Fleshtones & Ken Fox, A.D. 1990

In advance of the Fleshtones' 40th anniversary this year, I'll be combing through the Sweat: The Story of The Fleshtones, America's Garage Band archives for some little-seen nuggets. Below are the first photographs of Ken Fox playing with the Fleshtones. The occasion was the Mediterranean Rock Circus Festival on July 18, 1990 in Italy, where the band played before a large crowd in a soccer stadium, spending most of the time in the large field in an attempt to get closer to the cordoned-off crowd. (Fox had to get used to getting moving, on and off stage.) This xeroxed article first appeared in Corriere di Pordenone. The Paleolithic graininess of these photos is distressing but somehow appropriate, because when Fox joined the Fleshtones he plugged in to something eternal. When I saw the band at Stache's in Columbus, Ohio a year or so later, it looked like Fox had been playing with the band forever. It'll be a quarter century this summer. The "new guy" no more.

Here's a pretty typical headline from Fox's debut tour with the Fleshtones in northern Europe, this from Il Gazzettino on July 20, 1990:

More archival Fleshtones materials here, here, here, here, here, here and here.