Another take on the New Wave cred of my current favorite old band and a little review of the musical bounty of 1978.

Here’s a topic that is adjacent to my obsession with The Cars:  the music of 1978. I’ve hopped in the way back machine and have been reliving my past; specifically when I was eleven, twelve, thirteen years old.  Sixth and seventh grades.  I can remember almost every single lyric from songs from forty six, forty seven years ago. Amazing. Damn that music stands the test of time. 

So 1978. Jimmy Carter was in the White House entertaining Willie Nelson and installing solar panels on the roof.  I turned 12 that May and I was highly, highly impressionable.  That was the year I got my first pair of Levis.  Hunter green cords, straight leg.  Damn I thought I was cool in those pants.  Here’s an aside- remember when people wore clothes?  Like pants and shirts with buttons and collars? And shoes? Leather shoes?  Not jeans and t-shirts or athletic clothing or things made out of plastic? Actual clothes with buttons and zippers and tailoring and hems- much of which was still made by union workers in this country. Oh my.

Anyway, what I’m getting at here is that 1978 was a year of absolutely tremendously fantastic music releases. From debut albums by bands that finally broke through, ushering in fresh new looks and sounds to standout releases by some of the 1970s greatest artists, many of whom are still performing today.  AND it was the year that really broke what was being called New Wave into the mainstream. 

In another post I wondered why people think of The Cars differently than they do other New Wave bands.  Well, I guess the first thing to do is define exactly what  New Wave was anyway? A catchall phrase for record execs who couldn’t really pigeonhole the new sound? Punk-lite? Less blues influenced than rock?  Definitely more synthesizer.  Danceable?  Ironic quirky opaque lyrics? All of the above?  None of the above?   Here’s a clip of Claude Bessey, aka Kickboy Face, influential punk rock mover, shaker and influencer in Penelope Spheeris’ 1981 documentary The Decline of Western Civilization  on the artificiality of the term New Wave:

So there you have it. A completely made up term that meant nothing. 

Except…

When the question “what was the first New Wave song” was posed on Steve Hoffman Music Forums lots of people weighed in with strong evidence for songs by these artists;  the Ramones, Yoko Ono, Patti Smith, The New York Dolls. But the one band name that popped up more than any other was The Cars. 

When I was twelve and thirteen years old, I too thought The Cars were the epitome of New Wave.  The look, the sound, the cool detachment.  Today, I think The Cars defy categorization.  Ric Ocasek basically invented something different. He spent a good decade trying out different styles with different mixes of band members. He went from playing rock and roll covers, to making a folk rock album with Milkwood, to a funky mix of styles in Richard and the Rabbits and Cap’n Swing. The sound he was after finally gelled when he and Ben found the magic in partners David, Elliot and Greg.  Ric pulled together shades of The Velvet Underground, Jonathan Richman, Roxy Music, Iggy Pop, Devo and Television. But the band did not sound like anyone else, nor did anyone else sound like they did.  They were the antithesis of disco, which was in heavy rotation in the mid-late 70s, they were too synth dependent and not angry enough to be punk, they had solid pop hits but I certainly wouldn’t put most of their songs, at least early on, in the pop column. Late 70s pop was ABBA, the soundtrack from Grease, Wings,  Rubert Holmes’ Escape-the Pina Colada song, and Christopher Cross with his bank of hits.  The Cars didn’t sound like other “New Wave” artists like Blondie or Elvis Costello or The Talking Heads.  They were not  Fleetwood Mac or Supertramp or Styx or the Doobie Brothers or any of the other bands that had massive hits in the late 70s.  They were The Cars, and The Cars were not like anyone else. And that was a very good thing.  When they exploded in 1978, they were absolutely compelling and electrifying.  

May 29, 1978 the single Just What I Needed  was released ahead of the album The Cars, which came out on June 6.  This debut was just about perfect in every way.  The album cover was unforgettable, although from what I have read the band did not like it.  It was forced on them by the record label instead of the one originally designed by David Robinson which ended up on the album sleeve instead.  They may have hated it, but I think most people thought it was really striking.  Beautiful girl, red lips, white teeth, clear steering wheel.  What kind of car had a clear steering wheel? It absolutely made an immediate impression and made you want to buy the album.

Every single song on the album is great- not just good, but great.  The hits of course, and if you count, there are six-six hits on an album that has only nine songs, that’s fucking mind-blowing. And the three that didn’t get mainstream radio airplay are absolutely phenomenal.  Those three are I’m in Touch With Your World, Don’t Cha Stop and All Mixed Up.  Go here The Cars – All Mixed Up (Benjamin Orr vocals & guitar track) to  listen to the isolated guitar and vocal tracks- it will literally give you chills.  You can really hear the brilliance of Ben Orr’s voice and Elliot Easton’s guitar work.  It’s almost better than the full, completed version.

I can’t think of any other record I ever owned that didn’t have a couple of songs that were just ok, or that I skipped over to get to the song I really wanted to hear.  And some albums actually only had one or two songs that I really listened to.  The Cars debut album is one of the absolute best debut albums in rock music history. 

Add to all of that musical greatness the way the band looked.  They didn’t go so far as to do the Beatles thing with the suits, but they also weren’t just a bunch of guys standing on the stage wearing whatever. Their stage outfits were curated in coordinating colors and styles.  I mean their guitar straps were color coordinated.  As were the guitars and Ben’s bass.  They just oozed coolness. They cultivated an aura, a vibe, a feeling. And at the time they were completely unique and unlike any other band that was popular, and they aspired to be the antidote to disco that was predominant at the time.

So for this album alone 1978 would have been a standout year for music, but lucky for us there was more!  Here is a list of some of the debuts in 1978:

The B52s

Prince’s For You

Van Halen

Dire Straits

Devo- Are We Not Men? We Are Devo!

And here are other bands that released music in 1978:

Blondie- Parallel Lines

Springsteen and the E Street Band- Darkness on the Edge of Town

The Police-Outlandos d’Amour that included the classic Roxanne.

Warren Zevon- Excitable Boy

Billy Joel- 52nd Street

Cheap Trick- not one but two albums- Heaven Tonight and Live at Budokan

Elvis Costello- This Years’ Model–Pump It Up!

If you are reading this, and anywhere between the ages of fifty and 65, you can hear a song from every single one of these records.  Like it was yesterday.  You were cruising around with your friends in your first car, or on your bike, at the beach or in your backyard, at the roller skating rink, listening to the radio, or listening on your record player or your stereo in your bedroom. Not even realizing the genius and musical brilliance that you were experiencing!

Other music released in 1978 was Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band’s Stranger in Town that had five great songs-Hollywood Nights, Old Time Rock and Roll, We’ve Got Tonight, Still The Same.

Don’t Look Back by Boston, and Journey’s first album, Infinity, with Steve Perry, REO Speedwagon’s You Can Tune a Piano But You Can’t Tuna Fish,   Al Stewart and Gerry Rafferty- Baker Street was everywhere that year. One of my all time favorite Neil Young songs Comes a Time from the album of the same name. Molly Hatchet and the Doobie Brothers. Foreigner’s absolute classic Double Vision.  Oh my God, Styx Pieces of Eight with Renegade and Blue Collar Man.  The Band’s The Last Waltz.

I have distinct memories from the summer of ‘78.  Receiving my copy of The Cars in the mail from my Columbia Record and Tape Club and listening to it in my bedroom as it spun on the old fashioned record player that I inherited from my dad.   Listening to Hot Child in the City by Nick Gilder, Sweet’s Love is Like Oxygen, Foreigner and Hot Blooded, and Miss You and Beast of Burden from The Rolling Stones Some Girls.  When I hear those songs now they remind me of wandering the lanes at Van Buren Point and Van Buren Bay on Lake Erie with some girls a few classes ahead of me, desperately wishing I were older, cooler and prettier, and hoping that we would run into the hunky older boys who lived in the Bay and that they would notice me and deign to speak to me.  And the bonfires and fireworks along the beach on the Fourth of July. They remind me of my friends and I thinking we were grown up, and dying to do grown up things.  And just looking for adventure and mischief and middle school romance. HA!

There was other great music released in the banner year of 1978 but there simply isn’t enough time or space here to dedicate to all of it.  Those I’ve mentioned are really just a sliver of the musical greatness that was unleashed in the late 1970s, before the music industry was  taken over by videos and when good music was easy to find and incredibly listenable.