Queens Tribune

Peter Zaremba, the lead singer of garage rock band the Fleshtones, remembers what the musical landscape of Queens was like as a kid growing up Flushing in the early 1970s. “There was no scene,” he said. “As a teenager it seems like there was nothing to do. The nightclubs only had the cover bands. That’s what drove the Ramones, the Dictators, and us to do what we did.”

Playing rock and roll music is what the Fleshtones have been doing ever since, for almost 30 years. A lot of local groups from the punk era have come and gone, but the Fleshtones—Zaremba, guitarist Keith Streng, drummer Bill Milhizer, and bassist Ken Fox—continue to play their high-energy music while making their loyal fans dance and sweat. “The people who know [the Fleshtones] feel really strongly about us,” said Zaremba. “They kind of think of us in a very special and historic way.”

The latest chapter in the band’s long history is their 18th album Beachhead (Yep Roc). Recorded in only six days, it is a spirited party album that features driving guitar, pummeling rhythms, and catchy melodies—all of which capture the manic energy of 60s rock and roll. It is a sound that has not changed for the band since 1976.

“Why use a synthesizer to try to sound like a Vox organ?” asks Zaremba. “I like the sound of real guitars—to us, that’s like the real origin of rock and roll. There’s absolutely no reason why we would [change] now.”

“Super rock,” is how the Fleshtones describe their sound. “It’s a very preposterous term,” admitted Zaremba. “It’s a just a mixture of everything we like about Rock and Roll: all over the top, direct, forceful elements, primitive and psychedelic, put together as one thing.”

Although the group’s music is a throwback to vintage rock, it has also provided the template for today’s alternative rock groups. “You listen to a lot of the punk bands and they sound dated in the sense of punk,” Zaremba said. “When you listen to us, it sounds like a lot of the music that came out in the 80s, 90s, and even now. We wanted to get back to the primitive teenage fury and angst. Perfection is not something that we’ve tried over the past 30 years.”

The Fleshtones’ imperfect sound had its origins in a Whitestone home during the summer of 1976 when two roommates, Keith Streng and original bassist Jan-Marek Pakulski, discovered instruments in a basement left by a previous tenant. Joined later by Zaremba, an art student from Flushing, these young men dubbed themselves the Fleshtones and played garage rock modeled after such groups as the Kinks and the Yardbirds. Their brand of music was the antithesis to what was mainstream and trendy at the time.

“We couldn’t relate even then to what was popular on the radio—it was synthesizers or heavily orchestrated rock,” said Zaremba.

It was those conditions that sprouted such area bands as the Ramones, the Dictators, and the Fleshtones around the time that punk rock was emerging. “None of these bands would have existed if they had not been from Queens,”
explained Zaremba. “It was the challenge that made them more alienated from the cover band scene and the radio. It couldn’t have come from anywhere else.”

The Fleshtones have outlasted their punk contemporaries and are still playing both here and abroad. Even as the band members are now in their 50s, the Fleshtones show no sign of slowing down.

“It’s fun,” Zaremba explained. “Obviously it’s not about money—we squeak by. We’re proud what we’ve done. People stop me in the street and say, ‘Roman Gods [the Fleshtones’ 1981 album] changed my life.’ That kind of positive feeling goes a long way towards making it satisfying.”

Right now Zaremba hopes the new album will introduce the sounds of “super rock” to a new generation. As for the future, he said confidently, “We’ll still be around after that. There’s been a lot of good stuff. And more to come.”