My Story of the Cars in Concert 1979

Where I lived, the Cars and the Knack both came through town right around the same time. This was right after Get the Knack, so I guess Candy-O must have been the current Cars album.

I had enough money to see only one or the other. Plus, I don't think my parents would have approved of my going to two concerts only a week or so apart from one another. I went back and forth trying to decide. Some of my friends were going to the Knack, so I joined them.

I remember seeing kids with Cars concert T-shirts at school in the following days.

I have often wondered over the years if I made the right or wrong choice. It would have been cool to see the Cars at their peak. On the other hand, it was cool seeing the Knack in the wake of the success of "My Sharona."

The two combos will forever be linked in my mind because of this experience.

 

interesting analysis, there's also seething desperation hidden below the 'cool' dispassionate front. There's a bit to the Cars

 

These guys put out killer studio recordings.....top shelf sound and production.
RTB added that secret sauce like he did with Queen and Devo.

 

Between Doug Fieger and Ric Ocasek, Ric wins hands down as a lyricist. I know what you're talking about, and I also always noticed a double meaning pattern in Ocasek's writing. "You're All I've Got Tonight:" Does that mean "I value you because you are the one I'm with tonight" or "I couldn't do any better, so I guess you'll have to do for tonight." "Tonight She Comes" - self explanatory. In the interview on the Musikladen DVD Ric says they had many in jokes in the lyrics and cites "I'm on top of my nerves you know" as one of them. I guess I'm not in enough to figure that one out.

 

I forgot they played the US Festival in '82. They come across really well on the video.
Maybe they were a 'festival' band after all and needed a huge ocean of 200,000 sunbaked hedonists to bring their stage act alive.

 

Check out Ric at 1:46 with the white mini mullet.

 

How on earth can a male musician concentrate on playing in time when there are so many females in the audience shaking their stuff.

 

He is wearing a black and white headband and I think you're seeing the knot, which is the white part.

 

I saw the Cars in March, 1982 on the "Shake It Up" tour. Nick Lowe opened for them. I was 17 at the time.

No, they weren't as exciting as Van Halen or AC/DC on stage, but they had a different vibe. It was a cold, stoic, new-wave-techno-rock kind of vibe, and that's what they projected on record and stage. I expected it, so it didn't disappoint me, and they played all their hits fine.

Isn't my favorite concert but also far from the worst I've been to.

Still have the t-shirt:

 

This was the age when you could be a dull live band and still have a concert audience. I think it's tougher nowadays, where acts are more reliant on touring for revenue, now that the record industry has basically tanked.

The Eagles also had the reputation of being a very professional but dull live band: it didn't hurt them then, and it doesn't hurt them now.

 

Great performance. Thank goodness the awful video production style (all those zoom in/fade out effects) stopped when they got to the second song.

 

I passed on that show. Wish I didn't. I didn't end up seeing Seger for another 35ish years.

back on topic - I saw the Cars in '79. They were boring and then half their speakers went off.
There's a good chance we contributed to the "odor of cannabis". Even better chance we were not drinking fresca.

 

You just keep going. It helps if you are near-sighted.

 

Looking at the clip from the festival - maybe it is just the nature of their music. I like their music as much as anyone, but they could have been cavorting around the stage like Jagger and it may not have made a difference. Watching that clip it is hard to imagine how they could pick it up even a notch much less or two.

 

I always liked the Cars to some degree but never bought their music until now.Have the Rhino and Elektra Greatest Hits with the Rhino having all their hits.Love "Drive".Sad about Ben Orr...such a voice and talent.

 

My first concert in 1972 was The Osmonds I liked them and don't care if it was "uncool". Now my second concert was the next year and was Chicago so that made up for it. As for The Cars I saw them and they were horrible.

 

I was a teenager back in the early 80's and I had a friend who's was such a huge cars fan that I would call them "the best band currently recording". I never saw them in concert but all the concert footage I saw bored me to tears and nothing posted in this thread makes me change my mind.

Today I can appreciate them for the New Wave Synth Rock song writing geniuses that they were. But as others have said... a studio band all the way.

 

I saw the same tour - thanks for confirming that Nick Lowe opened - I saw him so many times....

Yep, the Cars just stood still and sounded exactly like their records.
It was not a thrilling show visually but the music was spot on.
For me, the thrill was watching Elliot Easton playing all of those perfect solos.
It was worth it , but I never felt like I needed to see The Cars again.

 

Well if it's anything like this...

...please invite me.

 

Saw them on the Heartbeat City tour (was it '84?... '85?). Poplar Creek outdoor shed in the Chicago 'burbs (anyone remember that place?). Wang Chung opened - it was probably the peak of their popularity. Probably was for the Cars, too, actually, since Heartbeat City was a huge seller & had been out for a while.

Anyway, the place was packed to the gills on a very pleasant Midwest summer evening. Wang Chung played a killer set, building up a great anticipation for the main act. The Cars were a bit of a letdown, honestly. They played most of the new album and a few older tracks. The sound was great, they played the songs well... technically. You could tell they were playing them live, but just barely. No stretching out on anything. Not much banter or stage presence as I remember it. What I remember most about this show is that it may be the shortest main act performance I've ever seen. Maybe an hour, if that.

I love the Cars. Still do (I've picked up all 4 of the MFSL masters in the last year or so). But that was probably the most disappointing show out of hundreds of live concerts I've attended.

 

I was a teenager in the Boston area in the summer of 1978 when the Cars broke big.
The rock radio station in Worcester (WAAF) announced a concert by them in July,
for $2 a ticket, if I am remembering correctly, and they were going to play outdoors
in a downtown Worcester park. But the demand was so great that they ended up
moving the show to the Providence Civic Center. July 23, 1978.

The crowd was as loud and fanatic as you could imagine. And the sound system was
LOUD! They did the whole first album, and some songs from what would be Candy-O,
and they really rocked the place! I thought the Candy-O album was pretty tame when
it came out the following year remebering how blistering Nightspots was live...

The only onstage interplay was between Ben and Elliott, but I certainly had the time of
my life, and so many people I knew had gone to the show. It was an event, to be sure!

There are plenty of 1978-79 era concert videos on YouTube that pretty much reflect
how they were then. But, crank the volume and imagine a wild crowd, and maybe
you will get a flavor of what that July night was like.

I would compare it to when I saw the South Park movie at a packed theater, and laughing
until I wet my pants, along with everyone else, and then watching it again a few weeks
later when there were only about 20 people in the cinema, and not laughing all that
much at all. The crowd added so much to the whole experiance in both cases.

 

Agreed. This is partly why I started the thread. I was hoping my experience was more isolated than it seems to be, as the footage I see of them in concert, here and elsewhere looks and sounds really good. I'm not someone who requires between the song banter, and the Cars' pre-1981 music was so good that, if anyone could get away with not talking to the audience, I would think it would be them.

I guess I'm trying to reconcile how I could have seen the same band that sounded so good on record and experienced them so differently in concert, e.g. that I didn't like them in person when all the pre-1981 footage I've seen of them live I've liked.

 

A little more exciting than Kraftwerk...

 

I saw the same tour and love it. BTW, pot was smoked at every concert in '79.

 

I saw the Cars on the Candy-O, Shake It Up, Panorama, HBC shows. Also went to a Benefit at the Metro in Boston for New York Rocker Magazine and the Cars showed up and played
7 songs they were fantastic.

The Candy-O show I saw was at the Music Hall in Boston. Thought they were great. Started the show with Got A Lot On My Head and never let up. Dressed in all Black & Red attire
skinny ties and all they plowed through their hits. Maybe it was a Boston thing where they got revved up in front of the locals?

I believe this clip is from The Paradise in Boston 1978