Since their inception in 1976 in Queens, New York, and their sweaty, boozy gestation at legendary venues such as CBGB, Max’s Kansas City, and the storied Club 57— recently feted at the Museum of Modern Art, where their proto-video underground film“Soul City” was unspooled for art stars, glitterati, and a raft of punk rockers who managed to get past the front gate — they have perpetrated their proprietary brand of SUPER ROCK, a frenetic amalgam of garage punk and soul, punctuated by the big beat and unleashed with the spectacular show business majesty which has kept them on the road for over forty years, adored by audiences whose love for them borders on religious fervor.
And yet their new record, Face of the Screaming Werewolf, has charted faster than any of their previous twenty or so releases, hitting Billboard’s Top 50 in half a dozen categories including, oddly, the Top Ten of “Alternative New Artists,” which just proves, again, that SUPER ROCK shows no signs of wear and tear.
The Fleshtones’ SUPER ROCK sound literally defines American Beat Music, and they have delivered their message with evangelistic passion, always skirting the edges of the mainstream without pandering to any obvious fad or trend. They have appeared on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand TV show; charismatic frontman Peter Zaremba was a host on MTV’s original late-night alternative broadcast The Cutting Edge; and they were the last band to publicly perform at the World Trade Center’s Windows on the World, a society gig by any standard. Always true to their school, they have flags planted in the old world and the new — they appeared with Andy Warhol on his short-lived talk show Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes, and throughout the mid-1980s they regularly played at the Pyramid Club on Avenue A in New York’s storied East Village, and were instrumental in helping to start Wigstock, the drag queen festival that has become an outrageously vibrant part of the New York City experience.
The Fleshtones were always oddly evolved in a plasma pool of retrograde wannabes — this is band that promises a party of the least-juvenile sort. And that is why they have proudly worn the SUPER ROCK title since they came howling and gyrating out of the gate. They are the rare thing, like the Grand Canyon – no matter how great you have been told they are , when you finally get to see them for yourself, it is actually much better than any hype.