The Cars - C or D/S&D

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.

Years ago I wondered if Ocasek was gonna be one of those music upon whose death we'll learn that he had $100 million in the bank.

I mean, wouldn't be surprised! All those Bad Brains points.

Quick little google estimated that he was maybe worth $80 million. (Same site said he and Porizkova were separated ... )

yes last year she said that they had been separated for a year up to that point…their home is in Gramercy park, and the park part of Gramercy park is only accessible to residents as such, which he and I also discussed. For years after my interview, I would see him all the time in the radius of 23rd st to Houston. I saw him and one of his strikingly handsome sons purchasing a college prep text; I saw him all the time at the Virgin Megastore on 14th st, and I often saw him going to Electric Lady Studios, which was next to the video rental spot that had the best porn collection in town…

what a peculiar tune…

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

Esp. the cowboy music stuff!

and I never heard these two songs until preparing for my interview and the second has since remained my fave…I think Alfred and Rob Tannenbuam were remiss to not include it in their thangs…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzDmo1LVLsc

Hey, I wrote about the solo years.

the publishing for the Cars music, which is played all the goddamn time on classic rock, 80s-era oldies, has to be substantial, probly not staggering. His music has never gone away, he did not appear to have invested unwisely, lived in a fancy neighborhood in NYC but did not appear to have expensive lifestyle and habits…he did smoke…he and I did throughout our talk…

There's a great anecdote re:Lange in the notes to the Rhino anthology about one day wherein he just called Orr in early one morning to track bass parts. The rest of the stayed in, watching TV, reading, playing games etc. until their call, which never came. Orr finally came back late that night. When asked what he and Lange had got done, he replied, "Well, we started to get a good sound..."

From JL's final interview a couple hours before he was killed:

YOKO: “But, music-wise, even… music is just a format, and we’re adding many different formats and that’s interesting. But New Wave is gonna be old one day, too… ”
JOHN: “Old hat, any minute… ”
YOKO: “The minute it’s out there and its number one, that means that it’s old hat, you know? And I think it’s nice to discover all different forms of music and that’s nice. But, at the same time, that doesn’t meant that the old form doesn’t mean anything. In fact, if a young-generation person picked up a very old form – like Elvis, or something – and did it, you wouldn’t call it ‘he’s mellowing’… ”
JOHN: “I’ll give you a for-instance: Bruce Springsteen’s Hungry Heart – which I think is a great record – is, to me… it’s the same kind of period-sound as Starting Over. I think The Cars’ Touch and Go is right out of the fifties ‘Oh, oh… ‘ A lot of it is fifties stuff. But with eighties styling, but, but… and that’s what I think Starting Over is; it’s a fifties song made with an eighties approach.”

yeah in the audio he mimics the "Oh, oh oh" quite well.

Except the verses are 100% '80s. What did John think of Roxy Music, probably the standard (and for sure key template for the Cars) for subverting the sounds of the '50s as kitsch by way of the future?

Let's ask him.

http://www.megancrewe.com/blogpics/ouija.jpg

lol