If you want power, and powerful pop, The Flashcubes are for you. They do both, and it is a real tonic for the troops -- the more guitars the better! I’ve loved all the big Stir singles they’ve released, and now they have an album out as well.

The band was kind enough answer a few questions for me.

Andrea Weiss: How did the project come together?

Tommy Allen: During COVID we recorded our version of Pezband's “Baby It's Cold Outside.” About halfway through the process I reached out to Pezband's Mimi Betinis on Facebook and asked him if he'd like to join us. He said yes, and so it began!

Gary Frenay: Organically, really. Tommy had the idea to record the Pezband tune, “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” and we all recorded our parts. Then he reached out to Mimi Betinis to see if he wanted to join in, and he did, much to our great joy. Initially, we thought we were just recording a new single, but as we added track after track, with participation from the majority of the bands we were covering, an album began to take shape.

AW: How were the songs chosen?

TA: lots of songs were on the list, and we couldn't do them all!

GF: It was a collective effort, with all of us tossing songs into the hat that we had an interest in. But it was left to Tommy to make the ultimate choice given that he was the engineer and producer, and would have to listen to each track hundreds of times while mixing them.

AW: Do you have any favorites?

TA: Honestly, I love them all or we wouldn't have put them on the CD!

GF: Probably the Pilot song. I’ve always been such a huge fan. Back in the day, I had a Pilot mix tape that we listened to often on the way home from gigs, singing along at the top of our drunken lungs. To be able to do my favorite David Paton song, with him actually joining in on vocals and piano was such a huge thrill!

AW: Were some songs easier to cover than others?

TA: Ask Gary!

GF: I think some were more in our wheelhouse than others. We had performed The Spongetones and Posies tracks live in our sets over the years, so those came naturally. Others, like the Stamey, Twilley, and Shoes songs, took a little more work to sort out the arrangement to our particular strengths.

AW: How were the guests brought in?

TA: In each case an invitation to participate was accompanied by a somewhat realized work mix and more than a few crossed fingers!

GF: We’re all home recordists, so the first question in approaching them was to find out if they were too. We weren’t going to ask anyone to go into an actual studio and run up a bill at our expense. Luckily, most were able to record at home, and happy to do so.

AW: I like that, while the originals are really good, your covers sometimes are a little better. Was there a danger of upstaging any of the originals?

TA: We absolutely love the songs and the artists we chose to cover, and our reverence for the music is apparent. As for upstaging, well, our goal was to honor our heroes, and I think we've done that!

GF: We never really considered that. We just did whatever we thought the song required, and what we could bring to the table. Given that some of the original tracks were recorded 40+ years ago, it was to be expected that we could improve on the sound quality and production in 2023.

AW: If someone doesn't know the originals, do you hope that people will listen to them and get into them?

TA: Yes!

GF: We certainly hope so! These are some of our favorite bands, and songs, of all time. We would like nothing more than for people to go back to the originals to experience what we were inspired by so many years ago!

AW: Are there any songs or bands you want to highlight?

TA: All of them! 

GF: I’m especially proud of the job we did as a band, and of the sound Tommy got as producer, on the songs by Pilot, Pezband, Cyrus Erie, Slade and the Shoes. Way better than we ever expected we could do!