Alessandro Ansani – bass player for The Liars – and the man who organized the whole Italian Tour for Firehouse’s Psychedelic Secession Tour – met us in Florence – his home town (He was born in Pisa, and loves to show us around there, and lives in Florence). The night was a book release for “Eighties Colours” by Roberto Calabro. The book covers the Italian psychedelic garage scene of the 1980′s. It’s a masterful acheivement – and exhaustively documents the whole period.
Alessandro’s band, The Liars, played live and rocked the house down.
Roberto and Alessandro presented the book. I even added a few words about the San Francisco poster scene, boiling down the last 50 years into an easily understandable storyline.
Our hosts at Cuculia were so kind as to invite Firehouse to show our posters until the end of the month.
Mondo Bizzarro invited me to do the first show on the tour. Only hitch is that my posters decided not to show up. I arrived in Rome on June 1st, but it took three days for my posters to get to Rome from Chicago. I spent three days learning how to play banjo – not wanting to disappoint.
Meanwhile Ron Donovan worked the problem from Stateside – calling to India and back – until he could finally chew out the baggage department at O’Hare Airport. He told them in no uncertain terms that they were “F@$king our tour.” My poster portfolios arrived the next day with numerous “URGENT” stickers pasted all over them.
Cristiano Armati and Dario Morgante were excellent hosts. We went out on the town in the San Lorenzo district of Rome. Luisa, François and Alessandro were so cool and helpful! Mondo Bizzarro has invited Firehouse to make a return show on October 21, 2010. I can not wait!
My old friend David Vecchiato showed up and made a story for Repubblica’s monthly art and entertainment magazine called “XL.”
Seems my friend Tara Macpherson dropped by Mondo Bizzarro in Rome a few days later.
Marie Xeme filmed this really cool video of the Miodi Festival in Milan, Italy , where Firehouse made an exposition with Malleus, Steuso and Kabuto.
The show was hot hot hot with Ufomammut, Lento, Amen Ra and Gandhi’s Gunn. The show was amazing fun!
Jerom from Geneva (in the band Knut and a great poster designer) surprised me – he’s in the film for a second with Ron. And also for a second you can see Marco Teatro talking with me – he’s the graffiti painter – he’s the amazingly cool artist that invited us for some of Firehouse’s first big shows in Italy. Marco Guasco and Ciccia showed up, as did Stefano Calori – Stefano helped me more than I can even mention, when I made my Milan studio at Centro Sociale Leoncavallo – and we rocked out.
Ufomammut played their new album “Eve” in it’s entirety. What a great night!
