Tuesday, July 26, 2011

D-Mob (feat. Gary Haisman) - We Call It Acieed/Trance Dance 12"


In the summer of 1988, six weeks after I arrived on board my ship in Norfolk, VA, I began my first long deployment as a young Naval officer. We headed over to Europe for a six-month stint as the American participant in NATO's Standing Naval Force, Atlantic (otherwise known by its abbreviated name, STANAVFORLANT). STANAVFORLANT (now known as "Standing NATO Maritime Group 1") was established in 1968, at the height of the Cold War, as an immediate reaction force. Just in case the Warsaw Pact countries decided to get a little frisky, our force was designed to be the "first responders", in the forefront of protecting and defending Europe from attack by sea. The force was (is) made up of frigates, destroyers and cruisers from the NATO countries, with the US, Canada, the UK, Germany and the Netherlands always having at least one ship in the fleet, and the smaller NATO countries (such as Belgium, Norway and Denmark) contributing a ship periodically.

Now, while being part of this first-reaction force may sound a bit hairy and Dr. Strangelove-esque to you, by 1988 glasnost and perestroika were in full swing in the Soviet Union. While the Western countries and Eastern Bloc weren't exactly bosom pals yet, the competitive tensions between the free and Communist worlds were considerably toned down. And accordingly, the formerly deadly serious nature of STANAVFORLANT was also ratcheted down. That is not to say that there wasn't serious work to do or a sense of purpose present during that deployment. There were still a lot of joint training exercises between the NATO participants, and on occasion we shadowed (or were shadowed by) Soviet ships coming out of the Baltic and traveling through the North Sea. And at one point early in the cruise, the group was diverted from its planned route to assist in the immediate aftermath of the Piper Alpha oil rig explosion, a horrific disaster that claimed 168 lives.

But for the most part, the deployment was pretty cruisey (so to speak). The ship I was on was the last one built in her destroyer class, relatively brand-spanking new, and as such it sort of served as a "showboat" for the US Navy with this group, showing the European countries what was then considered our maritime best. While the work at sea was intense, the frequent port visits were great, as the hosting port cities and the participating ships tried to outdo one another with the parties, dinners and functions (official and otherwise) they organized.
[Quick aside: Our ship was the only one in the force that was "dry", i.e., carrying no beer or liquor; the other nations' ships had no such restrictions regarding alcohol on board, which led to some wild times in port. Almost every participating ship (except for the US) had a signature booze they carried aboard to offer to visitors. The Norwegians, for example, kept iced aquavit in a locked safe in their officer's wardroom; one sip of that stuff would knock you flat on your ass, but those guys gargled it like it was water. The West German vessel carried the most outstanding beer I've ever tasted, served in big stoneware schooners specially made for
the ship (I still have the one they gave me). But of all the countries, it was the Canadians who were particular hard-core party hounds. In port, they occasionally used to invite the crews from the other STANAVFORLANT ships over for what they called "Moose Milk", a potent and evil concoction they brewed up and always seemed to have plenty of. The antics that went on aboard the Canadian ship on Moose Milk nights would put the wildest college fraternity to shame. But at sea, those guys were the most professional, competent sailors I've ever run across. So go figure.]
I saw and did a lot of new and cool things during that cruise. I visited London, a place I'd always dreamed of seeing, for the first time on that voyage (met some great people, went to a couple of clubs and even made it to Brixton, homebase of my beloved Clash). In Germany, I checked out the nightlife in Kiel and took a tour through Hamburg's red light district; I was in Antwerp at the peak of the Belgian acid house wave, and danced until the sun came up at clubs all over that city; I partied all one July night in Narvik, Norway, a town above the Arctic Circle, and was completely thrown off when I emerged from the club at 3:30 am to find the sky as bright as noonday. And one calm, dark night, far out in the North Atlantic, I stood out on deck for hours watching the aurora borealis dancing like a weird curtain of light over my head. It was all quite an adventure, and the months away from home passed very quickly.

By late October, we had less than two months left in our deployment. We were making another transit across the North Sea from West Germany to Scotland, and one evening en route, the force was practicing refueling operations with a West German replenishment tanker. While that exercise was going on, I was down in my midships office, a couple of decks below topside, doing some paperwork. At one point, the ship took a hard and unexpected starboard turn, sending all of my paperwork crashing to the floor. I was like, "what the heck?", and reached for the nearby phone to call the bridge. The officer of the deck (OOD), the person guiding the ship at the time (as opposed to the ship's captain), was a buddy of mine, and I was going to call him up and give him some good-natured shit for making such a wild maneuver. Just as my hand touched the phone, there was a loud and violent CCCRRRAAASSHHH!!! which shook the ship from end to end, sending everything not bolted down flying and me and everyone else in the room sprawling on the floor. I looked up at the person next to me on the floor, and half-asked/half-exclaimed, "We ran aground?!?!" His response was, "No, I think we were just hit!"

His word "hit" was sort of floating in the air, like in a balloon in a comic strip, when at that very same moment, every alarm on the ship went off in sequence - Collision, General Quarters, Man Overboard - and the emergency lighting immediately kicked in, bathing everything in an eerie and ominous red glow.

In a nutshell, what had happened was, due to a conflict between the OOD and the captain, and some miscommunication on the bridge, our ship had somehow placed itself directly in the path of the tanker we were trying to take station around. The tanker couldn't swerve, because of its size and speed, so a collision was imminent. What SHOULD have happened was, the way we were positioned in front of the German ship, it should have come straight on and sliced us neatly in two right at amidships, exactly at the point where my office was and where I was working at the time, unaware of what was about to transpire. But in the last few seconds, the OOD made a desperation move, kicking the rudder over hard right in an attempt to swing the stern out away from the oncoming ship and hopefully avoid a collision by mere feet. That was the turn that knocked my stuff on the floor, that I was going to call to complain about. It was also the turn that probably saved my life . . . although it wasn't completely successful. Instead of whacking us right through the middle, the tanker delivered a heavy but glancing blow on the starboard side, about ten yards forward of the stern.
It put a hole in our ship you could have driven a minivan through, destroyed the after steering compartment and sheared off the starboard screw and rudder. And we started taking on water - a LOT of water.

Through the diligent efforts of every member of that crew, damage control stabilized the ship's wounds within the hour. It was still pretty bad; the ship's maneuverability was gone, and with the water we had taken on, the ship had developed a not-insignificant starboard list of about 7 or 8 degrees.
The Man Overboard call turned out to be a false alarm; the splash the lookouts heard was the sound of chunks of the ship falling into the water (thank God for that - no one could have survived for long that night in those icy North Sea waters). But the ship was a mess. We limped across the rest of the North Sea and made it to our intended destination, the shipyard in Rosyth, Scotland. But instead of the planned five-day stop there, our ship was immediately put into dry-dock for weeks of emergency repairs.

Although the long stay in Rosyth was unexpected, life there quickly settled into a routine. I still had plenty of work to do in port, so my days were pretty busy. The major city of Edinburgh was about 15-20 miles away from the shipyard. I planned to visit the city later during my stay, but in the meantime I spent many of my nights in the nearest town of any consequence, Dunfermline, about 3 miles up the road.

Dunfermline, with a population of about 40,000 people, was a former seat of the Scottish royal family, and as such was the de facto capital of Scotland from the 11th through 15th centuries. It is renowned for containing the historic ruins of the old Royal Palace of Dunfermline. and Dunfermline Abbey, one of the most important cultural sites in Scotland and the burial place of several Scottish kings. It was also the birthplace of 19th century industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who left the town as a boy, but never forgot where he came from and later in life donated large sums of money to his hometown. I, of course, didn't know any of this; the only thing I knew about Dunfermline at the time was that the band Big Country came from there.

For a relatively small town, Dunfermline had an OUTSTANDING nightlife. There were a number of bars and decent dance places, all of which were jam-packed every single night in the weeks we were in the city (although that may not normally have been the case; a local bloke told me that when the word came out that "the Americans" were going to be in town for a while, the women "came out of the woodwork in droves"). My favorite place in town was a gleaming dance palace called Lourenzo Marques on St. Margaret Street, directly across from the abbey. The place had great music (house and dance music ruled there back then) and an even better crowd, and I quickly became a regular.

Lourenzo's was the first place I ever heard D-Mob's tune "We Call It Acieed", released earlier that year on FFRR (Full Frequency Range Recordings), a subsidiary of London Records. I told this story in an earlier post, but will repeat it here:
"One of my most vivid memories from that time is sitting in a seemingly dead and half-empty disco in Dunfermline, Scotland one chilly October night, waiting for something to happen. The DJ there put on D-Mob's "We Call It Acieed", and it was like a bomb went off - people came from everywhere, and in an instant, the place was packed with wild, gyrating Scots shaking the dance floor with a frenetic, tribal stomp that left me sitting there with my mouth wide open . . ."
And with all of the adventures and fun and danger I experienced during that deployment, in Dunfermline an additional wrinkle was added . . . a bit of romance.

I went to Lourenzo's one evening after a hard and frustrating day of work aboard ship. I was in a foul mood and it showed. I shouldn't really have gone out, but I was damned if I was going to sit on board and stew all evening. So the plan was to head out, alter my attitude with a drink or five, then stumble back to the shipyard in a different frame of mind. I was standing at the bar, clutching a glass of cider (the first and last time I drank any of that stuff in any quantity) and scowling to myself, when a female Scottish burr, full of smiles and promise, softly purred into my ear, "Why don't you smile more?"

I turned to look upon one of the most amazing girls I've ever laid eyes on - simply breathtaking in the best sense of the word, with long honey-blonde hair, a lovely face and an outstanding smile. And the voice - ah, that voice! All these years later, and I can still remember the way her Scottish accent surrounded and caressed every word. And not in a Groundskeeper Willy-sort of way, either. It was something altogether different - and vive la difference! That's what shook me out of my funk.

I quickly bought her a drink, and we stood at the bar and just talked for a while. I found that her name was Margaret, and she worked at the Royal Bank of Scotland branch in the center of town. Despite the noise, the people around us and the booze, we managed to carry on a lengthy and fairly serious conversation, touching on a variety of subjects - at one point, I recall we were discussing the IRA. The music and crowd just sort of faded into the background for me. I kept expecting her to walk away at any time, but she seemed to be enjoying my company as much as I was enjoying hers, and we remained together at that bar until last call.

I then made one of the stupidest, most lunkheaded moves I've ever made in my life. They flipped on the house lights, signifying closing time. I turned to Margaret, thanked her for a pleasant evening - then I whirled around and headed for the door, leaving her standing there. I know, I know . . . I don't know WHAT the fuck I was thinking - I'll use the excuse that I was half-drunk (God, I still cringe when I think about it . . .).

I was standing outside the place in the cold, queued up for a taxi, and somehow still oblivious to the humongous mistake I just made. But apparently, God smiles on idiots from time to time - I suddenly felt an arm slip into mine, and turned to find Margaret next to me, inviting me to her place for a nightcap . . . Thank goodness for small miracles.

I spent a lot of time with her over the next couple of weeks, both out at the clubs and at her place. She showed me the town, and I took her on a tour of the dry-docked ship. I had so much fun with her in Dunfermline, I never even bothered to go to Edinburgh. But we both sort of knew that time was short, and whatever we had probably wasn't built to last. The repairs on the ship went quicker than they anticipated, and just before Thanksgiving we were back in the water and ready to rejoin the rest of the STANAVFORLANT force in southern England.

I spent my last night in Scotland with Margaret at her house, saying goodbye. I gave her some pictures I had taken of us and our time together, some other mementoes and other stuff to remember me by. She gave me her picture and address, and promised to write. And that was that. It was a sad group of sailors that left Rosyth on that snowy November morning, myself included. I think that everyone enjoyed their extended time in Scotland, an unexpected silver lining to the near-tragedy that almost sank our boat.

I sent Margaret postcards from every remaining stop on our deployment: Portsmouth, England; Zeebrugge, Belgium; and the Azores. We returned home to Virginia just before Christmas, and I wrote her a couple more times in the months that followed. But I never heard from her again.

Later that winter, I found a vinyl copy of various mixes of "We Call It Acieed", along with three mixes of "Trance Dance", at 12 Inch Dance Records in Washington, DC. It took America a year longer than Europe to get into this song, but our country managed to catch on in the end - "We Call It Acieed" topped the US dance charts for several weeks during the spring of 1989. I still have this record, in its original sleeve and all, and once in a while I still do the "old school" thing and play it on my turntable. And every time I do, I think back on that cruise and on my time in Scotland so long ago . . . and wonder about Margaret, whatever became of her, and how her life turned out.

Such is life.

Here's the music, cooked off of my meticulously maintained vinyl copy. Enjoy, and let me know what you think:

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Sunday, July 17, 2011

Betty Boo - Boomania


Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia is one of the largest universities in the Tidewater area and one of the top institutions of higher learning in the state. It boasts superb facilities, nationally ranked athletic teams, a decent financial endowment and a loyal alumni fanbase. The only knock I have against the place is that, in terms of nightlife and activities, it's dull as dishwater.

I got to know ODU when I lived in nearby Virginia Beach about 20 years ago. My brother was a student there, and on occasion I used to head down into Norfolk to hang out with him. But when I say "hang out", I use that term loosely - in regards to decent bars/clubs/social amenities in close proximity to the ODU campus, the area was sorely lacking. Back then, there were three locales of any distinction close to the school - the 4400 Campus Club and another bar (whose name currently escapes me [addendum - was just informed that the other bar was called Friar Tuck's]) directly across the street from the main quad, and further up Hampton Boulevard, the King's Head, which showcased decent bands from time to time. That was it. Hell, even my alma mater, Navy, had a PUMPING nightlife just outside its gates, with the bars of downtown Annapolis a mere stagger away. The lameness of the area around ODU made Annapolis look like Las Vegas, comparatively.

Still, the ODU area had its attractions - mainly, the college girls who drank there most evenings. The 4400 Club also used to host a great DJ one night a week; the guy would play some pretty decent cuts - everything from Ministry, Nine Inch Nails and the Screaming Blue Messiahs to Madonna and the Cure. The guy also had little contests he ran during his set - trivia questions and "Name That Tune" sort of stuff. It was pretty enjoyable, and I usually ended up winning something on those evenings (due to my profound musical knowledge - ha ha), so I began making a point of going to the 4400 Club on nights this DJ worked,

One night, he was having a "Name That Tune" competition with random CD giveaways as prizes. He put the first song on, which I instantly recognized as Suidical Tendencies' "I Shot The Devil". My prize was a mixtape of various obscure songs and remixes the DJ had put together (it was actually pretty good - I still have it, all these years later) and a CD, Betty Boo's Boomania.

I listened to the Betty Boo CD the next afternoon, and initially I was convinced that the DJ was taking the mickey out of his audience (and me) by having this disc as a "prize". Englishwoman Betty Boo (real name: Alison Clarkson) was an eighteen-year-old sound engineering student in London in 1988 when she hooked up with a band of female rappers called the She Rockers. The group busked around London, and one day during one of their impromptu performances at a McDonald's in the city, were noticed by, of all people, Public Enemy's Professor Griff.  Professor Griff produced the group's first single, "Give It A Rest".


He also convinced Betty Boo to leave the group, as it appeared to be going nowhere; after little more than a year with the She Rockers, Boo went solo.

Betty's solo break came mere months later, when she guested on The Beatmaster's hit single "Hey DJ! (I Can't Dance to that Music You're Playing)", which went to #7 in the UK in late 1989.


She quickly followed up with a debut single of her own, "Doin' The Do", in early 1990. The song also went to #7 UK and topped the dance charts in the US. She spent the spring and summer of that year writing and recording songs in her bedroom for her first full-length release, which turned out to be Boomania. The album went to #4 in the UK, spawned two more UK chart hits ("Where Are You Baby?" and "24 Hours"), and at the BRIT Awards the next year (the British equivalent of the Grammys), it helped her earn the title of "Best British Breakthrough Artist". She was still only 20 years old.

The majority of the songs on Boomania are a strange hybrid of dance music and pop-rap, sort of a slightly 'harder', less trippy-dippy version of the stuff that Deee-Lite (whose album World Clique and lead single "Groove Is In The Heart" were big US/UK hits) was putting out during the same time period (Deee-Lite's album was released two months earlier, in August 1990). A lot of Boo's music sounds like the template the Spice Girls used to "create" their hateful pop-rap-dance sound ten years later - not a good thing (I'm sorry, but the British can't do rap to save their lives). Another analogy (I've got a million of 'em tonight) - Betty Boo was like Peaches with a lot less sass and a lot more accent. Which is why after that first listen, I thought the DJ gave out this disc as a joke.

However, once I delved deeper into the album, I found some gold there, once you got away from her formulaic "hits". "Valentine's Day" is an unheralded but superb tune, with Boo's voice exploring a more R&B direction. But the best song on the album in my opinion is "Shame", with Boo's excellent vocals backed by a nagging, incessant bass 'n' drum rhythm that drives the dancable groove along:


"Shame" should have been a huge club hit, but I don't think it even made the charts.

Betty Boo's fall was just as rapid as her rise. She began a world tour on Boomania, but during a concert in Australia in 1991, the audience discovered her lip syncing over taped vocals, and mass derision ensued. She cancelled the rest of the tour and stayed quiet for the rest of the year. Betty also left Rhythm King for Warner Music Group in 1991, and the next year Warner released
her sophomore LP, Grrr! It's Betty Boo. The album charted in the UK, but nowhere near the heights of her first album. In 1993, she left Warner and took time away from music to care for her terminally ill mother for the next several years; this effectively ended her singing career. In the past fifteen years or so, Betty Boo regrouped, and has carved out a niche for herself as a songwriter, writing tunes for British teen pop groups and the like.

As for the "scene" around the Old Dominion campus, the block containing the 4400 Campus Club was completely demolished at the end of the '90s. The area is now the site of the Ted Constant Convocation Center, the university's multi-purpose arena. I have no idea where the students go to hang out now - I guess they have to drive into the downtown area. Oh well.

Anyway, here, for your listening pleasure, is Betty Boo's Boomania, released in October 1990 by Rhythm King, and distributed by Sire Records. Have a listen to the cuts I mentioned above, and as always, let me know what you think:

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Saturday, July 2, 2011

The Fleshtones - American Beat '84 EP



I was browsing through the online version of The New York Times back in late May, and came across an obituary notice concerning the passing of actress Barbara Stuart. Ms. Stuart had a long and varied career, for over fifty years appearing frequently on the big and small screen, but mostly in supporting roles on television. For all of her longevity, she never quite made it big. It seemed that she lived out her career as one of those "oh yeah" faces, someone who you've seen before on TV without quite remembering where, or what her name was. According to the article, her big claim to fame was appearing as Miss Bunny, Sgt. Carter's girlfriend on "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.", which really didn't ring any bells with me. There was also a picture of her - she looked semi-familiar, but still not wholly recognizable.

I kept reading through her list of obscure TV series appearances, such as "I Led Three Lives", "T.H.E. Cat", "The McLean Stevenson Show", and forgettable B-movie roles in stinkers like Marines, Let's Go! and The Pterodactyl Woman From Beverly Hills (no, I'm not shitting you - that was a ACTUAL movie). The penny finally dropped for me with these words at the end of one paragraph: "She was Tom Hanks’s future mother-in-law in Bachelor Party (1984)."

YES! Of course! Bachelor Party! Tawny Kitaen's mother! She was the one who grabbed Nick The Dick's 'foot-long' ("and then some", as he quipped) in the strip club scene, a comedy classic!


I've always loved Bachelor Party. Yeah, I know - the thing was no Oscar winner; critics have called it "vulgar" and "sophomoric", descriptions I really can't argue with. And I'm sure that if you ask Tom Hanks (who appeared in an early-career leading role), I'll bet he wishes he never starred in this admittedly juvenile farce. But for a flick filled with bad acting (this movie killed dead any hopes Adrian Zmed had for a substantial movie career, dooming him to supporting roles on TV forever and anon), generic '80s movie cliches (Exhibit A: the blond Aryan preppy antagonist (a "Zabka-ite", if you will)), and a warmed-over plot line (i.e., the nerdy/weird/unacceptable guy wooing and winning the girl of his dreams - gee, they've never used THAT before . . .), Bachelor Party has shown surprising resilience over the years. The movie resists being ignored, or relegated to the dustbin of forgotten '80s 'junk' films of its genre like Just One Of The Guys, Better Off Dead or Hot Dog: The Movie.

In a way, Bachelor Party is like a minor-league Caddyshack, in terms of funny scenes and quotable lines that guys remember fondly. The "Nick The Dick" scene is a stand out (heh - so to speak); along with scenes and lines like:

- Rick (Hank's character) is enticed by his naked ex-girlfriend Tracey (played by the brick shithousedly-built Penthouse Pet Monique Gabrielle), and has a guilt trip about it (complete with the faces of a nun, his fiancee, and his friends appearing on Tracey's shoulders and counseling him);
- Gary (the nerdy guy) making a bad deal with a sinister pimp when arranging for hookers to attend the party, walking away and mumbling to himself, "I just bet my balls - and shook on it."
- "Pain . . . is SUCH a rush!"

As for the movie soundtrack, New Wave is well represented, with cuts by Wang Chung ("Dance Hall Days"), The Police ("Rehumanize Yourself") and Oingo Boingo ("Who Do You Want To Be" and the movie theme song) featured prominently. Bachelor Party does make some musical mistakes, in my opinion - the producers were obviously featuring/pushing two songs for radio airplay and chart recognition, Adrian Zmed's "Little Demon" and Angel & The Reruns' "Why Do Good Girls Like Bad Boys?". But both songs were annoying, for different reasons: Zmed's song, because it sucked REALLY badly, and the Reruns' tune because they just played it too long/too many times in the film, and after a while you just got sick of it.

The best song in the movie came early on, in the scene in the jeans shop that introduces Debbie, the main female character, played by Tawny Kitaen. In this part of the movie, the entire store (clerks and customers alike) is jamming out to a great horn-and-snare-driven Hi-NRG tune.


The whole setup is hokey and contrived, a Hollywood version of what a 'cool' New Wave clothing store is supposed to look like . . . but the song is still amazing, so much so that the first time I saw the movie, I stayed for the closing credits so I could find out the name of the song. I discovered that it was "American Beat '84", by a band called The Fleshtones.

The Fleshtones were formed in 1976 in Queens, New York when two roommates renting a house in the neighborhood, Keith Streng and Marek Pakulski, came across some musical instruments that a previous tenant had abandoned in the basement. The two recruited a couple of local friends, Manny Calderon (on drums) and Peter Zaramba (on keyboards and vocals) to fill out their new band, with Streng taking up the guitar and Pakulski on bass. Although the Ramones formed two years earlier in the same neighborhood as the Fleshtones, there wasn't much cross-pollination between the two bands - probably because the members of the Ramones were significantly older than Streng et al., and their music styles were totally different. While the Ramones pursued a purely punk path, the Fleshtones mined a sound that was more rock and power pop than anything else.

Whatever their differences to the Ramones, the Fleshtones also quickly found success on the New York club scene. They made their first appearance at CBGB's in May 1976, and became regulars at the top local clubs of that era: the Irving Plaza, Max's Kansas City and Danceteria in NYC, and Maxwell's in Hoboken, NJ. The band built up a strong local following, and expanded that fan base with club visits up and down the East Coast, making stops at places like The Ratskeller in Boston and the 9:30 Club in DC (in fact, they were the first band ever booked at 9:30).

In 1978, the Fleshtones signed with Red Star Records, recording an album's worth of material and releasing their first single, "American Beat b/w Critical List" the following year. But Red Star dicked around with the band, never releasing the album and only giving token support to the single. So in 1980, the Fleshtones left the label and signed with New Wave giant I.R.S. Records. As opposed to their previous label, head honcho Miles Copeland put the full weight of I.R.S. behind the band. He teamed them with the label's best producers (Richard Mazda and Richard Gottehrer, among others), featured them in I.R.S.'s signature concert film from that era (Urgh! A Music War), and even got the band a gig on American Bandstand in 1982. Copeland also had them rerecord their debut single, which was rereleased as "American Beat '84". Overall, this new version crushes the first one, in terms of beat, energy and overall coolness.

But for all of that support, all of their gigging and despite their large following, the Fleshtones couldn't find a national audience. None of the band's four albums I.R.S. released between 1982 and 1985 were hits; only the first one, Roman Gods, managed to scrape the bottom of the Billboard 200 chart. They were dropped by I.R.S. when their final label album, Speed Connection II, tanked in 1985. Since then, they have soldiered on, gigging constantly and releasing a series of albums either independently or through small labels. After 35 years, Streng and Zaramba are the remaining original members, but even with their lack of mainstream success, the Fleshtones refuse to give in. They're like the poor man's Dramarama - a band that had lots of talent, but never quite got over the hump.

Still, I'm glad they have at least one great song like "American Beat '84" in their discography. Here are the American Beat '84 EPs (both the U.S. and European versions, with similar "A" sides but different songs on the flip), released by I.R.S. Records in 1984. This tune made a movie that should have been forgettable that much more memorable (for me, at least). As always, let me know what you think.

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