The Fleshtones have the spirit that has always moved great pop music. They have the raw enthusiasm, the exuberance, the slight touch of madness. They have the beat - big, broad and danceable. They have the voices, the chops and the songs. What they don't have is very much of an image and still less any gimmicks. And gimmicks are what the marketing of a dance band seems to require. The core of the group, singer/harmonica player Peter Zaremba, guitarist Keith Streng and bassist Jan Marek Pakulski, have been together as a band since 1976. But the lack of an image, coupled with an unfortunate history of personnel changes (drummers and second guitarists) and long periods of inactivity, have kept The Fleshtones from the limelight they deserve. Now they have bounced back, surer and stronger than ever. On the recent compilation album of New York bands, 'Marty Thau Presents 2x5', their 'Shadowline' is the single strongest track. There are touches of classic '60s pop to the song but it's urgency is totally present day as Zaremba, working the old theme of bursting out of the world's constrictions, sings and blows his heart out. Their other track, 'Fascination', is a slighter, nostalgic exercise, but still charming. At the time of recording these tracks the band had no drummer, and Clem Burke of Blondie sat in. They've since found Bill Milhizer, and their recent gigs place them as one of the indispensable treats available on the local circuit. As front man, Zaremba has learned to give his audience something to watch as well as to listen to. He shimmies and bops around like he's having the time of his life, but he's no dancin' fool - his moves are edged with a sly wit. The band's biggest influences - psychedelia, surf, garage punk, R&B - have welded into a cohesive sound which is all their own. A horn section, Brian and Gordon Spaeth, adds extra swing. The best way to describe a Fleshtones set is to fall back on the usual dance band clichés - party atmosphere, loose craziness, rollicking fun - but this band is good enough to make those hackneyed phrases mean something again. It's fitting that the Fleshtones had their beginning as, literally, a party band. Sometime in '75, Streng and Pakulski, old friends, rented a cheap house together in the Queens neighbourhood of Whitestone. "We had a party there every weekend," Streng recalls. "One weekend we decided that we would play the rock and roll instead of playing it on the stereo." People liked it so they kept going.

Back in '76, the popular local bands had strongly defined images. The Ramones were bad-boy punks, Talking Heads askew preppies, Television loft-bound poets. The Fleshtones were just boys-next-door from Queens, kids everyone went to High School with and almost no-one wanted to know. Zaremba: "What happened was we either played at parties or tried to find alternative places. Finally we hit on the basement of this Polish Catholic Church, which became the original Club 57. We played there with The Zantees and Nervous Rex, and it was extremely successful. But the police always seemed to break it up." Alan Vega of Suicide became a fan in that period and he introduced the band to Marty Thau at about the time Thau was forming his Red Star Records. Thau at first wanted them to take part in a compilation, then decided to do an entire Fleshtones album. The album was recorded but due to Red Star's financial problems, only a single, 'American Beat' c/w 'Critical list', was ever released. 'List' was a rocker spotlighting a high-pitched, soulful vocal by Streng and equally soulful harp blowing by Zaremba. 'Beat' was a manifesto, celebrating the healthy tradition of regional American sounds. In the mid-'60s, when indie labels were more viable and AM radio still an open field, bands like The Count Five, The Music Machine, and The Syndicate of Sound were able to score minor but national one-off hits with raw, punky sounds. But without tours or TV exposure, they remained anonymous. The Fleshtones make the same kind of energetic, regional music, but are fighting their way up through an industry that's differently structured now. If things go well though, the fact that it's taking them longer to make it will mean they will have more than a one-shot career when they do. Pakulski: "We've had the garage label applied to us, and it's pretty true, in the fact that we just started playing what we felt." Considering the message of 'American Beat', is there something in your music that you could define as peculiarly American? Zaremba: "I think there is. I'm a little too close to it to say exactly what it is. It comes out of what we've been listening to for many years. Not out of responding to any fads. "I don't try to preach in my lyrics. But as nebulous as it may seem, I'm talking about things I have done, that I've gone through. 'Shadowline' is about people who stayed up all night doing things. I don't know if they do it in London, I hear things close down at eleven o'clock there. But in the States, where we have a democracy (laughter around the table) and a subway system that stays open, there are clubs. I was with a bunch of people, and we'd finish playing at four in the morning and go off to Crisco, and this place is packed with all sorts of people. Fine citizens. I mean these people are not burning the candle at both ends, these people are on fire. So we'd leave there at nine in the morning, and we'd go up to the Cell Block. You sit in there and you're wondering, what the hell, I should have been asleep hours ago, and there's this guy with chains wrapped around him and that's definitely, beyond the shadowline. "I didn't want to write about that saying, 'hey, hey, we're rockin' at the Cell Block this morning'. And I don't want to make any claims about taking on the police system of this country, although we've all had our problems with them. But there was a good view of Rikers Island (a New York Prison) from the place where I wrote 'Fascination', and we did sit and watch the river, and we did think about how it would be great to be in a band. So there are those things in our songs, and I will stand by all that, and so will Keith." Streng: "So there."