Et tu spiritus dance

40 years ago today the Fleshtones released their epic I.R.S. single "The World Has Changed" b/w "All Around The World." The February 1981 recording sessions at R.K.O. Studios in London were fueled by Watney’s “Party Seven” cans—seven pints of strong ale. Plus an inventive add-on. Here's the story as I tell it in Sweat: The Story of the Fleshtones, America's Garage Band:

But the room’s low ceilings, carpeted walls, and overall bygone feel weren’t exactly inspiring, and before long Peter and Mazda were out on the damp London streets searching for speed. “I didn’t have any contacts in London,” Mazda says. “And we certainly weren’t going to ring up Miles at the label and say, ‘We need drugs!’ “ So the fellas went down the block to a local chemist and bought a half a dozen bottles of Benalyn cough syrup, with codeine-morphine sediment. “We let the sediment sink to the bottom, poured off the syrup from the top and got quite high on that,” Mazda recalls with amusement. “That and the Party Seven’s....

A dead-in-your-tracks grind and growl was featured on “The World Has Changed,” a new song from Peter and Keith and one of three tracks laid down swiftly at RKO, along with “All Around the World” and the civics-lesson “R-I-G-H-T-S,” with Keith singing (“Keith was hard to record, he does not have a pop voice,” Mazda admits charitably). The sound and attitude in these recordings were as far from Shangri-La sonically as RKO was geographically. “The World Has Changed” bristles with barbarous energy, as if the early Yardbirds were dragged along the streets of the East Village, charged with low-rent amphetamines. Mazda encouraged the guys to layer on as much percussion as they could handle, and his literal hands-on production—he’d grab the reel, delay it, let go, the tape leaping and lurching forward recklessly—beat up the song to a rumbling, pulpy mass, the darkest, most muscular Fleshtones sound to date. The band would always consider the recording of “The World Has Changed” among their favorites. “I am really proud,” says Mazda, who feels that the ideal way to hear the song is through the small speakers of a jukebox. “That record totally rocks,” 

Titus Turner’s “All Around the World,” filtered through Edwin Starr’s funky, irresistibly danceable 1970 version, was a jolly high-energy streak through sweaty R&B territory, the kind of song prized by the guys in that it was amusing, rocking, and suitably obscure. Marek wailed his first recorded solo vocals—the riotous Grits ain’t groceries, fried eggs ain’t poultry, Mona Lisa was a man chorus—and the whole bands churns, Bill’s hiccupping drums and Marek’s slap-bass echoing the song’s strong black vernacular. Peter hollers the desperate words and blows harp (“We spent hours getting the filthiest harp sound possible,” remembers Mazda) while the Action Combo, in what would be their last appearance on a Fleshtones record, honks happily behind him. 

The raw immediacy of these two recordings came courtesy of the spontaneous luck that a lot of good rock & roll is borne of: sessions cobbled together quickly, songs chosen on the fly, performances breakneck and loose. The band would try and recapture the energy of these brief hours in the studio for years to come. “Those were brilliant sessions,” Peter admits. “We were in the right studio, and Mazda was still trying to prove that he could do it without stretching out too much. He had limited technology in front of him, which is a real plus, and he was very willing to experiment. It’s a shame, actually, that we didn’t have more material prepared right then, because that would have been the right time to record a whole album.” Peter’s memories may be burnished a bit by nostalgia, but a decade and a half would pass before The Fleshtones were this pleased with a recording session again. “We should have been locked down at RKO,” Peter laments. “We should have been sentenced to record there.”