In a recent thread on Richard Thompson, of all artists, Townsman dbuskirk questioned the Hall’s lack of interest in discussing The Cars:
Kinda shocked there aren’t more Cars defenders here. Roy Thomas Baker’s production stirred my soul when I first heard it. The debut is a wonderfully sequenced record….
The first thought that came to my mind was, Do The Cars need defenders? For me, the Untouchables status of The Cars, that is, the lack of critical debate over their output, requires no explanation or analysis. Unlike Peter Gabriel, whose untouchable status I found puzzling, The Cars never promised more than they delivered AND they had the good sense to get out of the game before they could no longer deliver within the narrow confines of what they did so well. I’m not suggesting that the second through fourth Cars albums are on par with the first one, but they worked within their system and maintained a high quotient of completely soul-less pop confections.
Did anyone who found that first Cars album the hookfest that it was bum out when the subsequent albums failed to reach that high a level? I don’t think so, but maybe Young Townsman dbuskirk suffered a serious letdown following the release of Shake It Up. More likely, I suspect we accepted the best songs from the next few albums for what they were, never thinking that the band had it in them to do any better. Better yet, they never opened themselves up to criticism by trying to be anything they weren’t. There was never a “serious” Cars album or a “back to the basics” Cars album or a foray into World Music or any other nonsense that The Police, for instance, would try. I believe The Cars should be complemented for this, whether it was intentional or not.
Does this make sense? Are there any other artists who got in and out of the game and delivered to the best of their humble abilities before letting any fan down?
Nice theory, but I think the Cars have a few really lousy albums.
At first, I found the second album pretty disappointing, but over time I grew to appreciate it because in some ways it shows some experimentation the first didn’t. I’m not a fan of anything after it, though. I really wish I liked PANORAMA, but I think it’s really weak…and I do think that in some weird way it was intended to be the “serious” Cars album.
Aren’t the Jam the epitome of getting out of the game before letting anyone down? I’m not a fan, but I do respect them for their consistency and Weller’s choice to end it when he did.
The Gift kind of sucks, but at least it tried to maintain all that The Jam was about. I know some of the Style Council apologists, like Hrrundivbakshi and the long, lost The Great 48 (“Where have you gone, The Great 48…”), find closure in the band’s farewell singles, but I’d say that Weller himself set the bar so high that he opened himself to a trail of disappointments, beginning with The Style Council and running through his solo career. It’s unfair to him, but he earned it.
Did anyone ever expect transcendence from Rick Ocasek and Benjamin Orr? I could be wrong, but compared with their emotional and spiritual depth Jeff Lynne is the Messiah.
Sometimes I like to read through the archives of the old yahoo newsgroup version of RTH. A few months ago, I found a message I wrote at the beginning of a new year, in which one of my resolutions was to get into The Cars. What? What was I thinking? I can’t possibly understand this kind of thinking. Not because they’re necessarily a bad band, but just one of those bands with a little personality, but not a lot, and who are best heard on a radio. If I want to hear the Cars, I’ll just turn on the radio and wait an hour or so.
It is difficult to separate the Cars from a certain nostalgia for growing up in the Northeast in the 70s & early 80s, but if the first lp is the only completely satisfying one then also I would say everything up to and including Shake It Up has more highs than lows. This I cannot say for Heartbeart City and certainly not Door to Door, but, hell, if I was married to Paulina Porizkova I might lose interest in the band, too. Anyway, that’s Ocasek’s excuse, not sure about the others.
Panoroma might not be all some crack it up to be but, shoot, it’s got Gimme Some Slack and Touch and Go, two of their best.
Maybe Oats is right, and the Cars are best heard in the car.
I never cared about them one way or the other. The production seems cold and sterile to me.
Oats, that’s well put: “If I want to hear the Cars, I’ll just turn on the radio and wait an hour or so.”
I have most of their stuff on cd or vinyl but don’t listen very often. Almost always glad to encounter them on the car radio, though.
BigSteve wrote:
An early contender for Comment of the Month!
I gave the 2-disc best of a spin a few weeks back. I think I prefer the one-disc version or the 1st record+ Let’s Go + Magic.
I remember buying Hearbeat City as a kid, playing once and then trading it for something else. You Might Think and Magic were the only songs I remember liking (and being disappointed, since I liked their singles prior as well.
Sorry if this sounds grumpy, but it’s typical of this list to go from attacking some more ambitious musician to praising some pop mediocrity that always played it safe in a short and not exactly inspiring career of turning out decent radio tunes. Sort of the RTH version of the Dixieland Revival of the late 40s.
That said, I still really like The Cars first record, and I think it’s sequenced well enough that there’s value in hearing these songs not just on the radio. I never bothered to buy even the second Cars record or any other. The later radio hits were like lesser versions of what was good about the first record. The band is pretty comparable to Boston in that regard, although I infinitely prefer The Cars.
Mwall said:
Sort of the RTH version of the Dixieland Revival of the late 40s.
I say:
That is both funny *and* nerdily insightful!
Mwall, I’m sure you understand that, in part, I’m damming The Cars with faint praise, but to play devil’s advocate, there’s nothing unambitious about the work that went into that first Cars album compared with later-day Richard Thompson albums. It could be said it’s just as typical of this list to think one artist is more ambitious because he writes about his inner turmoil over four chords and “professional” engineering.
I’m glad you bring up Boston – that’s probably the next band I thought of that promised little and delivered consistently, getting out of the game before anyone had the chance to notice.
Did Boston get out of the game? Or has Tom Schultz just been tweaking the mixes of Boston 4 for the last few decades?
For my money, Mod, you’re not getting anywhere near specific enough regarding the Froom-era and later records. I can overlook that because I get the impression that you don’t really listen to them.
It’s highly debatable, by the way, that “inner turmoil” is what makes the later Thompson records weaker than his classics. In fact it could be the lack of it: his writing always had an investment not just in the self but in describing the world, but there was a greater sense of connection, urgency, and pain in the earlier work, which I still think is rarely as “confessional” as it’s supposed to be. I agree though that some of his later material suffers from being too consciously a removed storyteller–though when he really nails it, on tunes like “I Feel So Good,” he can still be great. I think it has to do with the degree to which he genuinely feels invested in the tragic tale.
As you might have guessed, The Cars were very popular in Boston in the late 70s-early-80s, especially if you listened to WBCN. Also, lest you forget, like the Talking Heads, they had an actual ex-member of the original Modern Lovers, the drummer David Robinson. The 2-disc metalflaked cover Rhino comp is all the Cars I needed.
My question about The Cars is whether they could be classifed as “power pop” or were they actually too successful to be called that? I get the feelng that if the 1st Cars album flopped, someone would be proclaiming it “a lost power pop masterpiece.”
Mwall, when I write a self-deprecating piece entitled “Get Over It” can you really expect me to make the time for an in-depth reanalysis of Mitchell Froom’s production work? I own the Crowded House albums he produced and find his production to be an impediment to my fully enjoying even the best pop songs on those albums. I own Los Lobos’ Kiko album and like that better than anything else I’ve ever heard by that band. I used to own the first record he did with Thompson and dumped it long ago. I own Brutal Youth, but that’s an album of Costello delivering on what all us old EC & the Attractions thought we wanted, and we suffer for it to one degree or another. It’s not a bad album, but it’s forced and I feel guilty for having been part of the process of forcing Costello back into that vibe. Froom seems to be the one continuing to culture that Tom Waits influence that Costello got into with Spike, so I’ll hold that mediocre aspect against Froom but not all of it. Most importantly, Froom’s productions SYMBOLIZE things that I feel we all need to steer clear of, beginning with myself (cue “Man in the Mirror”). Please see this set of beefs in the same light as my frequent complaints about those Jellyfish guys (and I like my share of Jon Brion recordings, but he’s guilty of this stuff too). It’s healthy for me to kick Froom as a way of keeping myself aware of my own dangerous impulses.
As for Thompson and my “inner turmoil” comment, I was saying that it’s his well-established body of work as a “dark” artist that has allowed him to cruise for the last 25 years on albums that Mark Knopfler could have cranked out in his sleep. Everything I’ve heard from him beginning with that Froom album is basically Dire Straits’ “Walk of Life” with black humor thrown into the lyrics. Granted, I only listen to his recordings these days for a few minutes before turning up my nose at them, but I would welcome a return to writing that showed greater “investment,” as you put it.
I like The Cars. I like the way Cars records sound. I like most of the Cars songs I have heard. I like The Cars better than I like Richard Thompson…
…today.
TB
diskojoe asked:
Man, that’s a great question and an accurate response on your part. Is Cheap Trick’s level of success the highest that any band can attain and still retain the characterization “power pop?” The Cars went one level further and did, indeed, seem to lose that distinction.
I would think The Cars had too many synthesizers to ever be classified as power pop.
I thought that at first too, Oats, but then I thought of 20/20’s power pop masterpiece, “Yellow Pills.” What’s the difference between that and a classic Cars hit, beside record sales?
“Yellow Pills” has one synth. Most Cars hits, you can hear Greg Hawkes’ rack o’ synths.
I will give you the early hits however, if the band flamed out after “My Best Friend’s Girl” and maybe “You’re All I’ve Got Tonight,” then maybe yeah, they’d be remembered as power-pop.
You’re right about that. Maybe they did exceed the synth limit.
I love this discussion and the illustration using Shake It Up, because that’s the album that killed the Cars for me. It was so disappointing after the first record and the weirdness of Panorama — or as they sing Pan-oh-ram-a.
Elliot Easton put out an intereting solo album in the 80s — the New Cars featuring Easton and Todd Rundgren a few years ago was a complete joke. Todd doing a Ben Orr/Ocasek impression was horrible.
Also — re: Mitch Froom — I hate him not so much for what he does do records, but for his horrible treatment of Suzanne Vega. At least she got some good songs out of it, though.
Bringing Boston into this conversation reminds me of something very significant about both bands (other than being from the same city.) Those two debut albums are THE most classic rock radio-friendly albums ever. 7 of 9 songs from THE CARS and 6 of 8 from BOSTON are staples of this kind of radio. That’s a higher proportion than any other album by anyone. (Don’t even try to argue me out of this one–I’ve studied this phenomenon greatly and you’re not going to beat 77.7%.) Remarkable. The reason is that the first Cars album is by miles and miles and miles the best merge of new wave and AOR, making it THE perfect commercial rock album of its time. Nothing else comes close, and no other album uses the synthesizer as consistently well as a melodic instrument that’s equally as integrated into the band as the lead guitar. (I’m still baffled that there haven’t been bands since then who used the synth effectively in a similar way.) Calling the Cars mediocre isn’t really fair. For one album, they were transcendent.
The same could be argued for Boston and their readymade AOR sound too…that first album is as hooky as anything. I never liked the vocals or most of the lyrics, but I will not deny that it’s one of the greatest guitar albums ever. It makes the list for “Peace of Mind” alone. Boston’s decline is much sharper and stronger than the Cars’, by the way, with each album not only being progressively worse than the last by a large margin, but with them repeating themselves badly as soon as you get past the first song on the second album. And what’s with MIT guys writing such dumbass lyrics, anyway?
Welcome aboard, funoka! Good stuff. Elliot Easton was an excellent guitarist. There’s one great song on Panorama that I always mean to find again with an outstanding, short solo, but I can never get myself to put the album on the turntable.