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FLESHTONES
Take A Good Look
(Yep Roc)

(NO DEPRESSION.NET) -- Three decades later, the Fleshtones are still doing the folded arm "power stance," handing off instruments to do push-ups during shows, and passionately, desperately playing the set as if it's the last time anyone will let them. Because that's what they do, and they don't do it for fame and fortune, they do it because it's fun, the most fun you can have. Their chemistry has been incendiary since the start, with Peter Zaremba's Farfisa organ and harmonica falling into a swinging punk-R&B patois with Keith Streng's tough twanging rock guitar while the rhythm battery of bassist Ken Fox and Bill Milhizer lays down a fat and steady garage-rock bottom. Absolutely nothing is new here -- the first song Zaremba ever wrote, 1978's "American Beat", would fit perfectly next to this disc's "Jet-Set Fleshtones" -- but no one makes "super rock" (their term) like the Fleshtones do. True, the sentiments in "First Date (Are You Coming On To Me)" and "Going Back To School" seem creepy coming from crinkly fathers, but it's all explained in "Never Grew Up".

-- BUZZ MCCLAIN
Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or Buzz McClain.