At first I was hesitant to write about the first Cars album again so soon after calling out "I'm In Touch With Your World" as the worst song on the album, but then I remembered I didn't give a fuck and here we are. Truth be told, there's a certain joy to spending quality time with a beloved album that helps you to celebrate an album's weaker moments for the artistic risks inherent with being an artist that pushes boundaries.
Not everything Andy Warhol painted was a home run. If I told you my nephew's kid had made half that shit, you'd believe me. By the same token, bands are even more prone to missteps because they're made up of five individuals. Just to get a song from point A to point B takes a fuckload of compromise. Four other people have to follow and, well, sometimes, people get tired of following.
Just the thought of taking orders from a guy who looks like Ric Ocasek should be enough to scare anybody straight. Music is the only industry that would have him. Accounting already has plenty of guys who look like him.
Don't let the pic of Orr fool you, this is THE SCENE from "Fast Times".
As for Benjamin Orr, who among us doesn't wonder how much differently our own lives would have turned out had we been blessed with those cheekbones? What he was doing with such a scurvy lot as Ric Ocasek, Greg Hawkes (all four feet of him), and Elliot Easton (whose guitar points the wrong way) must have had many locals scratching their heads, but then The Cars came out, sold a bazillion copies, and suddenly it all made sense: Ben knew Ric had the goods.
Which reminds me, growing up, I always worshiped the legendary RTB (a.k.a., Roy Thomas Baker) for his work with Queen and on the first four Cars albums, which, for the record, remain the only Cars albums you need ever own.
Even so, for decades, many Cars fans (myself included) believed that it was Baker who'd sprinkled his magic British fairy dust upon the band's half-baked ditties, thereby transforming the songs on the Boston band's first album into the diamond-encrusted ear worms we all known and love.
With the release of the Deluxe Edition of The Cars, which included the song demos the band had recorded before going into record with Baker, all the components are there and the arrangements are virtually identical to what wound up making the album.
It was all there. All Baker had done, it turns out, was hit "record" and get out of the way, it seemed.
Any number of producers could have done that. In fact, Baker didn't even hit "record". No, he left that to engineers Ian Taylor and Thom Moore. So, what did he actually do, then?
I dunno, but he sure as hell could have poked his head out when he heard the band rehearsing "Moving In Stereo" and asked if they had any other tunes handy. Maybe even a cover or two? Just, whatever you do, don't put that bloody song on the album.
For being the second worst song on the album, it's actually a pretty amazing tune. Of course, once it was used in the masturbation scene in "Fast Times At Ridgemont High", the song took on a life of its own, being used in a number of other movies and TV shows over the years.
Something Greg Hawkes said in a 1980 Rolling Stone interview circa Panorama helped put songs like "Moving In Stereo " into perspective:
“I mean, we could put out records that are a lot stranger—droning, one-chord dirges that nobody would buy. It’s just that we happen to like pop music as well as avant-garde electronic music. That’s the idea: to be an innovative pop band and, at the same time, remain entertaining. No question about it, though—the first priority is to be innovative.”
Good to know, I guess.
In a way, that;s sort of like saying, "If our albums wind up being really listenable, then we didn't try hard enough", but whatever. They already got our money, lived happily ever after, for the most part, and are now proud members of the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame.