Ric Ocasek RIP

[orioles70]

an old documentary about The Cars with more focus on Elliott Easton's lead guitar, but touches on all of them

[queenofthehours]

Are there any good books or DVDs about the Cars? They're a band I like but can find very little about on the internet.

[denny]

Sept 27, 2019 15:43:12 GMT queenofthehours said:

Are there any good books or DVDs about the Cars? They're a band I like but can find very little about on the internet.

Back in the 80s I rented (yes, we used to rent movies etc from establishments called 'Blockbuster' or smaller family run video stores) a Cars VHS concert of the Heartbeat City tour, I think it was called '84-85 Live'(?).  I believe the concert was filmed in Houston.  I have a couple DVDs, one is called "The Cars Live" which includes a Musikladen performance right when their second album Candy-O was released/going to be released, and also includes an extended interview with the whole band shortly before Ben Orr passed.  Ben is extremely frail in the interview and hardly speaks - as a fan it was extremely poignant to see them all together again reminiscing on the old days, as the band at that point had been broken up for years, and Ric and Ben's estrangement was a huge factor in the group's demise.  My other DVD is called "The Cars Unlocked - The Live Performances" which has some interesting backstage footage, interviews etc, along with live performances throughout their career.  The hilite for me was seeing Ric Ocasek wearing a headband (!) when the Cars played at the US Festival in the early 80s.  I would recommend both DVDs.  I haven't seen very much in print on the band, although there is a Ben Orr book out that I saw was reviewed on Amazon.  YouTube has some decent audio/video of the Cars last big tour in the 80s in support of the Door to Door album filmed in the Philadelphia Spectrum.  I think it is only song by song though not the entire concert as a whole.  The Cars always seemed to be criticized for being boring and distant in concert, but I always appreciated their efforts to sound just like the record (like ELO?) and I think the aloofness of Ric especially was just his style.  Enjoy!