Thirty five freakin years ago The Cars released the amazing album Candy-O. Bringing Vargas girls to rock and roll with the pinup cover this album was top of the heap in my collection.
In The Studio with DJ Redbeard pays homage to this milestone with one of the most boring interviews I have ever scanned through. A band that had such amazing tunes thirty five years ago have nothing of value to say about the topic.
The album was outstanding and produced the pop hit “Lets Go” but deeper were the good ones like “It’s All I Can Do”, vocalist Ric Ocasek struck a gangly pose as the leader of shagdoo boys. I ate it with a spoon. Funny side note I hug out with a guy who went to Tufts and had some Bostonian encounters with the guys, cool huh? Two degrees of separation.
Having said this DJ Redbeard writes up an even more boring capsule on this spot:
By the July 4th 1979 holiday, a scant fourteen months after The Cars‘ debut album had surprised all but a handful of early adopters around their Boston assembly line, all eyes and ears were trained upon the quintet’s next model,Candy O. The consensus that The Cars’ debut was one of the strongest first efforts in rock history was by then only beginning, a notion that has grown to this day. In a pre-You Tube world, the act of staying home on a Saturday night just to catch The Cars perform on Saturday Night Live was a testament to their unfolding appeal, and by filling the very same stage that had seen the Rolling Stones on the 1978 Fall season opener, it elevated The Cars to the winners circle by the time the Sunday paper was on your doorstep.
On Candy O, Cars chief design engineer Ric Ocasek delivered a power plant firing on more than eight cylinders with the songs “Let’s Go”, the tasty mid-tempo melodies “Since I Held You” and “It’s All I Can Do”, the Marc On Candy O, Cars chief design engineer Ric Ocasek delivered a power plant firing on more than eight cylinders with the songs “Let’s Go”, the tasty mid-tempo melodies “Since I Held You” and “It’s All I Can Do”, the Marc Bolan/T.Rex infected“Dangerous Type”,“Got a Lot on My Head“, and the insistent mechanical darkness in the sophomore album’s title song. Ocasek and Cars keyboard retro-innovator Greg Hawkes are my guests In the Studio for Candy O‘s 35th anniversary, but neither they nor drummer David Robinson, under-rated lead guitarist Elliot Easton, or the late singer/ bass player Benjamin Orr have been granted a reserved parking spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. –Redbeard
What? Thats all ya got? Just get the album and feel 13 again.
