Review: 'The Cars: Let the Stories Be Told'

The Cars were one of the few bands who arrived fully, 100% formed on their first album. The Cars was so confident, perfectly constructed, and jammed with iconic songs that I wrote that it might as well have been called "The Cars Greatest Hits" in my book 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Minute. I thought I was mildly clever for that.  Except, I wasn't the first person to make that observation (it was something the band themselves often said), as I learned while reading Bill Janovitz's much better book, The Cars: Let the Stories Be Told.

Farewell, Ric Ocasek

At a time when The Cure and Devo were still a wee too weird for audiences of cheerleaders and jocks, The Cars were tuneful and non-threatening enough to drag the New Wave into the mainstream. This does not mean they skimped on the oddness. Mixed amongst irresistible pop confections such as "My Best Friend's Girl", "Good Times Roll", "Just What I Needed", and "Let's Go" were quirky numbers like "Shoo Be Doo", "Moving in Stereo", "Candy-O", and "All Mixed Up". Plus, you had Ric Ocasek's disaffected hiccups leading even the catchiest Cars tunes. The guy exuded cool with his shades on a beanpole image, and his knack for writing perfect pop songs makes that first Cars album sound like a proper Greatest Hits comp. 

Ocasek was also an outstanding producer, helming works by an impressive array of artists that include Suicide, Romeo Void, Bad Brains, Weezer (he's behind their career-defining "Blue" album), Bad Religion, Jonathan Richman, and Le Tigre. And I for one will forever insist that he did not help Guided by Voices create a too-slick career misstep when he produced 1999's Do the Collapse; he helped the band make the best album of the 1990s.

Sadly, Ric Ocasek was found dead yesterday in his apartment in NYC. No specific cause of death has been revealed yet. By most accounts, he was 75.

Review: Weezer's 'Dusty Gems and Raw Nuggets'

With a roster that included Liz Phair’s Whip Smart, Grant Lee Buffalo’s Mighty Joe Moon, Guided by Voices’ Bee Thousand, Pavement’s Crooked Rain/Crooked Rain, and The Cardigans’ Emmerdale, 1994 may have been the best year for rock and pop since the sixties. Yet those “alternative” albums didn’t yield much in the way of smash singles. Weezer was a very notable exception from the Class of ’94; the rare band to make terrific, organic pop and be rewarded with a several hits singles. Ace of Base may have ruled the airwaves, but everyone still went around whistling “Undone—The Sweater Song” and “Buddy Holly” (and into 1995, “Say It Ain’t So”). With infectious stuff like “My Name Is Jonas”, “The World Has Turned and Left Me Here”, “Surf Wax America”, and “In the Garage”, most of the rest of Weezer (aka: “The Blue Album”) could have made the grade as singles too. And Weezer’s excellent mid-nineties output didn’t even end there. On the B-sides and various artists comps was such A-material as the folky “Jamie”, the fifties-ish “Susanne”, the crushing “Mykel and Carli”, and the Stack-O-Vocals “My Evaline”. The band also managed to capture terrific live versions of more familiar stuff such as “My Name Is Jonas” and “Surf Wax America” on tape too.

Along with some spare demos (including a bizarre version of “Undone” that slows the tempo to a sloth’s pace and makes room for a bit of rapping and a Nirvana pastiche called “Paperface”), these stray tracks were compiled onto Dusty Gems and Raw Nuggets, the bonus disc of the deluxe edition of Weezer released to commemorate its tenth anniversary. Now on its 25^th anniversary (we’re old!), Universal Music is giving Dusty Gems and Raw Nuggets its first vinyl release. Isolated from the album its supports, this disc is still very much worth a listen, and a real treat for fans of Weezer and fans of vinyl (I’m certain there’s a major overlap between those particular groups). The vinyl is marbled blue and limited to 4,000 units.