MERCY and luckily a few days later we stayed at a friend's place who had the LP so we taped it and then repeatedly listened to it in the van. Absolutely great music for driving long distances! So fucking evil -- E-V-I-L!



The EXCEL "Split Image" LP you can see above included the well mouldy flyer for EXCEL merchandise -- as all Suicidal Records releases had flyers for merchandise like skateboards or shirts. Back in the day I sent them some hard earned cash for two shirts which I never received. So Dan of EXCEL, if you read this (yeah right!), you owe me 20+ bucks -- with interest.... or two shirts. We spoke about it at your gig at the ECSTACY in Berlin on your first tour. There is much debate about which of the first two EXCEL LPs is better. Somehow I still prefer the slightly rawer debut which sounds somehow unfinished musically.