Month: July 2017

Ron Howard wrote “I Was A Teenage Zombie”. Performed by The Fleshtones and supposably written by Peter Zaremba. I’ve seen these guys perform a few times….really good and hung with them as well.

Here’s the album and….

…here’s the film.

I hung out with them with their manager Robert Singerman, now Robert Hansingerman I believe as his wife is Chinese named Hansing. Something like this.

Peter Zaremba looks very Elton John’ish so he might be Billy Mumy while Ken Fox could pass for Ron. As a matter of fact I dug up this photo of the Fleshtones.

This appears to be the same venue where they shot Elton John doing Pinball Wizard!

They really were terrific and super nice guys for the most part. Like I said Billy is a precisionist and onetime got into during a performance with another band member and screamed at him… “I’m walking here!!!” ok that parts a joke he screamed at him, “I know the song!!” They didn’t come out for an encore which was sad. This was at the Texas Roadhouse.

My claim to fame… Peter Zaremba aka Billy Mummy came up to Robert’s office one day at Singer Management and managed to leave his very cool sunglasses which I put on when I noticed them on the table. Robert said to me…”Where did you get those glasses?” I said, “they were on your desk.” He said. “Peter must have left them, I knew they were too cool for you.’ He made me leave them.

Robert and I were business partners for a while at SingerManagement. He still owes me some money and I have his childhood baseball card collection which I think he still wants cause he contacted me for it once for his son. I feel mildly guilty about this but I figure I won’t once I’m dead and it’s part of the estate.

We were in a bar with the Fleshtones after a rehearsal once and I noticed Peter wasn’t drinking, I wasn’t either at the time and I offered him a drink which he politely declined. He said it would just give him a hangover the next day which he didn’t want. He then complemented the drummer for doing a great job. The drummer couldn’t stop drumming and was air drumming at that point who appreciated the complement  and said “Thanks”.

Peter and probably Ken would climb up on top of tables while playing their guitars hard and play standing on them which was really cool just like Slash on the piano. As a matter of fact when the two band members were arguing they were standing on the tables, exciting stuff.

Peter was a consummate gentleman, once Robert was cluing me in on some lyrics in a song and Peter said, “Hey you’re not supposed to give that away!!! That’s for when you listen to the album a few times.” The lyrics were about some psychotropic meds, maybe Elavil. Peter was pleasantly perturbed because Robert loved the band and music.

If I’m not mistaken they did a song called, “Hey Disco,” with lyrics something like “Don’t tell my wife but I’m going to…hey disco.” Robert confided in me that the original lyrics and song were called “Gay Disco”. I petitioned Robert to go back to the original lyric, “Gay Disco”. I think the song, the album and the band might have gotten some legs on it. Perhaps they’d still be pertinent today.

I believe Cheryl was a groupie for them. At one venue the fans were supposed to be a foot away from the stage and periodically some big black guy would walk between the stage and the fans to clear the space. Cheryl would be banging on the stage and singing along. She’d back up when the guy came and go right back to it when he left. It was pretty funny but she was great and I believe blonde at the time…and pretty yummy!

If that’s Peter on the right that’s pretty confirmatory as there is an uncanny resemblance to Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate”

 

7/13/17

I can’t remember why Peter showed up at Robert’s office; a pretty unmemorable meeting which leads me to believe he was scoping me out. I was pretty new at the office and met Robert at a Lifespring advanced group I was senioring. He was so wild and discordant I wanted to hang with him which is what we did.  I hate to put words into Peter’s mouth but I think he thought I was an asshole which on any given day could be true. He thought I was pretty much not harmless which is interesting since it makes only minimal sense and “We have to keep an eye on him.” I guess that’s a pretty good summary. They were worried about me poisoning the pot. I write this as I see it which sometimes doesn’t fully make sense.