IT MUST HAVE BEEN the summer of 1981. I was going to work for Expressen in New York and the first assignment I gave myself was to do a POP-page with The Fleshtones.
Admission: It wasn't only me pushing. The records I had heard were good but I was not as passionately interested as Nix of The Nomads, or other Swedish garage rockers at that time, were.
But I did feel the pressure.
At that time, The Fleshtones had a rehearsal spot opposite the bus terminal on Eighth Avenue. We were supposed to meet there in a house that was called "The Music Building" located in the middle of Hell's Kitchen.
The area was, as often with bus terminals, loaded with beggars, winos, worn-down bars, bad smelling fast food joints, junkies and prostitutes, and not used to New York I was relatively scared to death.
The house was the kind of "all activities" house that contained theatre ensembles, dancers and what was the cream of New York's garage rock scene - The Vipers, The Fuzztones and The Fleshtones. Zaremba says:
- We used to bump into Madonna all the time in the elevator. She was rehearsing with a rock band before she met Jellybean and became a hit with the gay scene.
That is typical of The Fleshtones.
The band has always nudged the big time, but must still, twenty five years later, sit down in a van and drive to a recording studio in the American South to cut another album that far to few will buy or even listen to.

I HAD NEVER experienced The Fleshtones on stage when I met them but they were then and are now the kindest band I have met.
My job at Expressen was turning out to be more and more about regular journalism, others took care of the POP-page, and I didn't feel prohibited to cross the line drawn between the journalist and rock band.
No running away from it.
During ten years in New York, Peter Zaremba, his wife Marilla Palmer and the drummer Bill Milhizer became three of my best friends.
But I had never seen The Fleshtones on stage when in the summer of 1981 I ended up on the guest list at a club called The Peppermint Lounge, located way down on Fifth Avenue, almost at Fourteenth Street - I believe it is a gourmet restaurant today but I am not sure.
I had grown up with bands who were on the "Nuggets" LP, but I had not heard the music in front of a stage and The Fleshtones were a complete sensation.
A book as thick as a telephone directory would have been required to describe Peter Zaremba's dance moves. I didn't know it then, but he had his own unique interpretation of classic American pop dance moves with names such as The Camel Walk, The Penguin and The Monkey. Sometimes he was blowing a harp, sometimes he threw himself onto a squeaking Farfisa organ while the others in the band were thundering on in a violent cacophony of rhythm'n'blues, Yardbirds, garage rock and a particularly white version of soul music.
Their entrances were so effective.
You heard the thundering of a drum and eventually the band came walking in a line through the crowd - Milhizer in front with a snare drum, then the others with saxophone, tambourines and harmonica in a strange, wiggling dance through the crowd and up on to the stage.
An entrance like that and you are home.
It was not until many years later that Peter Zaremba told me that they had stolen that entrance from the jazz musician Sun Ra and his Arkestra. What could be odder - a garage band from Queens in New York that listens to avant garde jazz - was explained when Zaremba said:
- I had a teacher in High School who got me into listening to Sun Ra as early as 1968. We were a bunch of youngsters who were dissatisfied with the horrible music that was popular in the beginning of the seventies and we were constantly attracted to artists who did more than just stand there and bore us to tears with pointless twenty minute solos. It was therefore why we loved bands who tried to break down the barrier between stage and crowd, it was why we fell for Sun Ra, Iggy, Jonathan Richman and - of course - Alan Vega. It was Vega who introduced us to (record company owner) Marty Thau and it was in that manner that we were allowed to make our first record. Break down barriers... I have seen Peter Zaremba throw himself from stage, I have seen him dance with the audience in the sea of the crowd, I have seen him standing on top of the speaker columns, I have seen him resting on and climbing the sewer pipes in the ceiling of The Pyramid in New York. Anything for a show, anything to entertain, anything for a party. Because rock'n'roll is a party.

MARTY THAU RELEASED The Fleshtones.
Miles Copeland, who was The Police's manager, became The Fleshtones' manager.
They got big and fat record contracts but sold no records.
Their "American Beat" was a key element in one of Tom Hank's first movies, "Bachelor Party".
Richard Gottehrer was a famous garage rock name who had reached mega success with The Go-Go's, came to produce The Fleshtones.
In an issue of Rolling Stone the band modelled that autumn's clothes.
Peter Zaremba was one of MTV's first programme hosts. Do not ask me to explain, but Miles Copeland scarred him into it, one way or another, and Zaremba's show was an entertaining mix of his garage rock consciousness and a collection of artists no-one had seen before on TV and which MTV would not touch today.
- I guess I'm a little bit responsible for what was then called alternative rock, but I didn't know it then. Though we had important roots rockers like Willie Dixon and Roy Orbison - I did his final interview! - I presented names like R.E.M., Steve Earle, Dwight Yoakam, Los Lobos and Chris Isaak. Red Hot Chilli Peppers did their first appearance on my show.
The Fleshtones had it all.
Except commercial success.
Keith Streng was for a couple of years living with the singer - or whatever one should call her - Wendy Wild and they were a symbolic couple for Manhattan's downtown and its East Village. What Keith and Wendy did was the law and I do not know how many odd nights or strange bars and clubs under their regime I have been to.
Once in a basement on the corner of Avenue D and - I believe - Eighth street and the area was not as chic as today.
I was walking in the middle of the street because the sidewalks looked like there was a war going on.
To get into the basement you had to climb a pile of rocks where rats fought with junkies.
That night Wendy Wild played with Das Furlines, one of her strangest bands - just girls in Viking helmets who were yodelling.
Or maybe I remember it wrong.
Peter and Marilla have now moved to Brooklyn but for a long time they lived on Fifth street on the corner of Avenue A.
It was a legendary apartment.
In those days no-one wanted to live in Alphabet City and the rent was as low as the apartment was big.
It contained the football field sized paintings that Marilla made during a period of time and in particularly it held classic Christmas parties.
I cannot remember much about them other than Bill and I had much more fun than was allowed at our age, that we drank and smoked and popped pills which made Christmas last till the Easter.
In those days the saxophone player Gordon Spaeth and bass player Jan Marek Pakulski were also in the band.
Both got tired of touring.
Perhaps Gordon had enough when he fell asleep in the dressing room after a gig at Irving Plaza and could not get out because when he woke up all the doors were locked.
He opened a window, looked down... two floors, well, he could make it if he hung on the ledge and slowly glided down.
Gordon did not hang.
Gordon did not glide.
Gordon lost his grip and broke both his legs.
I saw them once at Woody's on Second Avenue, a pretty long way down, south of St Mark's Place. The band left the stage during the last song, playing all the way through the crowd, up the stairs and out on the street waiting for the crowd to shout them back for the encore.
They did not.
People went home and The Fleshtones were standing on the sidewalk and shook everybody's hands and thanked them for showing up.
Then Bill and I went across the street and got drunk in a shabby sports bar in front of a baseball game on TV.
Bill was my sporting conscience.
Everything I know about American sports Bill Milhizer has taught me.

I CANNOT say that I throw myself at Fleshtones albums nowadays.
Far too many of them have been made with such a low budget in a home studio that the sound is too thin to really do garage-good.
But I am looking forward to the new one.
Rick Miller is the producer and I'm very fond of everything he has done with his own band Southern Culture on the Skids.
The Fleshtones once played at the same club as SCOTS and Miller said:
- Why don't you come to me and cut a record some time.
That was what The Fleshtones did in the beginning of January this year.
- At the same time as Rick gave us that offer Glen Dickers at Yep Rock Records said he wanted to release a record with us and as Glen's office is in Graham, North Carolina, very close to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where Rick's studio lies, we went there.
Zaremba says that the album is the best they have done in many, many years and that the result was exactly what he had hoped for.
It is mostly new songs, he mentions one called "Destination Greenpoint", but also completely unknown cover tracks he finds on flipsides from old sixties bands. He also claims that they have done a Led Zeppelin cover but is not sure it is going to make it to the album.
The record will be released on April the 23rd and besides The Fleshtones, Yep Roc have also released Los Straightjackets, The 45's, Paul Weller and - Nick Lowe.