Does anyone have a copy of 'Postcard'? It was download only and the website isn't up anymore. Also anyone got a copy of the Unshaker EP? I'm dying to hear it, ta!
I have a copy of Postcard. If I'm ok to upload, I shall do, but shall await a nod from anyone who might prefer me not to!
Unshaker EP came up on ebay the other year and I held off 'til the last minute...and left off too long. Some lucky sod got it for 99p. Hmph. Again, I do have the tracks, but am not sure if it's ok to upload them or not. The second track, Exotic Night, is one of my favourite Venini tunes, though. It's a very sexy thing indeed.
Is there nowt on Youtube? There is a video out there somewhere...for Carnival Star I think. I forget where the link is though, and you need Quicktime to view it.
Someone with technical cleverness should rescue this and put it on Youtube.
I bought the first Venini single in Liverpool HMV. Hard to imagine something that obscure being stocked there these days. Did any of the records ever hit the indie charts...?
I have the two singles, but Postcard was a free download so I can't see the harm in sharing that one. Unshaker EP, I know it was mail order but I suppose it was paid for content so I can see the caution what with the rules of uploading and such.
If the stuff isn't commercially available (i.e. sold on iTunes or stocked in any record shops) then there's absolutely nothing illegal about sharing it on here! People are always sharing unavailable Pulp b sides on here, and the forum hasn't been shut down so far!
There used to be Venini stuff free to download from Mark Sturdy's site. Unfortunately it seems to be gone now - http://www.mark-sturdy.co.uk/venini/ I'd also very much like the EP.
Not a problem! What'd you make of it? It's probably second only two Exotic Night in my affections. Just a brilliant pop tune. Something to take into consideration for those seeking to write off R's contributions to Pulp's pop side.
There's a few dupes on your list there. I think this remnant of the old official site is fairly comprehensive - there were a few more unannounced early gigs though, mainly (possibly wholly) with Rialto.
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That's a very downbeat Timeline, Mark! I'll update the one I've just done for the wiki. Hadn't realised the Unshaker EP took a whole year to be released. Jeez. Had they been trying to flog the idea of the mooted 3rd single Roxy in the meantime or something...?
And how did you feel about Russell quitting Venini one month after you'd relaunched the website? You can illustrate your answer with a smilie of your choice.
Furthmore, mooching around Venini references, I note that it was written that Russell left to do 'something with antiques in Bakewell'. Did he ever actually set up shop in Bakewell?
Stephen wrote:That's a very downbeat Timeline, Mark! I'll update the one I've just done for the wiki. Hadn't realised the Unshaker EP took a whole year to be released. Jeez. Had they been trying to flog the idea of the mooted 3rd single Roxy in the meantime or something...?
It wasn't really a question of it taking a year to release it exactly. That whole period for the second half of 2000 was an attempt to try and keep things on the boil in the face of little-to-no actual band activity. They'd recorded the album in late '99, then there was this break of six months for the first half of 2000 to reconsider what they were doing, and after that Russell decided he was leaving but hoped (as we all did) that the band would be able to carry on, with him in some kind of managerial role - which seemed sort of possible, as they were all younger and potentially more up for touring and stuff.
So from summer 2000 onwards they were trying to re-mobilise with the new guitarist (and then with a new drummer too), they weren't going to be able to gig for a while, and Russell and I both wanted to put something out to keep people interested and try and retain what fans they'd gathered. Hence Postcard and then Unshaker. Bit of a waste of time as it turned out!
And how did you feel about Russell quitting Venini one month after you'd relaunched the website? You can illustrate your answer with a smilie of your choice.
I sort of knew it was coming as we'd talked quite a lot in the runup to that period. I was just happy to be involved really, although it seemed a terrible shame he was leaving. I was probably more miffed that they'd done their first gig at Warwick Uni (where I was a student at the time) and I didn't hear about it till a week later!
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"Yes I saw her in the chip shop / so I said get yer top off"
Stephen wrote:Mark, what were Russell's reasons for disillusionment? The brutal lack of success at Venini, or the horrific reviews?
He didn't really go into it much, but I remember a sense that he wasn't really interested in going up and down the M1 in a Transit van and all those other trappings of being in a small band. The bad reviews and the fact the band didn't really take off commercially were probably a blow to morale (although you could argue calling it a day that two singles and less than a dozen gigs he didn't really give it much of a chance), but all that was secondary I think - although I do remember telling him about a fairly snidey gossip piece from the NME Thrills column about him leaving the band, and him being very irritated that they'd print something like that but not bother to review the singles. There was perhaps a sense of weariness with the petty politics of the indie music industry, and how there seemed to be a limit to what you could achieve if you didn't want to go down to London every weekend and suck up to Lamacq.
Were they much cop live, btw? I always imagined them to be rather good...
Yes, they were great - very watchable, with a fantastic frontline of Russell, Debbie and the bassist Nick who had this supercharged early Manic thing going on. Really tight too, with quite a loud powerful sound, perhaps more so than the singles would suggest. It's a shame there aren't any gig recordings around.
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"Yes I saw her in the chip shop / so I said get yer top off"
I am surprised that NME didn't review the singles. Were they dead against them from the start or something? I thought each ex-Britpop-star-now-solo was allowed at least one puff piece in the weeklies back then?
A shame indeed re: gig recordings. Tried watching the Carnival Star vid again the other night to get a flavour of a gig, but it really is the most horrible quality. Doesn't help that it's ripped straight from Quicktime I think...
Stephen wrote:I am surprised that NME didn't review the singles. Were they dead against them from the start or something? I thought each ex-Britpop-star-now-solo was allowed at least one puff piece in the weeklies back then?
They did get some good coverage at the start - an On piece in NME, some OK live reviews etc. Then they got absolutely ripped to shreds by both NME and Melody Maker in reviews of the Camden Falcon gig in July, and that was it. Very odd - the sheer viciousness of those reviews (see http://www.mark-sturdy.co.uk/venini/nmebarfly.html and, even worse, http://www.mark-sturdy.co.uk/venini/mmlive.html) does suggest there was some sort of agenda going on, but God knows what it was.
A shame indeed re: gig recordings. Tried watching the Carnival Star vid again the other night to get a flavour of a gig, but it really is the most horrible quality. Doesn't help that it's ripped straight from Quicktime I think...
It does look/feel like an agenda, aye. The criticisms are ridiculous too - seem to be centering around the fact that the band are 'too middle class' and are excluding the 'common people'. And having a go at them for plagirism.
I think you could take about 80% of NME cover stars from '95 - 2005 and accuse them of at least one of those things.
Doesn't NME often do that sort of thing? I remember them raving about The Moldy Peaches, I think they gave the album a good review, then a couple of months later I read a review of someone else's album and they said something along the lines of them being even shitter than The Moldy Peaches.
I am still very keen on Great Escape, but it was amusing to see the stance on Morning Glory change from it not even being the best album of that particular week to being considered as pretty much the best non-Beatle album ever by most polls/pundits/music papers...
I remember being VERY ANNOYED at some of the journos working for the NME and Select around '97-'99, it did seem like they had an orchestrated campaign against anything even vaguely arty or weird.
To give a bit of balance, while I fucking *loved* Venini, I have a copy of their full-length demo "album" (for reasons I'm not going to go into without Mark's permission) which I do still listen to semi-regularly, well, at the time, me and a friend played bits of it to a whole bunch of people we knew - not Pulp fans, in the main, or not hardcore enough to know Russell at any rate - and apart from said friend, who was quickly smitten, otherwise the reaction was uniformly terrible.
Postcard, Roxy, Hoboken*, Mon Camion, Carnival Star, Unshaker, Amsterdam Sam: we loved these, and yet they never garnered anything approaching a positive reaction that I can remember; the reactions I do remember ranged from indifference to real, annoyed hostility, in the style of the hatchet jobs from the weeklies mentioned up there. I think it's just a particular combination of musical cues - quite confrontational, low-tech arrangements and productions and sounds, the nature of Debbie's voice - that, taken together, somehow got people's backs up. Without them knowing any context, quite a few people reacted against them instinctively, assuming them to be pretentious middle class art students. (Obviously, quite a few of these people were themselves pretentious middle-class art students etc.)
Perhaps the weight of expectations over this being the first proper post-Pulp project, and critics' disappointment that the "missing ingredient" lost between His 'n' Hers and This Is Hardcore didn't really manifest itself in Venini, might have made them keener to deliver a kicking, I don't know. But I do know that a bunch of people with no agenda, "indie fans" who I'd expected to lap up Venini and make them a success, just weren't impressed.
* This one was my favourite, for some reason, but my friend (mentioned above) named it as the one song on the album he couldn't abide.
Whilst I don't think Venini could follow on from His 'n' Hers and Different Class, I do think they amply followed on from the 'Intro' sound of Pulp. There are a lot of similarities there.
I've also had the chance to hear Amsterdam Sam and remember it as probably the most cross-overable of Venini's songs. Lovely lyrics and rather less abrasive than normal music. I do think 'Roxy' would have been a disastrous third single, though. It seemed to compile everything that people hated about Venini into one song!
Steve Devereux wrote:I have a copy of their full-length demo "album" (for reasons I'm not going to go into without Mark's permission)
Fine by me!
Thanks for the insight too. I always laboured under the impression that more people would have got into Venini had they had a chance to hear them, and that there was a gap in the market with most indie music at that time being so drab and dull. From what you say though, I may have been somewhat wide of the mark!
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"Yes I saw her in the chip shop / so I said get yer top off"
Hi all - long time lurker, thought I'd better sign up and comment!
I was quite young when Venini arrived on the scene and it's been quite interesting to learn of free downloads, mail order EPs and an unreleased album! Wow. Like a really strange Christmas...
I have to do the obvious and ask if anyone in the thread would mind re-uploading or sending me direct the free download and Unshaker EP (all links in this thread are now dead, despite it being less than a year ago that they were posted). It would mean loads to finally hear them, so advance thanks to anyone who takes the time to help a Venini fan out!
I'd also love to hear the album session tracks, but not sure if anyone is willing to share those.
Anyway, cheers to all for reading - great to discover a bit more about the band who I thought only ran to the two singles! :)
Songs from the Unshaker EP and the only song I can find on Youtube called "Carnival Star" are all amazing. However, the link for Postcard seemed to be invalid now. It makes me feel bad that I can only request things but never share anything interesting with you because I don't have any, but I still can't resist my curiosity.
I've got Postcard, St. Tropez, Carnival Star, and Mon Camion which I can upload if they're not already on the account. I get very lazy about actually downloading things from the account because I forget to ever actually go log into the account and do it.......
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