Saturday Looks Good To Me
Rinderhalle St. Marx, 2008
The first impression must have been irritating for Saturday Looks Good To Me when they arrived at the venue of their Vienna show. Hundreds of primarily female and darkly rouged teenagers were waiting for a concert of the Canadian Teenie-Punk-Band Simple Plan to start, who played another hall of the Arena. Saturday Looks Good To Me singer and songwriter Fred Thomas, keyboardist Scott Sellwood (who knew a personal anecdote about nearly every single band we had a shooting with) and drummer Steve Middlekauf watched the strange scenery with an alienated grin before they kicked off what was going to be their only show in Austria on their surprisingly very last tour ever. “We all live in different places now which makes things complicated”, Fred explained after the concert. Thus their 2007 release “Fill Up The Room” – an amazing collection of powerful, melodic, stirring and souly indie rock songs with supreme vocal harmonies – might as well be the last record of the formerly Michigan-based band. “But all of us will continue to make music in some way”, Fred said.
- Photography
- Simon Brugner
Rinderhalle St. Marx
It was in the middle of the 1990s when the last cattle was slaughtered in the Rinderhalle St. Marx. Until then the 175 meter long hall that comprises an area of 20.000 square meters was the main building of Vienna’s Central Slaughter Cattle Market. Erected between 1879 and 1881 and inaugurated by Emperor Franz Josef the listed Rinderhalle is the town’s first wrought-iron-structure and was planned by architect Rudolf Frey, who received praise for the revolutionary lightness of the huge brick-and-iron-construction and was responsible for the whole abattoir complex. Nowadays the butchers have disappeared from the St. Marx area (the name derives from Saint Markus and is not connected to philosopher Karl Marx) which is intended to become a hotspot for biotechnological research. After some refurbishment works in recent years the Cattle Hall is still unused but subject of ongoing talks in Vienna’s townhall. The proposals range from further biotechnology laboratories to an exhibition hall or even a combination of both.