Cars – THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN

Cars, Elvis Costello & The Attractions, Lene Lovich, Pretenders, Roxy Music, Skids

SHAKEDOWN, 1979 (February)

Welcome to the second post of today.

All you need to do is read over the January 1979 posts for this new series to get an idea of how excited I was to be looking back at the 45s from 45 years ago.

February 1979 kind of dampens things down. It was seeing the song Bat Out Of Hell by Meat Loaf enter the singles chart at #25 on 4 February which provided a reminder of what really dominated things. It’s not so much the single, which spent just eight weeks in the Top 75, peaking at #15. It’s the parent album. It had come into the charts on 11 March 1978. It spent much of the rest of the year hanging around, but never getting into the Top 10. By 6 January 1979, it was sitting at #73 and looking as it if would finally give us all much needed peace and quiet. That’s when it got its second wind and started climbing up the charts again. It would be in the Top 75 for 321 of the next 329 weeks. There couldn’t have been too many houses that didn’t have a copy…..but mine was one of them! It’s an album that has continued to enjoy the occasional revival, and according to wiki, it has spent 522 weeks on the UK album chart. Ten feckin’ years…..(cue joke about crimes and jail sentences).

But then again, there were these to enjoy for the first time the same month.

mp3: Elvis Costello & The Attractions – Oliver’s Army

It came in quietly at #45 on 4 February and stayed around the Top 75 for twelve weeks, finding itself stuck at #2 for three successive weeks, unable to dislodge The Bee Gees or Gloria Gaynor. There are some who say it was only such a big hit as the piano part subconsciously reminded record-buyers of Abba.

mp3: The Pretenders – Stop Your Sobbing

As I mentioned last time out, 1979 was a year in which many new bands emerged to enjoy success, much of which turned out to be fleeting. The Pretenders rather excellent debut single, offering a new take on a Kinks song from 1964, hit the charts at #60 on 4 February, and in due course would climb into the Top 40. There was much much more to come from Chrissie Hynde & co throughout the remainder of the year, and beyond.

mp3: The Skids -Into The Valley

11 February was the chart in which The Skids made their first appearance of the year, having enjoyed a couple of minor hits in 1978. Getting to perform on Top of The Pops was a turning point in their career, thanks to Richard Jobson‘s mesmerising dancing that made you wonder if he’d been auditioning for the can-can girls in Paris. Into The Valley, whose title reflects a rather rundown housing estate not far from the band’s home town of Dunfermline, would spend 11 weeks in the charts and peak at #10. It’s still, all these years later, the walk-out tune for Dunfermline Athletic FC.

mp3: The Cars – Just What I Needed

Another new entry on 11 February. And recently looked at in some depth on this blog, right here.

mp3: Lene Lovich – Lucky Number

Lene Lovich, an American-English songwriter and performer (she was born in Detroit but moved to Hull, aged 13) was on Stiff Records here in the UK. A flop single in 1978 had thrown up an interesting b-side, which Stiff felt had potential. Re-released in February 1979, Lucky Number proved to be all that the record label bosses had imagined. It entered the charts at #62, and following a Top of The Pops appearance after it had climbed into the Top 30, Lene’s unique look and sound temporarily found a bigger market with the single going Top 3.

Two weeks later, on 25 February, Sex Pistols enjoyed a chart entry with the double-A side of Something Else/Friggin’ In The Riggin’ that eventually also went Top 3. Cartoon punk was now a thing….see also the fact that Generation X, fronted by BIlly Idol, were also riding high in February 1979. But at least Joe, Mick, Paul and Topper could save us…..

mp3: The Clash – English Civil War

The second 45 to be lifted from Give ‘Em Enough Rope came in at #39 and would end end spending six weeks in and around the environs of the chart, selling in decent enough numbers each week to offer up a chart run that nowadays could pass as a lottery ticket selection – 39 28 34 25 27 30.

The final week of February also saw the return of some of the original glamsters.

mp3: Roxy Music – Trash

Roxy Music had been away for a few years – the last original hit single had been in 1975 – with Bryan Ferry carving out a successful solo career. This was the comeback 45. One that I like, but it’s not regarded as being close to the band’s finest moments, as evidenced that it got no higher than #40.

There will be more of the same next month…..

JC

Cars

IT REALLY WAS A CRACKING DEBUT SINGLE (75)

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In later years, The Cars became most famous for Drive, a rather dull ballad that was twice a hit single in the UK….firstly in late 1984 and then again the following year when It was re-released after it had been aired during the Live Aid convert in London, when it was used as background music as a montage of newsreel clips, showing the extent and impact of the Ethiopian famine, was shown to the 80,000 attendees and the many millions watching on TV.

Credit has to be given to Ric Ocasek, the writer of the song, for handing over the monies made from the re-release, to the Live Aid charity.

Although written by Ocasek, the lead vocal on Drive was delivered by the band’s bassist, Benjamin Orr. It had been a similar story for the band’s debut single back in May 1978.

mp3: The Cars – Just What I Needed

It’s a great example of the sort of new wave/power pop sound that was very much coming to the fore at the time, one that was particularly going down a storm in the USA. It reached #27 on the Billboard Chart in mid-78, and paved the way for their self-titled debut album to go Top 20.

Slightly different story here in the UK. The first single over here was this:-

mp3: The Cars – My Best Friend’s Girl

This was one on which Ocasek took the lead with the vocals. It was released in November 1978, and made it all the way to #3, which proved to be the highest-ever chart placing for the band (Drive sold more, but never got higher than #4).

Just What I Needed was the second single in the UK, and proved to be a bit of a slow-burner, taking seven weeks in the charts to hit its peak of #17 in March 1979.

The Cars never really became a huge success over here. Despite having two hit singles, the debut album did no better than #29 – even the greatest hits package, issued cynically by the record label a few months after the Live Aid concert, just scraped the Top 30.

They weren’t always my cup of tea, but the early singles were great.

Benjamin Orr died in 2000 at the early age of 53, succumbing to pancreatic cancer. Ric Ocasek died in 2019 at the age of 75, from natural causes.

JC

Cars

MY FIRST EVER PICTURE DISC

There was a while when picture disc singles were all the rage. This was the first one I ever bought. A single that hit the charts in February 1979, peaking at #17.

The thing was, nobody meaningful in the UK seemed to take The Cars all that seriously, (by that I mean music journalists – the fact they got a couple of Top 40 hits means enough people liked them to buy things – or maybe we were all suckers for the picture discs).

They did however, do quite well over in their own country. I suppose that we Brits had enough of our own home-grown new wave singers and bands to talk and write about that we could ignore what was happening over on the other side of the big pond. Maybe it was also the fact that the early releases were produced by Roy Thomas Baker who had a close working relationship with Queen. But they were never really hip or trendy in the UK despite the early singles and LPs being a great mix of spiky guitars and pop-orientated synths.

Just What I Needed had in fact been the band’s first success in the States in 1978, but was only released over here as the follow-up to My Best Friend’s Girl. After that, more or less nothing. But back home, they continued to greatly outsell the likes of Blondie and Talking Heads, both of who had emerged around the same time, but both of who enjoyed great critical and commercial acclaim in the UK and across Europe.

Most people nowadays think of the hit song Drive when any mention is made of The Cars, which is a dreadfully dull and dreary song that conquered the charts, not once but twice, both pre and post-Live Aid (the second time being when when it was used as the soundtrack to a particularly emotive video appeal associated with the fundraising)

The Cars broke up in 1988. While most of the lead vocals on their songs were handled by guitarist Ric Ocasek, it is bassist Benjamin Orr, who died of cancer in 2000 at the age of 53, who sings on this great wee bit of pop:-

mp3 : The Cars – Just What I Needed

There’s no way I’m not going to make any case for The Cars being a band that should be in everyone’s record collection, but I will defend the greatness of their early hit singles in the UK. They sound a bit like Squeeze…….

(Originally posted in June 2009)