Sometimes this blog will just be "Venice In Peril"
Another canal. Maybe you can imagine how much Angus McKie's artwork for Rondò Veniziano's 1983 album "Venice In Peril" blew the mind of a young boy rifling
through records in WHSmith, although I didn't know it was called that back then, and having my mind blown by
album art was literally the only reason I rifled through records in
WHSmith in the eighties. Click to enlage if you like, but don't blame me if you never come back, and here's another.
I've just started watching Dennis Potter's Casanova: its scenes of an imprisoned writer suffering pornographic flashbacks and raging against his cellmates are very reminiscent of The Singing Detective, but its sumptious and creepy Venetian exteriors are giving me welcome flashbacks of my own, specifically to how powerful a role some idea of this city played in my childhood imagination. The mad cover art on a Rondò Veniziano record is probably what started it.
A decade after "Venice In Peril" was released I would have my first ever pizza (I was scared of cheese) and, as I've written before, I chose a Veniziana because for every one ordered Pizza Express would pay "a discretionary 25p" to the "Venice In Peril fund" and I still hadn't been. In the end Venice did not disappoint, but that discretionary 25p would never change in value over the next three decades of my ordering Venizianas. Then, last weekend, I went to the Pizza Express in Paddington basin and found out it was no longer on the menu. I asked why. Apparently Pizza Express no longer has the necesary sultanas. I blame Brexit. How are we going to pay for that spaceship now?
A big YES to all of this. I have long been mildly obsessed with Rondo Veneziano and their space gowns, having come to them via the La Serenissima video being regularly used as between-programme filler on Saturday morning ITV. There was also a brief phase when they'd play on Pebble Mill At One and similar, in full get-up and wearing smooth silver masks – I believe they still wear the clothes at gigs but the masks have long since been ditched, alas. Maybe Daft Punk were watching.
In an amendment to my original statement, I'd like to add a big NO to sultanas on pizza. But yes to everything else.
Cheers. Fine. Let Venice sink. I actually don't think I remember this video at all, apart from excerpts possibly used in the "Best Of..." ad which allowed me to put a sound to these space frocks. It's a find.
A big YES to all of this. I have long been mildly obsessed with Rondo Veneziano and their space gowns, having come to them via the La Serenissima video being regularly used as between-programme filler on Saturday morning ITV. There was also a brief phase when they'd play on Pebble Mill At One and similar, in full get-up and wearing smooth silver masks – I believe they still wear the clothes at gigs but the masks have long since been ditched, alas. Maybe Daft Punk were watching.
ReplyDeleteIn an amendment to my original statement, I'd like to add a big NO to sultanas on pizza. But yes to everything else.
Cheers. Fine. Let Venice sink. I actually don't think I remember this video at all, apart from excerpts possibly used in the "Best Of..." ad which allowed me to put a sound to these space frocks. It's a find.
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