On June 2 and 3, I was in Pisa for the Italian Poster Rock Art Festival; On Sunday, June 3, my friend Giampo Copparoni and I woke up early to meet Cesare Cantalupo and his motorcycle gang, the Tears Valley Motorcycle Club of Montecatini Terme, Toscana. I’ve know Giampo and Cesare for about a dozen years. These two guys rock, and the plans they put together never cease to amaze me.

Well, this beautiful, sunny Sunday morning, Giampo and Cesare were inviting me to hang out while they made a movie. Giampo, his girlfriend Betti, a cool friend of their’s who drove and I climbed up the beautiful Coline di Leonardo in a fast car. No matter that this hill was Leonardo da Vinci’s playground as a child, and probably supplied the background setting for painting such as the Mona Lisa. Forget all that, we were making a biker movie, “Bafantu Slaves.” What a frickin’ gas maaaaaan!

On the top of the hill was a medieval castle, and we were met by Italian film director Alessandro Mariani, his photographer friend, Ilaria Sancho Panogi, and my friend Cesare’s motorcycle gang. Giampo donned his biker, beatnik super-hero costume, becoming the mysterious “Bafantu” right before my very eyes! And my friends in Cesare’s gang slapped on their psychedelic, biker helmets, and we all had a million laughs making this trailer for a “crazed Roger Corman movie that sadly got lost in a drug raid,” according to Flicks That Never Happened by Hunter S. Thompson, “when Mario Bava came to the West Hollywood hills to party with Peter Fonda in 1971.”

Maybe the more clever rockers among you have figured out that this is an announcement for a rock and roll weekender in Montecatini. Man oh man, if I could go! Rock on Bafantu and rock on Bafantu Slaves!

TEARS ROCK’N’ROLL FESTIVAL

ROCCA NUOVA DI SERRAVALLE PISTOIESE

28 JULY 2012

(DALLE 17.00 ALL NIGHT LONG!)

WITH

LOS DRAGOS

KILLER PENIS

GOLDEN SHOWERS

THE HOMEBREAKERS

BONGLEY DEAD