I Dunno. I mean I guess I'm deluded but up until some time last month I had been living under the thought that the new wave was comprised of either punk bands or semi-punk bands...sorry for using that word, just let me say that.

There is a new wave coming-and it does not involve safety pins or blood or painfully monotonous noise that gets ones attention out of sheer volume-like I've been predicting this wave for two years now, always with a lot of shadows obscuring any clear concept from which it could arrive. All I know is that it spent last summer in Cleveland talking with similarly-disoriented friends about the new age, trying to envision exactly what it would involve: how much mescaline, how many paisley suits, it's been a long wait, and it was quite by accident that I was downstairs at Max's trying to get David Peel to autograph a Beatles address book last month. Quite by accident that the strains of INTERESTING music wafted down the stairs.

See, there's this band of neo-heads called the Fleshtones and like you can take that nomer any way you want-a play on doo-wop, as skin shades being difficult colors to arrive at, or as a menage of flesh as physical, tones as musical and thus as some kind of body music. I dunno. It's a fantastic name for a band. Like a word to play with while eating an orange under the influence of purple haze. God bless psychedelia.

The neo-psychedelic age is enroute whether anybody knows it or not. Whether fading memories of the last burnt-out grateful dead hippies still linger or not. That's not the psychedelia I'm talking about, anyway. I mean the inception stuff: fresh, inspired, not-yet-maharishi'd, tidy Nehru lovebeads look. The love-in days cum Riot on Sunset Strip. Like Journey to the Center of the Mind and tinted tripping glasses or watching Peter Fonda in THE TRIP before embarking yourself.

Yeah, I saw the Fleshtones and flipped. I walked in during some song that featured the most haunting reverb guitar playing since what-the Seeds' "Nobody's Spoiling My Fun"? There was this drummer thumping out a beat from the past like from when drums were like military or something, and a singer who's face was straight out of that Anglo movie where the pop star becomes Prime Minister-all I could think off when this guy took off on the most Yardbirdsian harmonica and Standellsian maracashaking I've ever witnessed was RELF and more RELF. Then there were the guitar players. The guy on bass was real tall and bent over a lot with the coolest moves. Hey, this stuff was like what I imagined my sister and brother were flipping out about when they left me home to watch Wonderful World of Color on Saturday nights. The guitar player had deceptively TIE-DYE looking trousers on his legs, and the bass player, well, his hair was JUST like Paul Samwell-Smith's and like need I say more?

Out of the strangely familiar unfamiliar song came "Soul City"-a rendition that had half of the audience (the half still unfogged enough to get up) dancing the jerk and the other half sitting down standing. Great! It's odd because this is the music that I lock myself in at home with-and here it was, yelling song titles at the audience; I crossed my fingers and hoped for a harp-hyped version of "Dark Side of the Mushroom," but the singer just paced the stage twixt songs and replied with, "we don't know it," or "played out." This band won my heart forever with a totally psychotic "Nervous Breakdown"-like if Eddie Cochran had been twanging away in'68 with a day-glo guitar.

The interview, had it occured on schedule, might have been more ALIGNED. As it was, three band members knocked at my door enquiring of the whereabouts of the drummer Lenny Calderon, who was to have appeared immediately after the Pink Floyd concert. Hmmm. I started to wonder about this band. Not being one to waste time, out came the champagne and o.j. (thanks be to those west coast weirdos who decided to popularize this delightful concotion and make "bubbley" accessible to the working class. The budget recipe? Equal parts Andre and orange juice) and, it being a hot summer night and everyone being parched and Lenny obviously having TOO good a time with Pink Floyd, we got continuously more cranked untill the beatboy finally made an appearance. I mean, what's an interview without a drummer? We'd gotten through Over Under Sideways Down, Fallin' Off the Edge, and a couple of other cool vinyls during this time, as well as having cleared the names and ages of these said Fleshtones.

There is Jan Marek (Pakulski) on bass, from Maine, age 20, Yardbirds fan, tall, REAL New England looking like out of a 1950's Vermont Christmas movie where a blizzard blockade may result in romance in the cabin for small town boy and holidaying niece of the old man next door (three miles away); Keith Streng on guitar, age 21, fan of 60s rock 'n' roll, plays like a healthy Jan Savage (Seeds), dances like go-go au Psycho; Peter Zaremba, age 22, on vocals, real cool Relfian harmonica and maracas, art student, fan of GOOD music also very 1950's-movies-looking, only he looks like the young doctor who falls in love with a lovely leukemia patient and is constantly crashing into test tube trays, his eyes blurred from tears of love and anguish-and then there is drummer Lenny Calderon, age 20, friend of heavy metal, anti-trends, record-addicted, drug consuming, volume-adoring, Lenny. This one could pass for Mark Mendoza's Detroit cousin anyday. Out of discriptions and into the interview.

THE INTERVIEW

CASSETTE RECORDER: ON.
VOLUME CONTROL: FOUR.
TONE CONTROL: FIVE.
RECORD ON TURNTABLE: "SHOT OF RHYTHM AND BLUES" (FLAMIN' GROOVIES).

LET'S START WITH, UH, PERSONAL INFLUENCES.
MAREK: Ray Coniff
I MEAN AS PER WHAT YOU'RE DOING IN THE BAND. (silence except for ice tinkling and Groovies spinning)
UH HELLO HELLO...ANY ONE?
PETER: Oh, yes. Definitely.
MAREK: Yeah, well, no. Well...when you improvise it all comes in, all of the stuff you heard when you were young, like my parents were into classical stuff and...Ray Coniff.
PETER: (mumbling into his glass)...Spector...jerk...bag.
HEY CAN I HAVE THAT LOUDER PLEASE?.
PETER: PHIL SPECTOR IS A SCUMBAG. An overprocessing scumbag.
KEITH: Who the hell is Bill Spector?
PETER: (Ignoring the young Streng's ignorance.) His music is so pasteurized that it like ruined rock n roll, like Gary and the U.S. Bonds and people like that-he made it impossible for good rock n roll to make it. The biggest letters on those 45's should spell P-H-I-L S-P-E-C-T-O-R. (Peter returns to leaf through the 45's.)
KEITH: Play the Honeycombs. Please? (Peter picks up the bag he had come in with and pulls out a yellow and white labelled ATCO 45.)
PETER: I love this guy so much. "ECHO BOOGIE" (Jorge Ingemann)-you know this is "Jeff's Boogie." Beck ripped the whole thing off this guy.
WHAT HAPPENED TO INFLUENCES?
PETER: Keith Relf. I like Eddie Cochran a whole lot. LENNY: I love early Who, Blue Cheer, anything with loud drums...anything with baseball bats.
MAREK: Paul Samwell-Smith-he was good! Duh-duh-duh, that's all he did. (garbled) LINK WRAY IS GARBAGE. (garbled) PLAY SHOCKING BLUE! (distinct) YEAH! "Hot Sands."
KEITH: I dunno. Music Machine were genius. Once we were going to do "Talk Talk." Hey-Lenny's drugged out!(L.C. is sprawled out on chair, eyes closed, arms limp at sides.)
GREAT! DRUGGED OUT PEOPLE SAY THE GREATEST SHIT.
PETER: He uses a LOTTA drugs.
Lenny: (stirring) Bar-biturates.
LET ME HEAR ABOUT DRUGS.
LENNY: Patti Smith is trendy. (He sits up) I can't stand her. She's a wave setter.
MAREK: A CLAIROL hairsetter.
LENNY: She has a mad following-I just get disgusted, ya see all these trendy weirdos all over the place. I saw Mountain once in Baltimore. I like Slade. I like Iron Butterfly.
KEITH: Great. "Unconscious Power."
LENNY: Ther's this group called MIND GARBAGE.
YOU MEAN GARAGE.
LENNY: No, GARBAGE. On RCA.
ARE YOU SURE?
LENNY: YEAH. Garbage. Garbage.
(JUST FOR THE RECORD: MIND GARAGE, RCA 1970 LSP 4319, notable for a sick version of "Paint It Black." At about this point, while I was off digging for that Mind Garbage record, somebody slipped the "Riot on Sunset Strip" soundtrack on.)
PETER: I like rock'n'roll in old monster movies-like it's there but you're not supposed to hear it. Like there's some girl doing the twist and they focus on her.
MAREK: And the monster's watching through the blinds.
WHAT WAS THAT MOVIE WITH ALL THE BIKINIS AND NEIL SEDAKA AND THE STANDELLS?
PETER: "A Decoy For Terror." Great movie... has to do with art and youth and rock 'n' roll and everything.
YEAH, IT'S THE BEST MOVIE I'VE SEEN IN MY LIFE. I NEVER KNEW WHAT WAS GOING ON AND EVERYTIME SOMEBODY GOT MURDERED, THERE WERE THE BIKINIS AND THE R'N'R. WHAT ABOUT T.V.?
PETER: I don't watch T.V.
KEITH: I do, I love "Lost in Space."
LENNY: (Sitting up and looking totally in-another-worldly) "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea." Ha Ha Ha. (He closes his eyes again.)
KEITH: Did you see the Lost in Space with the Space Teenagers? Ya press this button and all these girls start dancing-all the GIRLS- yeah, they converted Smith into a hippy. He was in this Nehru jacket saying, "Don't leave me here with these dreadful cats."
PETER: Oh, yeah! Then he sees them as they really are, with these big heads. (At this point everybody suddenly noticed that their glasses were empty and panic began to set in. We decided to finish the interview with a sane question and exit for some more liquid refreshments.)
WHAT'S THE FUTURE OF ROCK AND ROLL?
LENNY: No Future. No Future.
LENNY: Little Anthony.
LENNY: "Shimmy Shimmy."
PETER: (Oblivious to nonsense, I have decided.) All of those great 50's rockers died young. Fate. It saved them from becoming like Pink Floyd.
LENNY: Yeah, Pink Floyd, hey, I...like 'em.