Sweat! The Story of the Fleshtones, America’s Garage Band
By Joe Bonomo

I used to live in a small town in New Jersey called Butler. My friends and I used to visit Bill’s Tavern (RIP), a townie bar just down the block from our house. They served Schaefer on tap for only a buck, it was glorious. We knew a late-30’s barfly by the name of Wally. Wally was a good guy, everyone at Bill’s knew his name.

One night in the summer of 2001 he and I were talking music and he told me he had just seen a show in nearby New York by the Fleshtones. Wally claimed to know the singer from the early ‘80s. Sometimes you couldn’t tell if Wally was fucking with you or not, so I said something like, “Yeah, his name is Peter Zaremba, right?” Wally said, in his most flamboyant voice, something like, “Oh no, honey, that’s not the name I knew him by!”

According to Wally’s story, he knew Zaremba from visiting various gay clubs, and when Wally was at the above mentioned 2001 Fleshtones show, Zaremba did a double take on seeing Wally in the crowd. I could never figure out if Wally claimed to know Zaremba from his time in Athens, GA, Florida or New York City. After reading Sweat! I think Wally may have been somewhat telling the truth (I can’t even begin to describe the section on the disco after party scene in early ‘80s NYC… well, I don’t have to because Bonomo does).

Sweat! is a fantastic read, even if you don’t know much about the Fleshtones (shame on you!). There’s a blurb on the back of the book that says, “This is the secret history Please Kill Me [the ultimate book about New York's punk/art underground in the 1970s] doesn’t tell you” – and that about describes it. You get a good view of New York’s punk/garage underground after punk went above ground. You get interviews with all (past and present) band members, managers, label people and friends. It’s obvious how much love and research went into this and the writing is aces (well, if I have to complain about something – and I always do – there are some typos).

Sweat! sent me on a serious Fleshtones record hunt. Thanks to the folks at Get Hip Records in Pittsburgh, PA, Landlocked Records here in Bloomington, IN and a few record stores in Austin, TX I’ve got all but three of their releases. The Fleshtones definitely keep getting better as the years progress; it wasn’t until the mid-1990s that they found engineers and producers that could capture their live sound (and the Fleshtones definitely need to be seen live).

Now if I could only talk to Wally about this book.