The Cars - C or D/S&D

Cars had a pretty obviously great sound and hooks but Ric is an underrated vocalist. Distinctive and perfect for what they were trying to do. RIP

Was just checking wiki, and kind of surprised how many Ben vox I thought were Ric.

RIP good sir.

This RS piece is so goddamn good

Jon Pareles' definitive Cars profile from Rolling Stone in 1979, which Kevin Dettmar and Jonathan Lethem were smart to include in their recent American rock-writing anthology. R.I.P., Ric, whose unassailable cool was also unassailably inclusive. https://t.co/YO3qRobfjg

— Michaelangelo Matos (@matoswk75) September 16, 2019

I got fired from my radio job in part because I kept deviating from the playlist to include “Just What I Needed.”

On the contrary, it was the playlist that was deviating from playing "Just What I Needed" over and over again

:( . That first album is perfection.

(I didn't realize he was that old btw. Born four years before Robert Plant.)

oh for fuck's sake

Candy-O was the 2nd record I ever bought

RIP

https://theweek.com/articles/861750/coming-death-just-about-every-rock-legend

divesting news, for me it was Hreatbeat City as it was one of the very first albums i ever owned.

RIP

Always been a fan but somehow had no idea he produced the 2nd Suicide album (and a lot of their other group and solo albums)

Ocasek was really in the tank for Suicide. He demanded they appear on the ep of The Midnight Special The Cars hosted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=corytlfEB9c

Rest in peace. I remember seeing Suicide play in NYC sometime in the early '90s, Ocasek trying to be inconspicuous playing ( if I recall ) bass in the background. Hecklers called out for Cars songs.

I interviewed him in 1997 when he was promoting the record for which he was working with Billy Corgan, Melissa auf der Maur, Ira Elliott: "you have to choose: reform the Cars or have hot diarrhea for a week" with no hesitation whatsoever, he chose the latter.

And yet he did eventually reform the the Cars, so clearly hot diarrhea for a week made a negative impression.

Even that RS piece got who sand "Just What I Needed" wrong. When I saw that reunion tour, I was surprised/impressed to see Hawkes playing bass on "Touch & Go."

I enjoyed his work on the jonathan Richman Album "I'm So COnfused"

Ocasek trying to be inconspicuous

lol

RIP.

The combo of incredibly catchy songs and me being 7-8 years old means I have lots of misheard Cars lyrics in my head:

She's got nuclear food

And a risky mouth

She doesn't like the Jews

on that note, one of my small favorite things about living in NYC in the 90s was just how often I would bump into Ric Okasek and his wife* walking around lower Park Ave. It happened a lot more often than you’d think! They seemed nice and, like Ric, she was also very tall and they seemed like a good couple.

*Polish supermodel Paulina Porizkova, for whom it turns out just walking next to Ric Okasek was an effective public disguise, like wearing a nose and glasses or something.

uh, “that note” being ric Okasek trying to be inconspicuous. not whatever just happened in that xpost lol

I bought the second Suicide album when it was new w/o hearing it, didn't like it, and sold it back almost immediately. Today the production sheen Ric gave it, along with a dose of Ze Records disco, is sounding so good to me.

man, Candy-O is so tight.

Prince agreed!

https://youtu.be/gEjtGkDekv0

as a producer (on cars albums and others), he was great at finding punchy guitar and synth sounds, but his real superlative skill was arrangement. Each song had a full sound, and each instrument had room to operate. the most obvious example imo is in the guitar/synth interplay on 'bye bye love', but on pretty much every early cars song, every instrument is doing something interesting. and in the moments there isn't a vocal hook, there's a musical hook to bring you right back in.

Not to downgrade his prowess, but Roy Thomas Baker and Mutt Lange are two of the most hands-on producers of all time, so he should probably share credit with them. That said, no less than Jack Nietzsche cited "Drive" as an example of a perfectly arranged song.

xpost Wow, listening to that Prince cover, it really does sound like it could have been a Prince song, doesn't it? Shades of "Raspberry Beret," "Manic Monday," "Take Me With You" ...

yeah I was thinking that too. You can really hear shades of the Cars and Gary Numan in that early-80s Prince stuff.

Funny cameo here:

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/33tv9j/the-colbert-report-paulina-porizkova

I wish they'd ended with what I consider the apotheosis of their late sound. I suppose no one blames them for Door to Door, which just doesn't exist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlfH1SR0mnc

That song is so good, and (as we've discussed) one of the rare tracks added to a best-of collection that truly deserves to be there.

lol what a great video

that Easton solo is a corker!

For a famously uncharismatic live performer and an awkward, gawky, gangly-looking dude, Ric sure seemed to be having fun in a lot of their videos.

that Easton solo is a corker!

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, September 16, 2019

he's up there master of getting in, getting the job done, and getting out. a much chopsier mike campbell and i mean that as high praise. his solo on "it's all i can do" is monstrous.

If I didn't already have an SG (and if I liked the one I have, lol) I would totally get the Elliot Easton signature model. It's a beaut:

https://images.reverb.com/image/upload/s--39PXY8t4--/a_exif,c_limit,e_unsharp_mask:80,f_auto,fl_progressive,g_south,h_620,q_90,w_620/v1404760354/vdawsgcibe69vwrfdwzp.jpg

BTW, I think I mentioned it before, but years ago I joined twitter just to ask Elliot Easton why "Best Friend's Girl" (talk about a guitar solo!) was in F on the recorded version but often (or always?) played in E live, and he wrote back and told me it was recorded in E but Roy Thomas Baker just varispeeded the whole thing up!

Huh, I had no idea:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikkhmkAH72U

Final show.

lol wtf @ that solo Kurt plays there

For a famously uncharismatic live performer and an awkward, gawky, gangly-looking dude, Ric sure seemed to be having fun in a lot of their videos.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, September 16, 2019 10:45 AM (two minutes ago)

the thing is that Ric was a classically good looking guy who, over time, cultivated his look as a form of expression.

1963: https://i.imgur.com/bGQq0PY.png

1976: https://vanyaland.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/TheCars_CreditJeffAlbertsonviaRockHall.jpg

and then came the teased out helmet hair, the mirrored aviators & turquoise suits, etc.

I remember seeing Elliot Easton's solo LP in record stores, but never heard it.

https://i.ibb.co/ZLtTh85/MI0001495989.jpg

he looked a bit like Nick Cave at times, especially in the late 70’s

Squeaky Fromage (VegemiteGrrl)
Posted: September 15, 2019 at 9:25:14 PM
“Magic” isn’t supposed to make me cry goddammit

Oh yes it is ;_;

Instagram post from Paulina
https://www.instagram.com/p/B2e8mMWB2Ft

Peacefully while asleep at home with family around seems pretty ideal, really.

I have been humming Car songs all day to myself despite not hearing those songs for years. Anyway, I wear to Target today and they played "You Might Think" and wondered to myself, how many people in this store knows why they are playing this today?

don't have a lot to add of substance other than he seemed to be a force for good in music, both in his own creativity and craftsmanship and that he seemed to have an ear for others work and tried to help them realize it

Damn that sucks that it was post surgical and unanticipated. Also that final doodle posted by his kid <3

"but Roy Thomas Baker and Mutt Lange are two of the most hands-on producers of all time,"

he and I discussed the differences between his process and theirs in 1997. He said something like "Mutt Lange will spend weeks and tons of $$$ trying to mic one single drum this way and that to find the sound he wants, and there's no reason to do that," or maybe it was "I don't want to do that, because its still going to sound the same." additionally, he told me that the backing vox heard on "Drive" "Magic" "You might Think" and the rest of Heartbeat City are all Mutt, which I had previously inferred, but he pointed out that those creamy. plush vox Mutt liked to do wouldn't have sounded right on Back in Black… the backing vox on Pyromania are the Def Lep guys, whereas he couldn't get the Cars guys to sound like that…on the other hand RTB did get the Cars guys to do those great gang vox all over the first Cars record…

Is there a link or pdf anywhere to your piece vm

no, it was Time out NY, no archive as such. I do have it some place in my basement tho! memory serves, the production shit didn't make it into the piece…

I did read something similar in a TapeOp interview with Roy Thomas Baker. They asked him about working with a relatively stripped down band like the Cars after working with an ott act like Queen for so long, and he brought up the backing vocals as a similarity. He noted that yeah, the music itself is pretty spare compared to Queen, but the vocals are typically stacked the same way.