The Cars - Live!

I was never a huge Cars fan. I had liked their later material enough, since I grew up during the period when You Might Think, Drive, You Are The Girl, and Magic ruled the air and video waves. Their earlier stuff had never done it for me, but it had been years since I had really listened to any of those early tracks, and I had certainly never seen early Cars performance footage. Well, I decided to rent a DVD of an early (1978/79) concert they did for the Musikladen show --reissued by Rhino Records along with new interview footage in 2000-- to see what I might have missed.

I was not let down really. While I can't say I am a new fervent convert to the Church of Ocasek and Co., I do have a newfound appreciation for how good they were at simple, hooky songs, and their stripped down arrangements had more to do with good garage rock than new wave. Songs like Bye Bye Love and My Best Friends Girl sound better than they ever did on record, and it was pretty clear that the band was a rock solid stage entity long before they became studio twiddlers. It is all and all a really good performance, with really bad haircuts, particularly Ocasek, who looks like he has a follicle bell atop his skull. But I am willing to forgive fashion that makes everyone on stage look like a cross between the the Fonz and Nada Surf's parents, if the songs and the delivery are good.

The special interview footage shows apparently the only time the 5 members appeared together since their dissolution in 1988, and it was oddly touching and enlightening, as the band members really seemed to still all get along as people and did not suffer from the massive self-destructive tendencies of so many other outfits that sold a couple dozen platinum certifications worth of units. Sad to see was co-frontman and bassist Benjamin Orr, at the time suffering from panreatic cancer, looking so frail and thin. He would pass away before the year was out, and the video is actually dedicated to him. Of note, I never had any idea that drummer David Robinson used to be in Modern Lovers with Jerry Harrison (later to join Talking Heads) and Jonathan Richman.