The band has - over eighteen years, seven albums and countless tours - perfected an outré but winning breed of garage punk. Call it "Super-Rock." The Fleshtones do, and they'll play it almost anywhere, anytime. A testament: They once backed Sir Ian McKellen reciting Shakespeare's Sonnet No.20 on the last episode of Andy Warhol's cable-access show Fifteen Minutes. "We invited him to the Pyramid Club later that night," says Zaremba, "and he came."
Zaremba a habitué of the East Village since the glory days of New York punk, has seen his audience grow more fickle. "It's not a rock-and-roll city," he says without rancour. Yet the Fleshtones frug on, always at least one step shy of becoming party-rock-all-stars. They've got a new record, Beautiful Light (Naked Language/Ichiban), and the band plays Wetlands this Wednesday, March 30. From there, who knows? "Sometimes I say, 'Lord, how long can this go on?" Zaremba laments as Crazy Guggenheim and Connie Francis stare over his shoulder from record jackets tacked to the bar wall. "I'd rather be happy than hip."