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According to discogs:
On cold autumn evenings of Milan in 1981 met for the first time Nino La Loggia and Giacomo Spazio. Both were regulars of the Bar Concordia, one of the few meeting places for the post punk generation. Nino with Mark Philopat (now established writer) had given birth to the HCN, one of the pioneering punk bands of the peninsula. Giacomo instead was a performance artist, interested in graphics and was looking for a new form of painting that was innovative and provocative. When the two met sparked. The two had the same passion for music: Kraftwerk, Joy Division, DAF and the whole new scene of proto-electronic wave and together they decided to start the musical project called 2 + 2 = 5, a tribute to Orwellian dystopia. The two split the roles immediately, Nino continued to pursuit the sound to the limit of experimentation and Giacomo wrote texts. The band made their début at the "Cinema-Music Non-Stop" at the Cinema Porpora of Milan in May 1982. Shortly after entered the band Cha Cha Hagiwara, already a keyboard player in 'Jeunesse d'Ivoire', enriching the band's raw sound with sonority which we can now define analog. After several dates among Milan, Turin and Switzerland, the trio entered the studio to record their first LP titled '... Into The Future' which was to be published towards the end of the year 1983.........and that was the beginning...
Please listen again to their amazing stories... old songs/new versions, recorded in their unexpected 2010 live comeback in Milan!
There are some bands who never give up. Who after almost thirty years and thousands of bar gigs still do not know anything better than to cut another record or make another gig in front of 60/70 desperate/fortunate people. The legendary Fleshtones formed in Queens one million years ago (was it 1976 or...) and since then they started touring and never end. Maybe this is the reason why they became the greatest garage rockers of all time. In all these years, they drew from the best parts of The Yardbirds, The Kingsmen, The Sonics, The Seeds, The 13th Floor Elevators, The Rolling Stones, The Cramps etc. They borrowed from the old and created a monster of American rock music that lived up to the haughty "Super Rock" title they gave to their sound. They intensified everything but the sound: cool, anxiety, joy, and energy. Over the years they've become a tradition unto themselves, incorporating also '50s R&B, '60s frat-rock, and '70s disco into a heady mix that can only be recognized as "their unique sound". I've seen them live no less than half a dozen times and it has always been F.U.N.! And that song too, the one I consider the "SONG" of american garage revival... yes, i'm talking about “The Dreg”, with the incredible cool fuzz bassline (Jan-Marek Pakulski), a guitar that builds to a fever pitch, soaked in reverb by Keith Streng, with tones of percussions rattling off in all directions and a cool understated vocals by Peter, singing of a person searching for the meaning behind their intuition, moving forward in life with whatever they have. What a song, what a band! As someone else recently wrote, "The Fleshtones were all garage rock without any qualms of being original; they were just better than what they started with". Not a lot more to say, in my opinion they really symbolize what still matters in rock & roll... dance again to their american beat and sing "Sha la la la" forever!!!
