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). Read the rest of this entry »