The Cars: Shake It Up

 The Cars: Shake It Up

1981

Elektra Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl and Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Since You're Gone  2. Shake it Up  3. I'm Not the One  4. Victim of Love  5. Cruiser  6. A Dream Away  7. This Could Be Love  8. Think It Over  9. Maybe Baby


 I remember looking at the cover of this 8-track a million times as a kid and for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what the girl was holding...I finally concluded it was some sort of futuristic phone or something...

I picked up the album years later and had to slap my forehead and say to myself, "Duhhhh...It's a cocktail shaker!" Damn, I'm dumb sometimes...It says what it is right in the album title....Oh well...

Hey, look what I found in my closet! It's my old jean jacket from 1981!

Let's take a closer look at the buttons on it...

Oh yea...My old Reagan/Bush '81 button...This was the same year Ol' Jelly Beans took office...

That's right! In 1981 the Iranian Hostage Crisis ended and the hostages got to come home!

MTV also debuted in 1981...Which was a good place to view the Cars new video "Shake It Up."

This song lets you know they've gone back to straight-up pop after the dark detour they took on "Panorama."  There's no way this song doesn't brighten your day...Quick, clippy, catchy...It also reminds me of "Kings Lead Hat" by Brian Eno...

After a single that strong, it didn't matter if the rest of the album was trash or not...It had to be a hit...Fortunately, the single was no fluke, and the album still sounds like a 40 minute slice of 1981 top 40 radio preserved on vinyl, but with all the "Endless Love" and REO Speedwagon edited out...



Lots of good new wave pop here...I think I'm going to have to pick "Cruiser" as the best track though...It's noticeably more rocking than the surrounding songs, but there's so many neat, interlocking guitar parts...Benjamin Orr is at his coolest singing here...

I also never hear it mentioned as a stand-out, but I've always liked album-closer "Maybe Baby."  The Cars' music is often a bit emotionally cold, but I don't know...There's something sort of rewarding and triumphant about it when it hits the chorus...

It was one of those albums that seemed a bit disposable when I first heard it, but it ended up being one of my most-listened to Cars albums...It feels like there's actually quite a bit of substance beneath the bright façade...Any collector of 80's albums should seek this out...

I dunno...Let's stop talking about it and let's check out "Maybe Baby" by the Cars. Enjoy...

The Cars: Panorama

The Cars: Panorama

1980

Elektra Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl and Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Panorama  2. Touch and Go  3. Gimme Some Slack  4. Don't Tell Me No  5. Getting Through  6. Misfit Kid  7. Down Boys  8. You Wear Those Eyes  9. Running to You  10. Up and Down



This one tends to get a little overlooked...Hell, I overlooked it...I can remember going into the Hale Drug Store and seeing this in the cheap-o spinner rack in the late 90's  and thinking to myself "Huh? I never heard of this one..."

So it's the odd Cars album that I have almost no nostalgic connection to, but I enjoy it just as much as their other, more popular releases...

First off, this is the Cars album to play last at night...Maybe 3 am or so...When the sky is roughly the same color as the album cover...Instead of expanding their sound they make it darker and more claustrophobic...The metronomic drum pulse and the blackhole guitars of the opening title trackwill suck you right in if you're in the right frame of mind, and the off-kilter ska of "Touch and Go" is going to keep you there...Spooky, arty pop from a top 40 band? I love 1980!

The keyboard line on "Gimme Some Slack" is one of my favorite moments in the Cars' discography, poppy and dissonant...I get the vibe that they purposely avoided the easy pop hits and took a more unexpected route...I think you could do that back then...They put out an album every single year during this time, so if they went a year without ruling the radio it wasn't such a big deal..."Let's Go" was probably still playing and they would come out with "Shake It Up" the following year, so what was the harm, really? And I'm going to stand by my opinion that "You Wear Those Eyes" is the Cars' best ballad...I'm sorry "Drive," but "You Wear Those Eyes" nails that stormy, midnight feel so well...

But yea...A lot of this flies right past you the first listen or two, but now I love it all..The only song that's never grown on me is "Down Boys," which isn't horrible or anything, it's just that the melody and performance is somewhat pedestrian...I have to admit I tune it out sometimes...

 But overall, this is another good one...They put out one fine album after another during this period, so let's check out "Touch and Go" by the Cars. Enjoy...

The Cars: Candy-O

The Cars: Candy-O

1979

Elektra Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl and Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Let's Go  2. Since I Held You  3. It's All I Can Do  4. Double Life  5. Shoo Be Doo  6. Candy-O  7. Nightspots  8. You Can't Hold on Too Long  9 Lust for Kicks  10. Got a Lot on My Head  11. Dangerous Type


Yay! I like candy! Here are pictures of some of my favorite candy...

 Yorkie! I can still remember when I first ran across these in a World Market or something...I was ultra confused why girls weren't allowed to eat it...What would happen if one did? Was I secure enough in my masculinity to eat it?

 Mr. Melons! That's what they used to call me High School! (Shed tear...)

...and how could I forget good ol' Tupla Nutkicks? But my favorite of all is the Cars' 1979 album, Candy-O!!

Now that was a segue! Every time I see this record I have this compulsion to assume Benjamin Orr's mechanical baritone and sing "CANDY-OOO..."  I've never not done it...

This is probably my personal favorite Cars album...Certainly the one I listen to the most..It helps that there are almost no overplayed radio hits, besides "Let's Go" but it's also the band's best song, so radio can play it all day for all I care...

This seems more legitimately "New Wave" than the debut...Greg Hawkes' keyboards are more prominent and the hooks more cold and robotic...They also seem okay with the fact that there was no way they could top the non-stop perfect pop hits on the debut so it feels a bit more insular and quirky...It has a lot of personality...

I'm partial to "It's All I Can Do"...Do they play that on the radio? I've never heard it, but tell me it wouldn't sound great coming out of the speakers of your 1978 Camaro as you're cruising around pulling a few tabs with your special lady...

A song I think should be held in higher regard is "Lust for Kicks," with a  dinky organ sound so late-70's awesome that it reminds me of something off  Elvis Costello's "This Year's Model." "Double Life" is another one I'm always pleased to hear...I'm crazy about the lovely backing vocals...Almost too poppy for commercial radio if that makes sense... Also be sure not to miss the driving, strobing title track...Sleek and Modern...Like I said, 1978 Camaro...

 

The other day when we were discussing Captain Beefheart's "Safe As Milk" I was all hopped up declaring 1967 as the greatest year for albums...But really, I hold 1979 in that same high esteem...Most of my all-time faves come from this year...Let's check out some of the other great records you would have found on the "New Releases" rack at your local record store, all shiny,  shrink-wrapped and hot off the presses back in 1979... 

The Clash: London Calling

Joe Jackson" Look Sharp!


Elvis Costello: Armed Forces



Stiff Little Fingers: Inflammable Material



Cheap Trick: At Budokan



Roxy Music: Manifesto (Fuck you! I like this album...Especially the cover...)



Squeeze: Cool For Cats



The Fall: Live at the Witch Trials



Dave Edmunds: Repeat When Necessary



Nick Lowe: Labour of Lust



Joy Division: Unknown Pleasures



Neil Young: Rust Never Sleeps



Devo: Duty Now For the Future



Talking Heads: Fear of Music

 
The Damned: Machine Gun Etiquette



Wire: 154



Gang of Four: Entertainment...

Dang, I gotta give this up...Looking at the complete list of 1979 releases there are about 30 others of roughly the same caliber as the ones listed above... ("One Step Beyond" by Madness, the first album by the Specials, "A Different Kind of Tension" by the Buzzcocks, ":Mirrors" by Blue Oyster Cult....the list goes on and on and on...) Screw 1967!! 1979 was hands down the greatest year for music ever!!! These are all records I play just about every Friday Night...

Hey!!  Today is Friday Night! Let's check out "It's All I Can Do" by the Cars! Let's Beer!

The Cars: The Cars

The Cars: The Cars

1978

Elektra Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl and Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Good Times Roll  2. My Best Friend's Girl  3. Just What I Needed  4. I'm in Touch with Your World  5. Don't Cha Stop  6. You're All I've Got Tonight  7. Bye Bye Love  8. Moving in Stereo  9. All Mixed Up


The 1978 debut album by the Cars...

Damn, almost every single song on here is an FM staple...There are only two on here that I've never heard on the radio... "I'm In Touch With Your World" and "All Mixed Up." "I'm in Touch With Your World" often gets dismissed as an indulgent avant garde experiment, but to me it just sounds like another pop song...That could be because I've spent the better part of September listening to almost nothing but Can and Captain Beefheart...

"All Mixed Up" sounds almost proggy to me...It's interesting in that people tend to think of the Cars as a New-Wave band, but how many other New Wave albums get any classic rock airplay? This song makes it clear that this record was just as much related to Styx and Journey as it was to  Devo and Gary Numan...

This holds up well for an album that's been so overplayed...In the past 10 years, how many times have I played my copy of Led Zeppelin 4? Uhhh....zero times...What about "Back in Black"? Not counting the multiple listens I subjected myself to for the blog entry earlier this year...One time. "Paranoid." Zero. But I play this Cars album a couple times a year...It still maintains it's freshness...The vintage keyboard sounds, arena rock guitars and breezy choruses give it a casual, catchy quality that I don't get from the other monster 70's albums that dominate radio...

I guess there's no point in rambling endlessly about some album that every single person on planet Earth knows inside and out, so I guess we'll talk about the cover or something...



Oh yea...There's a girl on the cover...Which is the case with most of the band's albums...I can always remember looking at this cover as a kid (by the way...this is one of the oldest albums I own...) and the model clutching that clear steering wheel always seemed so bizarre...Her lips were so red and her smile was so big...It kind of reminded me of the Joker...

Apparently, she was a Russian model named Natalya Medvedeva who tragically died young...Man, I'm kind of sorry I looked that up...This blog is turning out to be a bit of a boner-killer...Let's check out the inside cover, maybe there's something in there that might cheer me up....

Ha ha! Look at Greg Hawkes' photo with the mustache and the big sunglasses! Okay, I'm feeling better now...Oh, yea...For some reason whenever I look at the third picture in the third row all I can see is Cyclops from the X-Men...Do you guys see it too? What is it?

Yecchh...I feel this blog is getting away from me today...Let's wrap this up by looking at some Cars.

This is a car...



So is this...

This is Vikki Carr...

...And this is "I'm In Touch With Your World" by the Cars...Enjoy...

Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band: Lick My Decals Off, Baby

Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band: Lick My Decals Off, Baby

1970

Straight/Reprise

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Lick My Decals Off, Baby  2. Doctor Dark  3. I Love You, You Big Dummy  4. Peon  5. Bellerin' Plain  6. Woe-is-uh-Me-Bop  7. Japan in a Dishpan  8. I Wanna Find a Woman That'll Hold My Big Toe Till I Have to Go  9. Petrified Forest  10. One Red Rose That I Mean  11. The Buggy Boogie Woogie  12. The Smithsonian Institute Blues (or the Big Dig)  13. Space-Age Couple  14. The Clouds Are Full of Wine (not Whiskey or Rye)  15. Flash Gordon's Ape




 Of all the Captain Beefheart albums I own, this one is easily my favorite...Reminiscent of the spastic "Trout Mask Replica" style but the lyrics hit the mark more often and the songs are catchier...

 Look at those song titles! Just the phrase "Woe-is-uh-Me Bop" gets stuck in my head! And Captain Beefheart sounds thrilled to be here,  like he won't be stopped until every square inch of the universe is filled with white-hot poetry and donky marimba...

"Hold a drinking glass up to your eye after you've
scooped up a little of the sky,
and it ain't blue no more.
what's on the leaves ain't dew no more..."

or try this one out....

"The rug's wearing out that we walk on,
Soon it will fray and we'll drop dead into yesterday.
Must the breathing pay
for those who breathe in and don't breathe out?"

I could listen to him hiss this stuff all day...Picking out highlights is difficult on these late 60's-early 70's Captain Beefheart albums. They're best appreciated as a whole, but if forced to choose I'm going to have to go with "I Love You, You Big Dummy," which could almost pass as straight-forward electric blues but the band sounds like they're having so much fun they're about to shake out of their own skins...

I also love the title track...Particularly the "She stuck out her tongue and the fun begun" section, which I always have a tough time getting out of my brain...Same goes for the guitar-based instrumental "Peon" which escaped my notice the first few listens but now I can't help but be taken in by it...It reminds me of a quiet sunset on Saturn...

(Television ad for "Lick My Decals Off, Baby," which would probably confuse people just as much today as it did back in 1970...)

Alsotake note of "The Smithsonian Institute Blues (Or The Big Dig)" which single-handedly invented Tom Waits 80's reinvention...Captain Beefheart was so ahead of the curve that he's still around the corner...

 (A 1983 appearance by captain Beefheart on David Letterman if'n you don't have anything to do...)

Damn, I wish "Lick My Decals Off, Baby" was a double album...Oh well, nothing I can do about that except play it twice. So, let's listen to "The Smithsonian Institute Blues (Or The Big Dig)" by Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band...Hell, you better listen to it twice for good measure...

Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band: Trout Mask Replica

Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band: Trout Mask Replica

1969

Reprise/Straight Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Frownland  2. The Dust Blows Forward 'n the Dust Blows Back  3. Dachau Blues  4. Ella Guru  5. Hair Pie: Bake 1  6. Moonlight on Vermont  7. Pachuco Cadaver  8. Bills Corpse  9. Sweet Sweet Bulbs  10. Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish  11. China Pig  12. My Human Gets Me Blues  13. Dali's Car  14. Hair Pie: Bake 2  15. Pena  16. Well  17. When Big Joan Sets Up  18. Fallin' Ditch  19. Sugar 'n Spikes  20. Ant Man Bee  21. Orange Claw Hammer  22. Wild Life  23. She's Too Much for My Mirror  24. Hobo Chang Ba  25. The Blimp (mousetrapreplica)  26. Steal Softly thru Snow  27. Old Fart at Play  28. Veteran's Day Poppy


 Captain Beefheart's dance pop masterpiece! As soon as you first put the needle on the record and hear the club-ready beats on "Frownland (featuring Macklemore and Katy Perry)" the bottles of Cristal seem to pop open themselves (SWAG)!

 

BUB!!

"Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish (featuring Flo Rida, Ge Orgia, and South Da Koda)"  " beats David Guetta at his own VIP/French-House/Blogstep game..."Pop Life" indeed!!

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$BALLIN"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Alright, enough horsin' around...If you haunt record stores long enough, eventually a big, red double-album with a guy holding a fish up to his face is going to catch your eye...The curiosity is going to be too much to take and you're going to go home with a copy of Captain Beefheart's  1969 classic "Trout Mask Replica."

This album seems to divide people...People usually declare it a masterpiece or they declare that anyone who considers this a masterpiece is lying...That it's just a bunch of noise and nobody actually like it...

I don't know, man...I liked this as soon as I put it on...It wasn't even the usual "you need to give it 4 or 5 listens before it reveals itself to you" thing either...I can only attribute this to the fact that I spent so many of my teenage years listening to Tom Waits and the Minutemen non-stop...

Good god, Tom Waits has definitely listened to this...Give "China Pig" a spin and tell me it wouldn't sound right at home on "Frank's Wild Years" or "Bone Machine"...

 

I think I get the Minutemen from the thin guitar tone and the jagged swing of it all...The songs sound like they've been shattered into a thousand pieces and glued back together all wrong....

"Just keep comin' Jesus,
You're the best dressed,
You look dandy in the sky but you don't scare me,
Cause I got you here in my eye..."

It doesn't make literal sense, but damned if you don't feel something as you hear him wheeze and roar those lines...

Oddly enough, during the middle of Side Two you're totally used to it and suddenly it dawns on you that it's shuffling blue-rock...Just the gait is a little odd...

The acapella songs that came off as nothing more than slightly humorous on Side One suddenly become riveting by the time you get to "Well," and is it just me or are "Sugar N' Spikes" and "Ant Man Bee" real toe-tappers? Ah, who can tell anymore...

I can't convey how difficult these songs must have been to play...As each song starts it seems like the music is random for the first measure or so, but they keep playing those random sequences over and over...How do they play these flaws so flawlessly?  I don't know...For that feat alone this record deserves all the praise it has received...

I personally find this album to be a blast...I spin it often  and I recommend it for anyone who's into adventurous music...This is about as adventurous as it gets...But what do you serve your guests when you're playing"Trout Mask Replica" at your very own Friday Night Record Party? That's easy...

A cherry phosphate and...

A hair Pie!

Actually, you better Bake 2!! Unless you have a squid at your party...Then you just put him in a polyethylene bag and feed him dough...

Alright, so let's check out "Frownland" by Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band...Enjoy...