Music Trash compactors

In the flesh, and coming to the Sanctuary

On The Fleshtones' new album, Beachhead, singer Peter Zaremba exhorts his bandmates to "get serious about not being serious." It's a mantra that the group actually took to heart nearly 30 years ago when Queens, New York roommates Keith Streng and Jan-Marek Pakulski first crossed paths with Zaremba.

While the punk revolution made it mandatory to reject all frivolity, Zaremba and his cohorts reveled in the serious silliness of an earlier, more innocent brand of punk: the '60s garage-rock celebrated on the Nuggets collections. Like most of the bands exhumed for Nuggets, the Fleshtones were not an especially talented or innovative aggregation. But they had the good taste necessary to distinguish transcendent trash from pure refuse, and an ability to make every maraca-driven gig feel like a New Year's Eve party.

The Fleshtones 8pm Sat, Sep 17 The Sanctuary 1818 N. Main 732-0313

In the early '80s, when the band actually had a chance for airplay, their records never captured their vaunted live exuberance. Now, with little to lose, and with a new generation of garage rockers vindicating the Fleshtones' aesthetic choices, the group has loosened up in the studio and delivered two consecutive slabs of stoopid super-rock: 2003's Do You Swing? and the recently released Beachhead. You don't expect growth from a band like The Fleshtones, you just hope for continuity and undiminished energy. With Beachhead, this group maintains its musical foothold. •

- Gilbert Garcia