The Cars - C or D/S&D

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

“John? Go ahead, you’re on the line...”

When I say I nearly passed out from laughing... pic.twitter.com/TJgpLocqrL

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) September 16, 2019

lol For some reason reminds me of that classic Police Squad line (one of the funniest gags of all time), where they show up to the grieving widow and apologetically tell her "We would have come sooner, ma'am, but your husband wasn't dead yet."

Speaking of the Cars and Roxy, I've got to assume Roxy had the Cars in mind when they did this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm84LZF66_w

for sure

I asked him if Roxy was important to him, and he said no, he didn't even listen to 'em. I have to think he liked them a whole bunch, that the band was modeled on Roxy, but he had to have been sensitive about how clearly this was so, didn't like frequent questions as such and so denied it.

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2019/09/how-ric-ocasek-met-paulina-porizkova-and-the-80s-videos?fbclid=IwAR1SuwhYak9lykkyPm-U-DOjcFVb0lVC_4tsQ_yM_NvJEAC9pidHtwk69Uk

re: two assertions in the above: 1.) I know that the other guy who wore a hair piece in the Cars was Easton 2.) It sez that Ocasek and Orr fell out. I don't know why, but I wonder if it was "look man, I'm the one who sings the romantic songs, I look good in the videos sucking my cheeks in, I'm a star, we need to do my songs, like 'Stay the Night"" (which suck ass) "and I need more say." And then maybe Ocasek said "fuck this, I don't need this."

wasn't Orr kind of a wreck?

Was he? Drunks and drink?

https://ultimateclassicrock.com/the-cars-door-to-door-album/ gets into it.

I have to think he liked them a whole bunch, that the band was modeled on Roxy

huh this has never occurred to me. I don't really hear it tbh.

there's some obvious parallels (synths + art school rock + hot shit guitarist) but idk Roxy seems so quintessentially British and abstract, whereas The Cars were *funny*

I hear the Velvets more than I hear Roxy

Yeah the connection is more widely aesthetic than specifically musical. They drew on many similar points of reference, but recombined them very differently.

T. Rex and Berlin--era Iggy too.

there are clear vocal similarities between ferry and ocasek, but it's definitely plausible that ric arrived at his vocal style by way of buddy holly and bypassed ferry. he was older than ferry after all.

I only hear the VU more or less the way I hear them in a hundred bands of the time (or before, incl. in Roxy). But Roxy, that's a more rarified influence, esp. before the British new wave got to them. I brought them up because of that John Lennon quote re: the Cars as '50s rockers, but really they reflect what Roxy did, too: take kind of "corny" old rock and roll influences and futurize/contemporize them (in a way that, say, Springsteen - also praised by Lennon back there - didn't). But beyond the po-mo music there are a lot of circumstantial comparisons, too, from the emphasis on stage look/fashion (as dictated by David Robinson), or the pinups on the covers. And a tall, striking aloof leader ... though Ferry was a mere 6'1" to Ocasek's 6'4"!

xpost Ferry is 73, that's only a hair younger than Ocasek.

Of course Ric's fave Suicide was into (literally) synthesizing the 50's, too. But "Candy-o" is a pretty undeniably Roxy like song.

We shouldn't take the Lennon quote seriously beyond what he was trying to say, "Hey, '(Just Like) Starting Over' is cool! There's contemporary stuff that sounds like it!"

it's definitely plausible that ric arrived at his vocal style by way of buddy holly and bypassed ferry. he was older than ferry after all.

I mean yeah this seems like a given? I can’t imagine why or how an American rocker who grew up in the 50s would be more indebted to Bryan Ferry than Buddy Holly

Possibly because he was posing? I mean, there were plenty of late 70s contemporaries of his that sounded like Buddy Holly!

VM, as far as odd production moments, did you and Ric talk about:

But you kep it goin
Til the sun fell down
You kep it
[bizarre throat click]
Goin.

Well, I guess I hear Roxy more clearly than you guys…to me, it is more than plausible that he was paying attention to shit that was going on in the UK in the 70s…and after trying a few projects with Orr that failed to take off, Roxy would be a band that he would see and think "I can do an american version of that," rather than being inspired by ZZ Top or Jackson Browne (has anyone heard Milkwood?). But I see what you guys are saying, and he certainly said to me that they weren't important to him and instead talked about how much he was into post Stooges Iggy and VU.

idk if Ferry ever tried to be funny, but there are so many sly and/or goofy moments in the Cars' canonical material from the just-posted throat click to the "but she used to be mine!" kicker in "Best Friend's Girl" to all the silly videos

no we did not discuss that…I don't think I ever noticed that bit much…

"and wasting all my time time" from "Just What I Needed" echoes that odd usage in lines from "Sister Ray" (& "Cool It Now").

I could have sworn some I read critic at the time taking issue with the "time time" thing, for some reason. I assumed it was Christgau, so looked up his reviews ... which mentions Roxy Music a couple of times. "That accentuated detachment may feel like a Roxy Music move in the first flush of studio infatuation, but schlock it up a little and this band really could turn into an American Queen," in the review of the first album. "They've always basked in the shadow of Roxy Music, too," in the review of "Shake It Up."

(Heh, look at that jumble. Should have been "I could have sworn I read some critic at the time ...")