Editor's note: If you're a longtime fan of local music you may recall The Flashcubes, a power-pop band from Syracuse that gained a following in the 1980s. The band may be under your radar, but through a series of recent events the band struck a chord in Japan. In fact, the band gained enough of a following that a Japanese producer sponsored the band on a tour in April.
Gary Frenay, the group's bass player and co-singer and songwriter, chronicled the band's Japanese adventure for syracuse.com and The Post-Standard. Below is his travel journal.
Note: The introductory video below contains some graphic images
The Flashcubes Japan Diary
By Gary Frenay
The Flashcubes (Gary Frenay, Arty Lenin, Paul Armstrong and Tommy Allen) were a band that flourished in Syracuse from 1977 to 1980, releasing several independent singles, opening shows for major acts like The Police, The Ramones, Pat Benetar and The Romantics, and amassing a rabid following of like-minded New Wave rock & roll fans throughout the Northeast.
The Flashcubes (Paul Armstrong, Gary Frenay, Tommy Allen and Arty Lenin) are a band of 50-something guys who still sporadically perform and record together well into this 21st century. We are, as one friend notes, "the band that refuses to die."
Starting in 1993, when we recorded several new tracks to accompany a CD anthology of our late-70s recordings (BRIGHT LIGHTS), we began to find new opportunities and new fans who encouraged us to keep on doing our thing. Our indie CD, ultimately released in 1997, led to a feature article in GOLDMINE magazine and our inclusion on several sampler discs that were distributed internationally. Those, in turn, led us to being asked to perform at an indie pop festival in Los Angeles (International Pop Overthrow) in 1998 and 2000 where we met several Japanese fans who had heard us on the sampler discs and took our BRIGHT LIGHTS CD - along with their firsthand accounts of our live performances - back to Japan.
??Shortly thereafter we heard from Airmail Recordings, a Japanese label run by Hiroshi Kuse, which - much to our surprise and delight - wanted to release BRIGHT LIGHTS in Japan. Tied to the release was the offer that, if the CD did well, Hiroshi would like us to come to Japan to do a short tour. Amazingly, the CD did do well and, in May 2002, we flew to Japan for a five-day, three-date tour. The gigs were incredible with Japanese kids half our ages, singing along with our songs with their fists in the air and asking for autographs after the shows. We were treated like bona fide rock stars and it was all over much too quickly. Before we knew it, we were back in the States, resuming our own routine lives, with the nagging thought, "Did all that really happen?"
??Over the next decade, Airmail Recordings released five more of our CDs in Japan, including a live recording made during our tour called RAW POWER POP, LIVE IN JAPAN. During that time, The Cubes performed sporadically at a few IPO Festivals, in Chicago, Boston and NYC, and at select CNY shows like Dave Frisina's 30th Anniversary party at the Inner Harbor in 2008 and the Taste Of Syracuse in 2011.
In 2007, 30 years after our first gigs together, we began a new recording project: a tribute to British rock legend, Roy Wood, the founder of The Move, Wizzard and ELO. We are all record collectors (especially into anything British) and Roy Wood always held a special fascination for us because he was such a unique combination of outrageous performance and wildly-eclectic songwriting. There was, quite simply, no one like Roy Wood. And even better for our elitist collector-selves, very few people in the US knew who he was. It was like belonging to a secret club.
Because we had no real budget or financial backing for studio costs, we did all of the recording at home, on our computers, using modern digital recording programs like ProTools, Cubase and GarageBand. The album, SPORTIN' WOOD, was the ultimate DIY project. I created demos in my Strathmore kitchen, Tommy tracked real drums in his NYC loft, Arty did guitar tracks in his Eastwood bedroom, and Paul added his parts in his Boston basement. As each track was finished, they were emailed to Tommy in NYC where he assembled the tracks - as project producer - and mixed the assembled parts into a finished whole. The album took five years to finish (longer than we were together in our initial run) and we were, in fact, never in the studio together at the same time. Despite our extremely unorthodox process, we have a new CD of which we're all very proud.
Upon completion, Airmail Recordings stepped up once again to release SPORTIN' WOOD in Japan. Along with the release, came the invitation to tour Japan again, only this time for five dates, spread over seven days. We were thrilled at the prospect of re-experiencing that level of adulation but, admittedly, apprehensive, in part because that was 10 years ago.
Was the first time a dream? Would any of our fans still be into the music scene? Could we really do it again? Could we survive jet lag to make it through a tour that long, at our ages?
Hell, sure we could! Part of being in a rock & roll band is being cocky. You have to think you're great if you expect anyone else to. And you have to believe in yourselves, no matter what. So we believe we can do it. We can experience it all again, and prove to ourselves that it wasn't a dream the first time. But just to make sure, I'm gonna keep a diary to document what really happens.
Ready, boys? Bags all packed? Passports in hand? Let's go!
Day 1 - Thursday
After arriving Wednesday night, not-so-fresh off a 14-hour flight, I, Arty, and my wife, Jackie (who I had to bring to witness this wild ride), settle into our hotel in the Shinagawa section of Tokyo. It's spring and the cherry trees are in full blossom everywhere. Tokyo is the cleanest city I've ever encountered. No trash - or trash cans, for that matter - anywhere.
We spend the day taking in the sights. Arty checks out a modern art museum, while Jackie and I are content to comb the neighborhood, successfully, for the ancient Sengakugi Shrine. Built nearly 400 years ago, still standing, an active place of worship, and a wonder to behold. We're all still feeling pretty out-of-gas, so after an early dinner and making sure the other half of the band arrive from Boston, we call it a day.
(A quick note on the band lineup: Tommy Allen couldn't make the trip. Our drummer is Ducky Carlisle. Ducky was an SU student when we first started playing. His band, The Ohms, opened for us many times, and he has engineered and produced nearly all of the recordings we have done in our 35 years together. He has subbed for Tommy many times in the past when Tommy was living in LA in the early-90s. He is still a very busy drummer, but is more widely known as an engineer and producer, with gold records and a Grammy -- for engineering a Buddy Guy CD -- to his credit. He's a world-class joke teller, too!)
Day 2 - Friday
The first gig is booked for Hamamatsu, a small Japanese town about two hours south of Tokyo by bullet train. We leave in the morning and the urban jungle that is Tokyo gives way to picturesque hills, small towns and the ocean, to our left. Shortly before Hamamatsu proper, we see Mt. Fuji to our right. Snow-covered, majestic and looking every bit the wonder we've seen in pictures. Really amazing to behold!
We are met at the train station by Toshi who runs the club we'll be playing at tonight. His band, The Florians, will also be on the bill. After ferrying us and our gear to the hotel (with his car stereo blasting my song, You Only Get One Life), we make tracks to the club for a 3 p.m. soundcheck. All goes well and we take in a quick meal before heading back to our rooms for a little rest.
The G-Side is maybe the smallest rock club in the world. It supposedly holds 100 people, but the crowd of 70 that shows up to see us is packed like sardines into a space no bigger the first floor of my house. We wait through four opening bands, who run the gamut from Rock to Punk to Ska, before finally taking the stage at around 10 p.m.
We launch into my song "It's You Tonight" and the crowd pushes toward the stage. Five songs into our set and they're nearly spilling into our space. The wilder they get, the louder and crazier we play. Things seem to reach critical mass when we blast our way through the Flamin' Groovies' classic, "Shake Some Action." Suddenly the line between band and crowd, already a blur, disappears. There are five or six fans on stage with us, dancing like mad, thrusting fists in the air, and commandeering our mics, to join in with the vocals. A few more songs, wilder and wilder, and Paul is on the dance floor having ceded his stage space to the throng while Arty plays his guitar behind his head as crazed, drunken fans genuflect in front of him. Drummer Ducky Carlisle (replacing Tommy Allen who couldn't join us on this tour, due to family and business obligations) and I try to hold down the fort but, ultimately, there is no reining in this kind of energy. You can only try to ride on it. And ride we do.
Closing with originals "Wait Til Next Week" and "Got No Mind," the whole room is a frenzy. I can't even leave the stage, to wait for an encore. I just stand there and wait for Duck, who somehow did get offstage, to return. We dive into "Do Anything You Want to Do," and over a dozen fans are leaping about on our cramped stage, screaming into the mics and having, what appears to be, the time of their lives. As are we!
All that's left in our collective tank is poured into a super fast version of my song, Welcome To The Working Class, with our obligatory Nick Lowe/Paul Collins/Ramones interlude. We end the set sweating and breathless. Four more nights to go. Oh man, do we feel old!
Day 3 - Saturday
After taking a train to Tokyo, we check back into our home base, Hotel Keikyu, and head off to lunch with our hosts and promoters, Hiroshi Kuse and his wife, Yumi. For some reason a French restaurant is chosen, which is fine, but things gets comical when we start trying to read the menus. Having our Japanese hosts attempt to describe French food to American musicians seems like something right out of the Bill Murray film, LOST IN TRANSLATION.
We head to the club for our 4 p.m. soundcheck, now pushed back to 5 pm, to accommodate our amazing - but leisurely - lunch. The sound system is much better here than last night with killer monitors and great amps for us to play through. All the clubs we'll play in Japan supply backline amps and drums so we wouldn't have to bring our own. Hard enough just dragging our guitars and stage clothes from hotel to train to plane.
We have two opening bands tonight that both feature friends from our first trip, 10 years ago: Rockbottom and The Raydios, and both are great. We hit the stage at about 9 p.m. and there are about 150 people stuffed into a smokey, intimate club. We played The Jam (the club, not the British band), on our first date in 2002, and I'd forgotten how cool it is. The stage is narrow, but deep, allowing us more room to move than we had last night. Paul, especially, has way more room to prance, which he takes full advantage of. The band is better tonight, and the crowd, while not quite as crazy as Hamamatsu, are clearly very passionate. They are pressed up against our monitors and singing along with every song.
I've said it before, but this is my rock star fantasy, coming to fruition. The Flashcubes were never a huge band in America, despite our game attempts to spread the word. But here in Japan, we feel revered. A young guy in his mid-20's, wearing a Cubes tour T-shirt (like the original, but now yellow letters on black) is standing right in front of me with tears streaming down his face as I sing my song, "You're Not The Police." He knows every word and seems to be truly overcome, being this close to our music, and the musicians who make it. Very moving.
We are in top form tonight. This is about as good as The Cubes can be - at this age, anyway - and we feed on the constant energy that comes back at us from the assembled horde. Rockbottom recorded "Shake Some Action" on their most recent CD (which they were eager to share with us) so I brought the lead singer, Tatsuya, up onstage with us to share the lead vocal with Arty and me. A very wise move, indeed. I?m not sure what it is about that song, but it seems to have become one of the power pop anthems here in Japan and, seeing one of their own onstage with us, drives the crowd crazy. This is almost unimaginable energy. If we could harness it, we?d solve the energy crisis! We rip through the final five songs at breakneck pace (sorry, Duck) and take our leave, before returning for two very long-winded encores.
We?ve taken to including The Raspberries classic, "I Wanna Be With You," in our shows over here as a tribute to the Cubes original drummer Tommy Allen, who is the most passionate Raspberries fan in the world. It?s our way of feeling Tommy?s presence. Even though he isn?t with us physically, he is with us in spirit. And if Shake Some Action has attained increased status in the Power Pop pantheon, "I Wanna Be With You" is the mountaintop! There are really no words to describe that song, in that place, by this band, but suffice to say, it?s a memory we?ll treasure forever.
Read on
? Days 4 and 5: The Flashcubes in Japan: Leaping on a table 'like some mad Shogun go-go dancer'
? Days 6, 7 and 8: The Flashcubes in Japan: 'Our wildest dreams coming true'
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