i took this picture on the side of the road during a trip in between Montebelluna, in the Treviso province, Italy, and Padova. i had spotted this nice piece of graphic design on a billboard before, but could never stop in time and park to snap a pic of it.
turns out Azienda Agricola Gorza ran a pig farm near Riese San Pio X.
it was forcibly shut down in 2010 after a dispute with the neighbouring village for the stench that reportedly pestered the air.
this explains why the billboard seemed odd, right there in middle of farming land, with no phone or address advertised: the vacated premises are now in shambles, hidden from view behind thick bushes of weed thorns, a few hundred meters behind the billboard.
it may have swine-stenched the surrounding, from what few piece of news i could find, but graphically speaking the Azienda Agricola Gorza knew how to portray the image of a clever, imaginative business with a creative twist i’ve not often seen associated to pig farms.
on the side, the trip during which i took the picture is relevant to this blog and blogger. Montebelluna is where i’ve located the [electric] upright bass i’ve been dreaming for a lifetime, since my sound engineering days when i mixed some concerts by Eberhard Weber in the Stuttgart area in Germany.
i could have never afforded one, as the price these things go for are too steep for my pockets, very close (or too close) to the price of a passable double bass of the acoustic variety; but at a music shop in Montebelluna a piece was on offer at b-stock price, sold over the ‘net and quickly returned on money-back-guarantee because malfunctioning, as it had been idling on display in the shop for the best of ten years without much care.
it was on the trip back from this music shop that i stopped to take the picture; it seemed like two precious findings had presented themselves on the same day before me, the bass and the billboard.
buying the bass was a bit of a gamble, because i wasn’t sure at all it may have been fixed and put to work alright, given how it had been neglected for a decade. and while it came for about half the money of its current average street price, it was still a horrible amount for my reduced means, which left no pennies for further luthier’s care, and which i could have never afforded, hadn’t i sold an electric bass that i wasn’t spending enough time with.
after thorough cleansing, the fingerboard rehydrated, neck and bridge and pickups properly set, with a fresh set of specific strings aptly installed, the five-string broomstick has finally started to obey the laws of physics with a more favourable response to a player’s needs.
it is still in need of a capable player, and badly, as for the time being it only has a practicing student that’s sleepy for most of his playing time, and not at all applying to it consistently, unfortunately.
but it is being played, at least, and receives the care it deserves, and will soon provide its audio feed to, i hope, some inspired signal-processing-based composition.