I totally loved these guys when they first arrived in the late 70s. Their first few albums were like a breath of fresh air in the time of punk, prog, and the beginnings of new wave. Tight, rocking, catchy-as-hell hit songs that leapt out of radio speakers like clarion calls in an era when bands were either trying to outsmart or out-pose each other. They hired Queen’s producer, Roy Thomas Baker, who made their early albums sound as grand-scale shiny as Sheer Heart Attack. I’ve heard it said that if you took their debut album and added Greatest Hits to the title nobody would notice. Every single from the album rocketed up the charts and almost every track on it can still be heard regularly on Classic Rock Radio stations. I bought tickets to a Styx concert in 1978 only because the Cars were announced as the opening act, but the album got so huge so fast they were pulled off the bill by Elektra Records at the last minute so they could be headliners somewhere else. They were replaced by soft-rockers Ambrosia (“How Much I Feel,” seriously?). Not at all what I signed up for.
The hits continued for a good long time for the Cars, and they were idiosyncratic looking enough to become mega-MTV stars for a while (who remembers Ric Ocasek as the voyeuristic housefly in the “You Might Think” video?) But even though their single releases continued to go gold or better, the deeper album cuts became less consistent and album sales became more erratic. When 1985’s Door to Door didn’t give them the big hit single they took for granted, they called a halt to working as a band for quite a while. I’ll pick up their story from that record; it’s an interesting tale of odd career decisions, a brilliant but woefully overlooked comeback of sorts, and rampaging egos. Tragedy and comedy in equal measure.
THE CARS CLASSIC CANON:
The Cars (1978)
Candy-O (1979)
Panorama (1980)
Shake It Up (1981)
Heartbeat City (1984)
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT:
** Door to Door (1987) - By this point the band was dealing with the massive ego of their front man, Ric Ocasek. MTV had made him the most recognizable Car, pushing aside heartthrob and co-lead singer Ben Orr. Ocasek decided to produce Door to Door himself, abandoning the successful pros who got them here, Roy Thomas Baker and Mutt Lange. The first single, “You Are the Girl,” barely cracked the top 40, the second, “Strap Me In,” ended up in the lower regions of the top 100, the reason you likely don’t remember them. The album itself was their first to not earn at least a gold record, although it did somehow crack the top 10 in Norway. Ric was divorcing his wife and starting up with international supermodel Pauline Porizkova, whom he would marry in 1989. By the end of Door to Door, he was seeing his future elsewhere. Ocasek released a total of seven solo albums, all of them vaguely Cars-like (except for the oddball spoken-word Getchertikitz), none of them recapturing the magic of his former band and none whose title I can remember without Googling. Orr and guitarist Elliot Easton released solo albums around this time, too, but nobody remembers them much. Bottom line, an okay record that I never choose when I want to hear the Cars.
EARWORM: “You Are the Girl” – The bigger of the two singles and the one that sounds most like the glory days. According to Spotify’s streaming numbers, it also seems to be the only one fans go back to.
***** Just What I Needed: The Cars Anthology (1995) – Elektra tried to wait them out, but when it became obvious the band wasn’t going to patch things up anytime soon, they authorized Rhino Records to release this definitive greatest hits collection. If you only need one Cars record, this one fills the bill nicely. Every massive single and every near-miss is here, in chronological order. The 2-CD set is a fitting testament to their brilliance as a chart-topping, highly innovative band, and a non-stop 80s-revival party record.
EARWORM: “My Best Friend’s Girl” – I’ll happily use this slot to include one of the most outstanding early hits.
**** It’s Alive (2005) The New Cars – This is a fascinating outlier in the Cars catalog and the record that inspired me to write this post. It’s been a favorite of mine since it came out, although you could argue it's not really a Cars album. Think of It’s Alive as the best possible Cars tribute album and you’re in the ballpark. Every time I listen to it, I feel like more of their fans really need to give it a chance. It's a hoot.
By the time guitarist Elliot Easton and keyboardist Greg Hawkes decided they wanted to make music together again, Ocasek was still off on his own trip and Ben Orr had sadly passed away from cancer in 2000. Original drummer Dave Robinson had retired from the music biz to become a restaurateur. Todd Rundgren was corralled by his friend Easton to take over the vocals and play guitar. Todd brought in his long-time collaborators Kasim Sulton on bass and Prairie Prince on drums. After shutting the group in a studio long enough to record three new songs, the label sent them out on a two-leg U.S. tour with Blondie and recorded every show. The press and fans who saw them came away raving about the shows and tickets got scarce in a hurry. Even the most die-hard Cars fans embraced the new version as a killer live band who more than did justice to the laundry list of huge hits they played on the tour. Todd’s vocals didn’t stray too far from the recorded versions, but his input introduced an ever-so-slight psychedelic rock element that made their performances sound fresh and adventurous rather than note-by-note recreations. Based on It's Alive, I would have truly loved to see one of the New Cars shows. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely they’ll ever reform.
The resulting album is a long one – fifteen cherry-picked live tracks from the tour recordings (including two of Todd’s biggest solo hits “I Saw the Light” and “Open My Eyes”) with the three new studio songs tacked on at the end. No, it’s not 100% Cars, but they do have two key members of the original band so there’s a sonic familiarity to the performances. The reason this record deserves more attention is this terrific five-piece rock band, whether they’re the Cars or not, kicks ass in a really satisfying way. I can easily play this record as much as anything else from their catalog. The three new songs? They’re fine, I don’t skip them at the end of the record by any means. Todd’s singing is surprisingly similar to Ocasek’s and the band locks pretty easily into a less edgy, but familiar, Cars groove. Not the cream of the Cars’ catalog, but not even close to the bottom of the barrel. In the end, the shows did well but the record did not, and the New Cars disappeared into the music biz ether. To my ears, It’s Alive is the most criminally overlooked album with the Cars name on it.
EARWORM: “Moving in Stereo” – It’s tempting to link to one of the new songs, but I go back to the record to hear what the band did with the songs we know and love.
** Move Like This (2011) – Easton and Hawkes eventually convinced Ocasek and Robinson to reunite for one last Cars album and added bassist Jacknife Lee to fill the Ben Orr spot. Lee handled a lot of the record’s production, too, a role he had filled for several other bands, notably R.E.M.
Simply put, Move Like This is never gonna be the first Cars album you or I reach for when we’re jonesing to hear their music, but it’s not bad. If somebody played it for me, I wouldn’t mind giving it another listen. It’s all perfectly pleasant and catchy, but nowhere near groundbreaking, or particularly memorable. The only mistake you can make with it is playing it back-to-back with one of their early classics. Move Like This is definitely missing the feeling of fiery adventure and surprising creative chances they took when they were a young and hungry new band from Boston.
EARWORM: “Keep On Knocking” – I find that I like this one more than the rest. It has that catchy, pound-y sound the early band did so well.
*** Moving in Stereo: The Best of the Cars (2016) – It looked like the Cars had a shot to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2016, so Rhino thought the time was ripe for some new product. They let the band choose the songs to fill two LPs, which makes it less essential than the 1995 Just What I Needed compilation. Some major songs are missing – “Bye Bye Love,” “Magic,” and “Good Times Roll,” for starters – replaced by a couple of rare single edits and live tracks. Not bad, but not a must-hear.
EARWORM: “Everything You Say (live)” – The Cars never really released a proper live album during their career (another reason I enjoy the New Cars record so much) so I’m including this cut, even though it took the place of a bigger hit.
FINAL NOTES:
As of this post, the only thing released from the band’s archives since 2016 is a low-fidelity live recording from Cleveland. As it happened, the Cars didn’t get enough votes to make the Hall of Fame in 2016, it took them two more years to be inducted. They were inducted by the Killers’ Brandon Flowers, a huge fan whose career has certainly reflected the band’s influence. The surviving foursome ripped through four of their classic hits in fine style at the ceremony. There was no way to know at the time it would be Ric Ocasek’s last live performance with the band he co-founded.
By the time he passed in September of 2019, Ocasek was suffering from severe physical and mental health issues, becoming reclusive and paranoid. He had disinherited his wife Paula and one of his sons, claiming they had “abandoned” him, shortly before succumbing to heart disease. Paula eventually sued the estate, claiming after the judge’s ruling that she had won “what is mine under New York state law.” Not surprisingly, there's been no more talk from the surviving members about any type of Cars reunion. It would shock the world if some new version of the band rose from ashes, but there's no denying their brief shining moment in rock history.
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