The Cars - Panorama

Oddly this wasn't the record I had intended to write about ... I was pulling out Heartbeat City and Panorama came out at the same time. So being me, I played both. It was strange and my reaction was backward to what I remembered. Back in the day it was Heartbeat City that I played to death ... I mean I had their other albums and they were good, but man oh man to 21-year-old me Heartbeat City was far and away their best album.

I hadn't actually played Heartbeat City end to end for a long time, and while I still thought it was great, it was Panorama that felt fresh. It was the drums. David Robinson had a way with his fills and his tom toms jumped out of the speakers. They were fat and demanded attention. He didn't overdo it and not every song needed extra fills. Heartbeat City by comparison was mainly Fairlight programming but it was cool at the time.

Panorama was the band's third album and the critics were savage. Without a Toto album to crucify they went after The Cars. And boy howdy they were merciless. Now to be fair, there were a couple who seemed to get it, but mostly it was blood in the water.

I had Panorama, and I always liked it, and there were some songs I really liked. Elliot Easton's little songs within a song are often wee nuggets of awesomeness that push things over the top. Now I'll be the first to admit this is not the band's best album, but it's way better than I remembered.

Like the band's first two records, this one was produced by Roy Thomas Baker. Who to me always seemed to be the perfect fit for excess and technology. I suspect he came on board after finishing up Alice Cooper's 1980 release Flush the Fashion. The Cars fully embraced new wave on Panorama. The songs were quirky, bordering on experimental while still maintaining Ric Ocasek's penchant for catchy pop. To those who wanted a band to pick a lane, it was a frustrating record. The Cars were trying to balance whether they were an alternative or commercial band and somehow managed to alienate both sides in the process.

Panorama is full of really good songs, particularly the first side where you get the album's singles:

"Touch and Go"
"Gimme Some Slack"
"Don't Tell Me No"

The deeper album cuts are so good too:

"Panorama"
"Misfit Kid"
"Down Boys"

While I've always liked The Cars, they were always a band I liked in small doses. You know, the catchy songs and singles were great but there was something tiring about listening to an entire album. I really did enjoy most of the songs here but after playing it through a few times that was enough. Which seems to contradict the enjoyment I got when hearing so many of the songs. Mathematically it doesn't make sense, I get it. I'm as befuddled as you are by this weird flip flop. The sum of the parts is less than the whole.

However, that hasn't stopped me from collecting most of The Cars discography. When I talk about the band I'll always say they're awesome.

Go figure.

Styx - Paradise Theater

Styx was hands down one of my favourite bands as a kid. They were a strange band, even back then. They were a hard rock band, almost progressive at times, who had a penchant for sucky ballads. I know there's a tendency for people to zero in on "Babe" as the song that killed the band's credibility. The roots go way back to almost the beginning when Styx released "Lady" on their second album. It showed a side to the band that needed to be kept in check, and for the most part the band kept things on a pretty tight leash. The band had been setting a gruelling pace, releasing an album a year (two in 1972) and by the time they released Paradise Theater (if I end up writing theatre later it's because that's how we spell it here) in 1981 they'd dropped ten albums in less than a decade. I snapped this up as soon as I saw it, and it became a fixture on my turntable. Like the band had announced on "Borrowed Time" from 1979's Cornerstone , ...

David Baerwald - Bedtime Stories

The little sticker on the shrinkwrap says, "You may remember David Baerwald from David & David's Boomtown ..." You bet, I remembered David Baerwald. Back in 1986 Boomtown was an album with moments of sheer brilliance. The whole album may not have been as top shelf as the first few tracks, but that didn't matter - it is an excellent album. I waited for a follow-up ... and waited, and then in 1990 it was a solo David, David Baerwald, who dropped Bedtime Stories . I snapped it up. "All For You," the opening cut, is still my favourite song on the album. It was mesmerizing. I'm not sure if the song got any airplay, it may have, but that may have been wishful thinking on my part as it was on a lot of mix tapes at the time and I heard it a lot in the car. The CD had a great booklet with all of the musician credits and lyrics. Oddly, when I found a sealed copy of the record (a great score), it just had a plain paper insert - the picture of David walking wit...

Gary Numan - The Pleasure Principle

"Cars" was really the only song I knew by Gary Numan. I knew the name of the album the song came from. Over the years bits and pieces of trivia are accumulated, but in terms of his music it was still distilled down to one song ... It would be too easy to write Mr. Numan off as a one hit wonder, and I suppose in terms of actual chart hits this was his defining moment as a solo artist. Of course this really means nothing, as Gary Numan would drop an album a year pretty much through to the end of the '80s. He'd then slow down a little but continued to make music. While The Pleasure Principle was Gary Numan's debut solo release in '79, he actually cut his teeth on a couple of albums in a band called Tubeway Army, first with the band's self-titled release in 1978, and then on Replicas that came out in April of '79. By the end of Tubeway Army's run most of the band would follow Gary into his solo career. Paul Gardiner, who had been with Gary from the b...

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