In memory of the late, great Paul Armstrong. The single can be ordered here. The live memorial show takes place at The Lost Horizon on Saturday, November 7th, 2026.
An infinite number of tracks can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Today, this is THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE!
In his song "Wicked Game," singer Chris Isaak warns that this world is only gonna break your heart. But that's just for starters, because this world is also gonna kill you. It's going to kill every last one of us. No one gets out of here alive.
Another singer-songwriter of some note observed that life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. Yet another declared there would be no future. There have also, of course, been calls to do the Twist, the Stomp, and the Mashed Potato, too, to shake your groove thing, to wave your hands in the air and wave 'em like you just don't care. One guy said the revolution would not be televised. Our shift on this planet is finite. Life is what happens.
Making something happen is what life is.
Paul Armstrong was a singer, songwriter, and guitarist who did not particularly think of himself as a singer, a songwriter, or a guitarist. He was a fan. Like Joan Jett, he loved rock 'n' roll. Like KISS, he loved it loud. Like his heroes, he picked up his guitar and played, and he would play his guitar like a-ringin' a bell, play on, play on, play on, play on, play on. Paul Armstrong lived a life as loud as the music he loved, unafraid, unashamed, unabashed.
Like rock 'n' roll itself, Paul Armstrong was born in the 1950s. Like the Beatles, he was born in England, though he preferred louder UK contemporaries the Dave Clark Five, the Kinks, and the Rolling Stones. He was himself a de facto member of the British Invasion, as his family relocated to Syracuse, NY just prior to Ringo, John, George, and that other Paul taking their left turn at Greenland. As young PA aged into his teens, vinyl acquisitions tried to keep up with his demand for more and more music.
Oh, and the guitar thing. Paul figured out boys with guitars could get girls. Paul got a guitar. The equation completed itself thereafter.
By 1976 and '77, Paul was a record buyer at local emporium Gerber Music. He worked with a friend at Gerber's Shoppingtown location, a bass player named Gary Frenay; another long-time pal, a guitarist called Arty Lenin, was a frequent visitor to the store. Punk happened; Paul saw it first-hand during a visit back to England, and he told his friends Gary and Arty. Kindred spirits. They found drummer Tommy Allen--another kindred spirit--at another Gerber location. Drums. Bass. Guitars. Volume. Maybe there'll be girls, too! This was the origin of the Flashcubes.
Punk. Pop. Power pop. Rock 'n' roll. The Flashcubes combined and channeled their interests and influences, then turned 'em up and let 'em rip. Covers? Sure. British punk, American power pop, British power pop, Top 40 oldies, underground noise. Originals? Yeah, of course. You can't build something without actually, y'know, building something. Gary was already a songwriter. Arty was becoming a songwriter. Paul did the same, expressing his pugnacious POV with outrageous numbers like "Damaged Beyond Repair," "I Need Glue," and "Student Rape."
In the summer of 1978, less than a year after the Flashcubes' first live gig in September of '77, the Flashcubes released their first single, a 45 of Arty's pretty pop ballad "Christi Girl." To represent the band's other two songwriters, "Christi Girl" was backed by two harder-edged DIY basement recordings: Gary's "Guernica" and Paul's "Got No Mind." "Got No Mind" became Paul Armstrong's signature song, a Ramones-fried rant about a child prodigy who lost it all at 17, with lobotomy to follow. Got no mind? I don't mind!
The Flashcubes' initial tenure was incandescent but brief, and over by 1980. They'd be back. Even in that short period, they shined a light so big and so bright that it energized the Syracuse music scene, and it changed my life forever. And the music that Paul, Gary, Arty, and Tommy made in subsequent years and decades, whether together or separately, continues to nudge my internal compass toward magnetic North. When the Flashcubes reconvened in the 1990s and beyond, the power of their latter-day recordings matched the sonic splendor I heard in my head at Flashcubes shows. This was a life worth living, a life worth celebrating.
Paul Armstrong succumbed to cancer in April of 2026. He was 70 years old. Like the Liverpool Parkway Bridge that refuses to yield to clueless truckers who smash into it, the world remains undefeated. This world is only going to break your heart. This world is going to kill all of us.
Eventually. But in the mean time....
Well, in the mean time, we dig in. We laugh, cry, love, dance, argue, commiserate, dream, create, and eat tacos. Life is what happens. What happens can be pretty special in its moment.
Heartbroken by the loss of their brother Paul Armstrong, the surviving members of the Flashcubes felt compelled to honor his legacy with the first-ever full studio recording of PA's signature tune. Tommy would produce. Gary and Arty would be Gary and Arty, and I'm sorry, you can't beat Gary and Arty being Gary and Arty. You can't. Local guitar legend Mark Doyle would add his majestic prowess to the proceedings, Paul's son Chris Armstrong would also bend strings on his dad's behalf, with Paul's Boston buds Sal Baglio and Mike Gent singin' along as Boston buds oughta. But who should step to the mic for lead vocals?
The Flashcubes knew that job belonged to Syracuse's favorite son, Tom Kenny.
Before finding well-earned fame and acclaim as an actor, performer, and the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants, Tom was a Syracuse kid like I was, eager to create, eager to live, and fully captivated by Syracuse's own power pop powerhouses the Flashcubes. It would be silly and inaccurate to claim that Tom owes his success to the Flashcubes. It would be insane, guano-crazy, to presume the Flashcubes experience did not help in providing Tom with an atmosphere for his own artistry to take shape and grow. Tom has never forgotten his roots. I suspect he never will.
I'm told Tom was at first reluctant to take this gig, unsure if he was the right choice to try to step into Paul Armstrong's well-worn shoes and stand in PA's defiantly battered position at the mic. Gary told him, "Tom, just plug into your eighteen-year-old punk self and think about how you would sing it then."
And that is exactly what Tom did. Time stood still. Maybe the world even retreated, just a little bit, for the two minutes and forty-three seconds needed for our man Tom Kenny to testify on Paul Armstrong's behalf, for Paul's brother Flashcubes to once again assemble one more jolt of the Syracuse noise they invented. Take that, ya mean old world!
It is not a Pyrrhic victory. Because we already know this world is going to take everything we have, burn it, steal it, or throw it away. It will leave us for dead, and it will move on. We can't win that battle, at least not in the long run.
But man, the short run belongs to us. We have art. We have music. We have cookies! We have each other, in this moment, in our time. As each cherished bit of our lives fades, we retain the memories.
Those memories, my friends, are immortal. We can beat the world by holding them dear, and by others keeping those memories alive even after we've surrendered our time in this temporary realm. Immortal. Immortal.
Immortal and loud. I don't mind.
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My new book of short stories Guitars Vs. Rayguns!! Short Stories And Other White Lies is out now, and you can get autographed copies of the new book, its six-chapter novelette digest A Band Called GUITARS VS. RAYGUNS!, and my previous book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) directly from me. You can still get my previous previous book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones from publisher Rare Bird Books, OR an autographed copy here. If you like the books, please consider leaving a rating and/or review at the usual online resources.
I compiled a various-artists tribute album called Make Something Happen! A Tribute To The Flashcubes, and it's pretty damned good; you can read about it here and order it here.
This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, streaming at SPARK stream and on the Radio Garden app as WESTCOTT RADIO. You can read about our history here
