Gangsters of Love 3: International Men of Mystery

1. Jane Birkin - Orang Utan
2. Johnnie Taylor - Slide On
3. Vanusa - Espere
4. Gülistan Okan - Kanim Kaynadi Sana
5. The Meters - Tippi-Toes
6. Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra - Greenwich Village Folk Song Salesman
7. Bodies Of Water - I Heard It Sound
8. Mercury Rev - Something For Joey
9. Can - Vitamin C
10. The Bendeth Band - I Was There
11. Paul Chambers - Tale Of The Fingers
12. South Street Soul - Poppin Popcorn
13. Joe Cain & His Orchestra - I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm
14. Elvis Presley - Suspicion
15. Wallace Collection - My Way Of Loving You
16. Mireille Mathieu - Tommy
17. Apollo Nove feat. Seu Jorge & Ceu - Ensaboar Voce
18. Jaybee Wasden - De Castrow
19. The Mamas And The Papas - Somebody Groovy
20. Bobby Konders - The Poem (Featuring Mutaburaka)
21. Michel Polnareff - Ca n'arrive Qu'aux Autres

It had been a long, hard summer and the money from the Eastern European tour was already gone. Gangsters blasikin (left) and tornadoZ (center) had found work in Las Vegas; blasikin as a Samuel L. Jackson dealertainer at Imperial Palace, and tornadoZ as the centerpiece of Phyllis Diller’s adult all-male revue, with some irregular work as a short order cook on the side.

Gangster sammyg (right) had barely settled into his new position as head waterer at the Green Thumb Tropical Nursery in Riverside, California when he got the call from Tonino Baglioni, one of his father’s old army buddies. For over forty years, Tonino had owned and operated Baglioni’s Milano Gelato, the Italian city’s largest and most popular gelato joint, offering more than 50 flavors. But recently, some snot-nosed and enterprising young American upstart named Hank Phillips had opened a chain of cheap gelato stands, directly threatening the Baglioni family’s local gelato monopoly. Hank Phillips needed to be sent a message, and the Gangsters of Love were just the men for the job. They had always heeded the urgent call of a friend in trouble—and besides, they loved gelato.

Sammy, blasi and ‘nado met up in Zürich, then took the train south together from there. A single GoL concert had been scheduled for them in Milano that evening, as an alibi to explain their presence in the city. Tonino had arranged for the three to occupy an empty apartment directly above Gelato Genie’s flagship store, from which Hank Phillips conducted his business. The gangsters were to wait there until dusk, at which time they would make their move. They passed the waiting hours browsing through Rigoletto’s Records, a quaint-but-well-stocked store just two doors up the street, then quietly returned to the empty apartment where they listened to their new musical acquisitions on an old stereo they had found in the musty hallway linen closet.

Dusk fell, and the gangsters struck with their trademark precision, leaving Hank Phillips with the promised message delivered in no uncertain terms, and with a headache he wouldn’t soon be able to forget. Just 32 minutes after the assault, The Gangsters of Love were dazzling a screaming throng of thousands with a concert like no other they had ever seen before, and by half-past midnight the three were on a private yacht headed for Algiers.

The Milano police were completely bewildered by the crime, their only clue a solitary compact disc marked “MIX FIX” that had been left on the window seat in the abandoned apartment just above the wreckage formerly known as Gelato Genie’s primary store. With nothing else to go on, the authorities dropped the mysterious CD into a plastic zip-lock bag and delivered it directly to the downtown lab where it would undergo a thorough examination.