Boil It Down!

The Fleshtones' Garage Rock Is About As Essential As It Gets

originally published May 23, 2007

Brother man, if you get to a Fleshtones show, prepare to sweat! Forget any notions of candy-ass garage revival schlock - this is one hard rockin' outfit, musically literate cats hell-bent on showing the folks such a good time that their story fills the pages of the forthcoming book Sweat: The Story of The Fleshtones, America's Garage Band by Joe Bonomo.

Since 1975 when they formed, they have pounded audiences with the same kind of adolescent fervor with which front man Peter Zaremba embraced the British Invasion as a kid. By simply playing music that felt good, the Brooklyn-based quartet unwittingly birthed the whole garage-revival movement. They're often hailed as the ultimate party band - it's easy to hear the Beatles, Yardbirds and MC5 in their sound - but the Fleshtones' unique style of shake and twist also draws heavily from soul, disco and bubblegum hooks as well.

"I like rhythm-driven things," explains Zaremba, who along with axeman Keith Streng, drummer Bill Milhizer and bass player Ken Fox, consistently dishes up a dynamic rhythmic soup, a notoriously ass-shakin' spectacle that more often than not ends up on the street with Milhizer pounding on a hefty tom while Zaremba howls the last strains of the night's entertainment.

The Fleshtones' physical stage show evolved from the very beginning as an effort to connect with the audience, explains Zaremba on the phone from his home in Brooklyn. "The people we liked - even before we formed the band - didn't respect the conventions of the artificial barrier between the stage and the audience," he says. "We liked artists that punched holes through that consistently." Instead of reeling off the expected list of jump-blues madmen, he names Iggy Pop, Jonathan Richman and Suicide's Alan Vega. "In the original context of rock stars, [Richman] was so amazingly unlike a rock star. He was like the anti-rock star. No platform boots. Didn't have feathers stuck to him."

This genuine desire to connect with people and show them a good time undoubtedly has contributed to the Fleshtones' longevity. They are the one single band from the New York City '70s punk and new-wave scene to have been active each and every year since their formation. Most of those early years included at least one gig in Athens, and they also came to town to record 1993's Beautiful Light with R.E.M.'s Peter Buck. And a few years earlier, Streng and Milhizer teamed up with Buck to form the Full Time Men, a side project that released a 12" single and an album titled Your Face My Fist during the late '80s.

They've also bounced around to various labels, starting with '80s indie powerhouse IRS Records and then signing with a variety of Southern labels like Ichiban, Redeye and most recently Yep Roc. "We've endured because we enjoy what we do. There's no one else like us," Zaremba states flatly.

Although the Fleshtones were the first to play what has become known as modern revival garage, their contribution often goes unrecognized by the very bands that privately thank them for the inspiration, a fact that doesn't sit well with them. "We are the band that builds the roads that other bands travel down comfortably," says Zaremba, and he laughs a bit ruefully. "Privately they tell me that we inspired them to get together, but when they talk to [the press], it's like, 'Oh, I was listening to the Yardbirds when I was eight years old…' and all this nonsense."

Once Sweat arrives in bookstores this fall, the significant role that the Fleshtones have played in rock and roll will be hard to ignore.

"They've always been dismissed as a mindless party band, or even more inaccurately, as a garage revival band of some sort," says Bonomo, the book's author. "In the 1970s, a lot of bands might have been influenced by the Stones or the Pretty Things playing R&B, but the Fleshtones went back to the original source material, to really obscure, small-label 1950s stuff. And look what happened. We can do a 180-degree turn now and look back at their career and see an interesting legacy.

"While weathering one trend after another over three decades, they've always plugged themselves into what they love about making rock and roll. It's a great story of perseverance and spirit and integrity," Bonomo says.

Although Zaremba lived it once, he's read it twice. "I had trouble reading [Bonomo's book]. It's hard to read something analytical about such a huge chunk of my life… not all of it is positive, but [Bonomo] is rather merciful."

No matter how merciful, reading about the band's infamous 1980 stint opening for the Police had to sting. Both signed to IRS, the Fleshtones openly mocked the headliners, ditched shows, and ended up getting kicked off the tour.

"That tour was so bizarre!" says Zaremba. "It was an opportunity that any other band would have capitalized on that we botched and subverted from the very first." Zaremba audibly cringes a tad as he recalls the last show of the tour at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. "We were walking face-first into a hail storm of nickels, quarters and pennies," he remembers. "I was screaming at the audience, 'Keep throwing! Throw more! Throw more!' I was lucky I wasn't arrested for public profanity. The filth that came from my mouth shocked me!" He laughs when someone suggests that that stunt showed the Alan Vega influence.

The release of the book should coincide with the new album on Yep Roc, their first release since 2005's Beachhead. Furiously writing songs in time for the summer recording sessions, similarly to Beachhead, the band plans to spend a week recording at home in New York with former Voidoids guitarist Ivan Julien producing and another in Detroit to again work with Jim Diamond who has also produced records for the Dirtbombs, White Stripes and the Compulsive Gamblers.

"Yeah, that's fast. Keith [Streng] is biting his nails," Zaremba says about the tight schedule. "but we know what we're doing."

When asked what he thinks of the modern garage scene, Zaremba makes no bones about where on the heap he wants to be. "As far as really new bands, I think it's more their job to like us than for us to like them… I would hope!" he says, and laughs at his own bravado.

But after surviving 30 years of miles and miles of touring and changing fashions in music, the Fleshtones have reached rock emeritus status, kings of the boss riff, never growing old and hardly slowing down.

Bonomo says it best. "It's pretty amazing to see the Fleshtones now playing with the same intensity and energy and spontaneity that they did in the 1970s… and with no pharmaceutical help anymore!"

Gretchen Wood

WHO: The Fleshtones, Tiger! Tiger!, The Owen 4, 8-Track Gorilla
WHERE: Tasty World
WHEN: Thursday, May 24
HOW MUCH: $8