Full Time Men

Created to celebrate the power of "Rock 'n' Roll, Good Times and Wild Music," Full Time Men was a raucous garage rock project led by Keith Streng, the guitarist and co-founder of New York "Super Rock" band the Fleshtones. Making music honoring his love of 1960s rock, R&B, and psychedelia, Full Time Men featured a rotating lineup of collaborators that included several of his Fleshtones bandmates, as well as members of R.E.M., the Lyres, the Hoodoo Gurus, the Smithereens, and many more. After a pair of releases in the 1980s -- 1984's Full Time Men EP and the 1988 album Your Face My Fist -- the supergroup lay dormant until 2023, when the compilation Part Time Job gathered highlights from their back catalog alongside four new songs. Despite his busy schedule with the Fleshtones, guitarist Keith Streng had long shown an eagerness to sit in with like-minded artists and collaborate with his friends, and he took this to the next level when he launched Full Time Men as a studio project in 1984. FTM's debut release was a three-song EP that was primarily the work of Streng and his friend Peter Buck of R.E.M., who sat in with the Fleshtones for the Paris concert documented on 1985's Speed Connection II – The Final Chapter. On Full Time Men, Streng and Buck played all the instruments, except for keyboards from Mike Mills (another member of R.E.M.) and Tim White. In 1988, Streng released a full-length Full Time Men album, Your Face My Fist, and this time, the group had a proper lineup, with Streng on lead vocals and guitar, Rich Thomas on guitar, Robert Burke Warren on bass, and two of Streng's Fleshtones associates, Gordon Spaeth on sax and harmonica and Bill Milhizer on drums. The record's 11 songs included a wealth of guest stars, including Fleshtones lead singer Peter Zaremba, Hoodoo Gurus leader Dave Faulkner, Pat DiNizio of the Smithereens, Jeff "Mono Man" Connolly of the Lyres, and Dead Boys frontman Stiv Bators. Beyond two songs on a 1999 EP, The Fabulous Sounds of Coney Island (which also included a pair of tracks from another Streng group, the Master Plan, featuring Andy Shernoff of the Dictators), nothing was heard again from Full Time Men until 2023, when Yep Roc Records delivered Part Time Job. The album featured eight songs from the two Full Time Men releases of the 1980s, along with four new tracks. Once again, the new recordings featured Streng and Peter Buck on guitars, as well as contributions from Clem Burke of Blondie, Scott McCaughey of the Minus 5 and the Young Fresh Fellows, Michael Giblin of the Split Squad, and Josh Kantor, another Split Squad member who is also the official organist for the Boston Red Sox.
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