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The Dreaded Musical Icon Obituary
This is the post where you put in a few videos no one clicks to watch, because they know the song, and maybe didn’t feel the same affinity for the band you have. That’s how I feel about the artists of the ’60s — I might like a song, or admire the tunesmith’s skill in an unheralded B-side, but there’s a quality to the recording that dates it and puts it outside of my emotional range. It’s a matter of instrumentation, arrangement, production, the vocalist’s mannerisms. You had to be there. If you were 23 when the song came out, it grabbed you, man; got its mitts right into your pith. If you weren’t young and wrangling the thrashing loose wire of the popular culture, it doesn’t mean the same thing.
Listening to some Cars songs tonight, all the good ’80s tropes are present – the chilly synthetic seriousness that would make a great “Miami Vice” scene where Sonny drives to a meeting; the echoey melancholy; the wry untutored lead vocal that nailed down the band’s sound; the warm synth beds and telltale patches for the keyboards of the era; the wet guitar solos mixed up front — a raw squealing rip given a moment to tear it up within the parameters of an exquisitely crafted and controlled pop song.
Ric Ocasek knew what he was doing, and he was very good at what he did. The songs will probably survive as period pieces, which is a testament to how he used the tools of the day. It sounds “vintage” now, I suppose, but at the time it was pure smart pop perfection. The Cars weren’t popular because no one had heard anything like this before. They were popular because no band had gathered all the elements of the contemporary sounds together, wrapped them up with skill, and done it better than anyone else at the time. For a while. Then we got used to it, because other bands were doing it too.
Ocasek, we suspected at the time, was a canny guy, and he could have gone down the David Byrne road — quirky! Weird! Offbeat! But he vented that side in producing, I think. He wanted to make songs you wanted to play in — well, your Car. The songs come on the radio when I’m on the highway and I goose the pedal and break the law. Ric didn’t name his band the Trams for a reason.
(Plus, he married Paulina, which gave hope to us all.)
Published in Entertainment
I beg to differ only slightly: this song is a classic in any era.
We would vacation in Cape Cod when I was a kid (still do, actually). Since the Cars were a Boston band, I got to hear them before they made it nationally. So when they started getting air play on NY radio I could sound like an insider, “What, you don’t know the Cars?”
During the late 70’s to early 80’s (my teens), there was a bunch of bands making fun rock songs that people could dance to. I think this was a reaction to classic rock getting too serious and boring and disco . . . being disco.
https://theweek.com/articles/861750/coming-death-just-about-every-rock-legend
They include Art Garfunkel in their list of aging rock stars but omit Ringo Starr and Mike Love !
Damn.
They are on the soundtrack of My favorite childhood movie: Last American Virgin
“Bye Bye Love” and “Let’s Go” are my two favorite Cars songs. There’s something about the words of these songs combined with their respective melodies that gets to me . . .
Still one of the great music videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dOx510kyOs
One of my favorites, and surprisingly not a RickRoll.
Pardner, that there was some mighty fine word-slingin’. Mighty fine.
I got so wrapped up in the article’s poetry and its insights that I didn’t get around to listening to the music.
Thanks!
There were two shocking things I learned after I heard that Ric Ocasek had died:
1: He was 75 years old.
2: He and Paulina split up last year – this ruins one of my favorite jokes, “Who are the luckiest men on the face of the earth? Ringo Starr and Ric Ocasek”.
Apparently Paulina was the one who called authorities to check on Ocasek, which I’d guess means they were still in close contact, despite the separation (Victim of Love?)
I hadn’t heard that he died.
I saw that article going around recently, the one about how the next ten years are going to see the end of all the biggest stars of Rock. The Greats who came up in the 60s and 70s, who made rock n roll, and then who lived through its . . . pressures, are all now in their 70’s. Ti-i-i-ime, is no longer on their side, no it’s not.
It’s going to be sad.
But then again, as somebody once said somewhere:
And I am not frightened of dying
Any time will do, I don’t mind
Why should I be frightened of dying?
There’s no reason for it, you’ve gotta go sometime.
I’m 63. If all goes well for me, I will soon find myself living in a world without anyone still alive from “The . . . nope, not going to name then all.
But I will, as everyone will, live in a world filled with their music, a world made better and more interesting and wonderful because of every one of them.
And Ric Ocasek (and you too Ben) is right in there.
My very first concert as a teen, back when you had to wait in a line with other people (gasp) for tickets. What a sound. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
I read an article maybe 20 years ago that talked about pop music getting into a rut, but then a band coming along with a totally different sound. The Cars were one of the examples.