US Festival '82, Glen Helen Regional Park, San Bernardino, CA, 9-4-1982 - Day 2, Part 3: The Cars

The third act presented here from Day Two of the 1982 US Festival is a set by the Cars.

Unfortunately, after the great sound quality of the previous set, by Santana, we're back to just okay sound quality. This comes from another audience bootleg. Basically, pretty much the entire festival is only available via audience boots, but were lucky the festival had a stellar sound system for such a massive audience, so all of those are much better than the typical poor audience boots.

In an interview before the Cars' performance, the band's lead singer Ric Ocasek said, "The first time they pushed me to do this, I said no. But they, uh... they talked me into it. We haven't played in months, so this show could be anything."

I looked it up, and the band's last concert prior to this one was in March 1982, when they were still promoting their 1981 album "Shake It Up." So it had been about six months. They wouldn't play another concert until mid-1984. It seems the money offered was just too good to pass up. There didn't seem to be any problem with their performance, despite the time off.

As I've done with all the other audience boot-sourced albums from this festival, I used the UVR5 and MVSEP audio editing programs to improve the sound quality as much as I could. But I could only do so much.

This album is one hour long.

030 Good Times Roll (Cars)
031 Bye Bye Love (Cars)
032 Touch and Go (Cars)
033 Misfit Kid (Cars)
034 Cruiser (Cars)
035 Since You're Gone (Cars)
036 Candy-O (Cars)
037 Moving in Stereo (Cars)
038 Nightspots (Cars)
039 Let's Go (Cars)
040 My Best Friend's Girl (Cars)
041 Dangerous Type (Cars)
042 Just What I Needed (Cars)
043 Shake It Up (Cars)
044 You're All I've Got Tonight (Cars)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17497721/VA-1982USFstvlDay0203TCrs_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/zCKnmj2H

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/sMLVpx6ZUExIrVH/file

The cover photo of lead vocalist Ric Ocasek is from this exact concert.

The Cars - The Summit, Houston, TX, 9-11-1984

One of the main purposes of this blog is to help you, the listener, find the gems out of all the bootlegs out there. Tons of them seem good based on their titles, but turn out to have crappy sound quality. This is a case in point. I would have liked to hear a concert by the Cars in 1984, because that was a particularly strong year for the band, with their huge hit album "Heartbeat City." They petered out after that, with a sub-par album in 1987 and then a break up. Anyway, I would have liked to hear a 1984 concert from them, but I never came across an excellent sounding one. 

Until now, that is. This concert recording has to be the best from the 1984. It was professionally recorded and then broadcast for the Westwood One radio network. Later, some songs were released on a DVD, called "Live 1984-1985." Most of this comes from the radio broadcast, but at least one song comes from the DVD.

To be honest, the Cars stayed very close to the studio versions for all the songs here, and there's absolutely no banter between songs whatsoever. But still, one can hear they put on a flawless concert. And this would be a good album to play at a party, because it's hit after hit after hit, pretty much all with a driving beat.

This album is an hour and 14 minutes long.

01 Hello Again (Cars)
02 It's Not the Night (Cars)
03 Touch and Go (Cars)
04 Candy-O (Cars)
05 Good Times Roll (Cars)
06 Jimmy Jimmy (Cars)
07 Moving in Stereo (Cars)
08 Just What I Needed (Cars)
09 A Dream Away (Cars)
10 Cruiser (Cars)
11 Drive (Cars)
12 You Might Think (Cars)
13 My Best Friend's Girl (Cars)
14 Magic (Cars)
15 Let's Go (Cars)
16 Heartbeat City (Cars)
17 You're All I've Got Tonight (Cars)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15998809/TCar_1984_ThSummtHoustnTX__9-11-1984_atse.zip.html

Pretty much the only good photo I could find of the band in concert only features lead singer Ric Ocasek. This photo was taken at East Rutherford, New Jersey, in July 1984. Regarding the text, I was struck by the vivid colors in the photo, so typical of the 1980s. (Think "Miami Vice.") So I tried to keep that up with the font type and colors.

The Cars - B'Ginnings, Schaumburg, IL, 7-1978

The Cars were one of the biggest new wave bands. So it's rather surprising to me that they never released an official live album. There has been one such album, "Live at the Agora 1978," but it was only a limited release for Record Store Day in 2017. This is from the same year as that, and has most of the same songs, but in my opinion this actually is superior, with better sound quality.

The Cars had a pretty slick sound that they perfected for their studio recordings. But that doesn't mean they were worthless live. I was particularly interested in hearing a concert from the start of their career, when they were young and hungry and had more of a raw, bar band sound. 

This concert took place one month after the release of their debut album, simply titled "The Cars." That was a great album, and even the band members themselves informally called it their "greatest hits" album, because every song on it was a hit, or could have been a hit. But one of the most interesting things here is that they played a few songs that are good but didn't make that album, or any later one: "Night Spots," "When You Gonna Lay Me Down," "Take What You Want," "Hotel Queenie," and "Somethin' Else." That last song is a cover of a 1950s classic. It wasn't sung by either of the band's usual two lead singers, Ric Ocasek and Ben Orr. Instead, it was a very rare lead vocal by the band's lead guitarist, Elliott Easton.

I listened to samples from a handful of Cars bootlegs from 1977 and 1978. All of them are soundboards, but this one sounded the best to me. Like I said above, it actually sounds better than the official album from this time period. However, there was one problem: the vocals were too low in the mix, in my opinion. So I used the UVR5 audio editing program to boost them. I boosted the vocals for the banter between songs even more.

There were three songs on the Agora album that weren't played at this show, so I added those at the end. Also, I don't know the exact date of the show. If you do, please let me know so I can fix that.

This album is 57 minutes long. It's only 47 minutes long if you don't include the three songs at the end from the Agora show.

01 talk (Cars)
02 Good Times Roll (Cars)
03 talk (Cars)
04 Bye Bye Love (Cars)
05 Night Spots (Cars)
06 talk (Cars)
07 My Best Friend's Girl (Cars)
08 Moving in Stereo (Cars)
09 talk (Cars)
10 Don't Cha Stop (Cars)
11 When You Gonna Lay Me Down (Cars)
12 talk (Cars)
13 You're All I've Got Tonight (Cars)
14 Just What I Needed (Cars)
15 talk (Cars)
16 Take What You Want (Cars)
17 talk (Cars)
18 Hotel Queenie (Cars)
19 I'm in Touch with Your World (Cars)
20 All Mixed Up (Cars)
21 Somethin' Else (Cars)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15634175/TCar_1978_BGnningsSchaumbrgIL__7-1978_atse.zip.html

I couldn't find any good color photos of the band in concert in 1978. So I picked one from a concert in Hyannis, Massachusetts, in August 1980.

Ric Ocasek - Solo Acoustic- Spinhouse, New York City, 10-14-2005

I already posted the gist of this album back in 2020. But today I'm deleting that and posting this instead because I've changed most of the music. I found a new source that makes up the bulk of it, causing me to change the name as well. Before, the album was only 23 minutes long, but now it's a more respectable 35 minutes (not including the bonus track.)

Ric Ocasek was the main songwriter and lead singer for the Cars, although Ben Orr had a prominent role too. I found some YouTube videos of Ocasek playing songs in the solo acoustic format. This really intrigued me. For one thing, I really enjoy acoustic versions in general (as you've probably noticed if you follow this blog). But while I like how the Cars produced their songs, it was definitely a heavily produced almost "wall of sound" approach. So acoustic versions are a drastic and interesting contrast.

All the performances here are unreleased. All of them were performed in front of audiences. However, there's virtually no banter between songs.

Ocasek very rarely played in the solo acoustic format, so I had to bring together some songs from very different years. The first song is from 1992, the next two are from 1997, and the rest are from 2005. But in my opinion, there's no way to tell, due to the simple solo acoustic format. Plus, Ocasek's voice hardly changed at all. All the 2005 songs (tracks 4 through 10) come from the single performance mentioned in the title.

In 2005, he released his last studio album, "Nexterday." Three of the songs - "Bottom Dollar," "Carousel," and "Crackpot" - are from that. "People We Know" and "Time Bomb" are from his 1997 solo album "Troublizing." The rest are Cars songs.

The bonus track, "Since You're Gone," is a bonus track because it sounds a lot rougher than the rest. It's from an audience bootleg at a club, and you can hear lots of talking and ambient noise all through it. But I thought it was interesting enough to at least merit bonus track status.

01 Just What I Needed (Ric Ocasek)
02 People We Know (Ric Ocasek)
03 Time Bomb (Ric Ocasek)
04 Moving in Stereo (Ric Ocasek)
05 Bottom Dollar (Ric Ocasek)
06 Carousel (Ric Ocasek)
07 Crackpot (Ric Ocasek)
08 I'm Not the One (Ric Ocasek)
09 My Best Friend's Girl (Ric Ocasek)
10 Drive (Ric Ocasek)

Since You're Gone (Ric Ocasek)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15505782/RicOcask_2005_SoloAcoustcSpnhouseNewYrkC__10-14-2005_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo of Ocasek comes from a concert at the CBGB's club in New York City in 2005. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any acoustic music from that performance.