History

   Arty’s girlfriend, Debbie Redmond, started calling herself Meegan Voss and joined an all-female group called the Poptarts. Danny Bonn, a Flashcubes roadie, formed the Dead Ducks Band (initially with Bobcat Goldthwaite on vocals). Other fans and onlookers became the Ohms (a great band that deserves its own CD anthology–someday!), Dress Code, the Drastics, the Bad Hands, the Natives, the Toys, Distortion, the Penetrators, and the Gigantic Dogs.

   Against all odds, an increasingly confident new wave scene grew in Syracuse.There was even a local fanzine, Poser, created to track the local, national and international new wave scenes. (“Poser” founder Penny Poser, alias Diane Lesniewski, went on to work for Teen Beat magazine–nice résumé!) The Syracuse new wave was in full swing, and it was all thanks to the Flashcubes.

   But the Flashcubes always had goals outside the Salt City. To raise their profile, the Flashcubes opened for virtually every new wave or power pop act that passed through the area: the Ramones, the Runaways, the Police, David Johansen, the Romantics, Fabulous Poodles. They played outside of Syracuse as often as possible, including gigs in Boston, Buffalo, Detroit, Philadelphia and, especially, New York City.

   And they recorded. They recorded many of their live shows, and they recorded demos in hopes of snaring the interest of a record label. Their earliest demos were crude, but the Flashcubes soon learned how to get the most out of basic recording equipment. They announced that they would release their own 45, with Arty’s “Christi Girl” backed by Paul’s “Do The Jumping Jack”.

   The release of those demo sides was aborted, but “Christi Girl” was recut in a real studio at Syracuse University, produced by Bill Murphy and Randy Sex as a student project. It became the debut single on the Flashcubes’ own Northside Records label in 1978, backed by home demos of Gary’s “Guernica” and Paul’s sneering “Got No Mind”.

   “Christi Girl”, a lovely light pop number worthy of the Rubinoos, ultimately became the Flashcubes’ best-known work. At the time, though, it was supposed to be but another step in the Flashcubes’ path to fame and fortune. Locally, the Flashcubes’ progress was beginning to be recognized, and Syracuse New Times music editor Mike Greenstein named them Band of the Year for 1978.Elsewhere, the ’Cubes continued to form friendships and connections they hoped would lead to greater things.

   The Flashcubes kept trying to make inroads outside of the Syracuse area. In New York, they played for audiences that included the Ramones, Blondie, Johnny Thunders and the whole Max’s Kansas City crew. A photo that appeared in “Rock Scene” magazine showed Joey Ramone chatting with Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen, and Joey was holding a copy of “Christi Girl”. At a show in Cleveland, former Raspberries guitarist Wally Bryson told the Flashcubes that they did “Hey Deanie” better than Eric Carmen ever did. They amassed loads of press clippings: good write-ups from Bomp! and The Aquarian, and a lambasting from New York Rocker (who at least conceded that “September Gurls” “was great, though”, referring to the ’Cubes’ live cover of that classic Big Star song).

   By the end of 1978, the Flashcubes had established themselves as a consistent local draw. They sang six songs (including a power pop cover of the Supremes’ “Stop! In The Name Of Love”) on an Oswego, NY cable TV show, and promised the imminent release of a new four-song EP. (“No More Lonely Nights”, Gary’s first Raspberries tribute, was recorded around this time, and may have been intended for that EP.)

   That EP was ultimately abridged to a two-song single, Gary’s “Wait Til Next Week”, backed with the Armstrong-Frenay “Radio”, released on the Northside label in the spring of ’79.“Wait Til Next Week” was a terrific power pop ode to the terror of delayed gratification, inspired by Eddie Cochran and by Bomp! magazine’s Greg Shaw. Shaw had promised to write about the Flashcubes in Bomp!, but the piece took much longer to appear than he’d originally said. An early, unrecorded verse of “Wait Til Next Week” commented on this directly: “Greg Shaw writes about the music scene/Told us that he’d put us in his magazine/Three months later, it’s nowhere to be seen/He says, ‘Why don’t you call me next week.’”

   To Shaw’s credit, the blurb on the Flashcubes did eventually appear in Bomp!. More importantly, he included “Christi Girl” on “Waves”, a sampler album of unsigned new wave bands from around the U.S. and England.

   By the middle of 1979, the Flashcubes looked unstoppable. Although they hadn’t yet managed to land a record deal, they had become definite contenders. Their performances got tighter and tighter. They became more professional without sacrificing an ounce of the honest energy that was so important to their appeal. And they kept writing piles and piles of great songs.

   In June of ’79, the Flashcubes took nine of those great songs and put together a demo tape that could have been the basis for their first album. There certainly weren’t any losers in this bunch, which included Arty’s “Taking Inventory”, “Girl From Germany” and “Gone Too Far”, Paul’s superb “Sold Your Heart”, “Muscle Beach” and “Misunderstanding”, and Gary’s “She’s Not The Girl” (a sequel to an earlier, unreleased number called “Social Mobility”), “You’re Not The Police” and, best of all, the incomparable, Raspberries-inspired “No Promise”. The tape ended anticlimactically, with Arty’s quick take on “Bad To Me”, a Lennon/McCartney tune that was a hit for Billy J. Kramer. But surely somebody would sign this lot now!

   Surely. The Flashcubes themselves were so positive that a deal was imminent that they postponed releasing their planned third single, “No Promise”/“She’s Not The Girl”, reasoning that they should save it for after they got a record deal. The deal never came, and this amazing power pop single was never issued. And, at this point, things just went wrong.

   The lingering punk image had become a burden for the Flashcubes. Where the punk connection had originally served to get the band noticed, that label now seemed to hold them back as they progressed beyond punk’s perceived limitations. Gary, Arty and Tommy all felt that the ’Cubes could only succeed as a power pop group if they finally shed their punk past. And the band still had but one indelible link with its now-unwanted punk image: Paul Armstrong.

   Paul was fired from the Flashcubes in July of 1979. The roots of his dismissal from the group lay in their musical differences, the very dichotomy that had once seemed to be the Flashcubes’ strength. The split was hastened by Michael Browning, whose management firm handled hard rockers AC/DC. Browning was interested in taking the Flashcubes on as clients, but he insisted that they do things his way. His way would include a general taming-down of Paul’s high-energy on-stage antics, or a removal of Paul entirely. Bye-bye, Paulie.

   Paul’s replacement was Mick Walker, a local veteran, then playing with Joe Whiting and the Bandit Band.
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