The Fleshtones now are light years ahead of all that. The group reeks of new-found confidence, is clearly tighter musically, and performs with factory-like precision. Not boring precision of course, but the kind of meticilous efficiency that once created faultless Made in America products like Cadillac, Campbell's Soup, Kleenex Tissues, Heinz Ketchup-and for that matter, Rock 'N' Roll itself. Like the streamlined corporate fantasy, where everybody does their job with ease and verve, at the end of the line exits The Great American Whatever.

The Whatever in this case, is lead singer Peter Zaremba, perfectly devastating, hypnotized by the sounds into an ideal rock 'n' roll clone, a trancelike zombie who Jerks, Twists and Swims his way through a sea of fuzzes, drones and thrumps. And then the truest test of all, the cover-songs like "Cara-lin" from outta a cave somewhere, and a brilliant rendition of "Sometimes Good Guys Don't wear White", a seemingly impossible song to tackle, the original being so flawless, and more than that, actually transcendental. I mean, here's this guy Zaremba, (to begin with an unlikely rock 'n' roll name that conjures up visions of the guy they shot to death in the Congo in nineteensixty-somethin...), a totally cool Paul Jonesian figure from somewhere outta a Privelege torture chamber. An obvious drugged out hip sixties mutation, like time stopped in 1967 and the last record ever made was the Over Under Sideways Down LP, and the rest of them so totally (until now, oh no I hope not) un-self-conscious. Zaremba STARES at his mike like a dancer or ice capade or rockette who is taught to fix an eye on something stationary while cavorting or spinning into dizzying directions.