Classic Slice of the Early Eighties

For those of you NOT from Bawstun, The Cars, or the Cahs, as we called them were originally from Boston, Massachusetts.

This band was a big part of the soundtrack to my formative high school years, so when I saw a Cars concert DVD on Netflix, I placed it in my queue. For those not familiar, from 1979 to the mid 80s, The Cars were a quirky pop powerhouse rock n' roll band from my home town, Boston, Massachusetts. This particular DVD captures a very early concert that features all songs from their eponymously titled debut album and Candy - O

The songs In case you don't have that debut Cars album or Candy-O, the songs performed were:

Good Times Roll; Bye Bye Love; Nightspots; I'm In Touch With Your World; My Best Friend's Girl; Candy-O; You're All I've Got Tonight; Take What You Want; Since I Held You; Don't Cha Stop; Just What I Needed.

The Performance
Normally, I would go into a long track by track description, but for this concert thats really not necessary. If you are familiar with the songs of The Cars, you know the songs. (If you are not, listen to some of their albums before getting a live album). The Cars really play the songs like they appeared on the albums. There are no blistering long drawn out guitar solos, no drum solos, no in between song banters, no funny changing of the lyrics, just a straight out play the songs from our records. (and yes, when this concert came out, The Cars albums were released on VINYL, CDs hadn't come of age yet). I saw The Cars once myself back in the 80s, and it was much like this concert. They came out with little fanfare, they performed their songs and went home. I am not saying this to complain about the concert, just to give you the information. The band performs their songs quite well, they have a slighlty rawer edge to them or that could just be the poor sound engineering of this DVD (originally released on VHS). The only way we know the band is playing live is the occasional shots of the audience. Their playing is very competent, it's just that The Cars were not a band to show off or go into an extended jam session when performing live. What you heard on the albums was what they delivered when they performed, and this particular show is no exception. The show lasts about one hour.

Ric Ocasec looks so thin, tall and gawky, he hasn't changed much. Back in the day, I knew all their names, now I only remember Ocasec and Benjamin Orr. Orr looked great, so young, playing the bass guitar. Tragically, Benjamin Orr died on October 3, 2000 of pancreatic cancer. He was only 53. It was Orr and Ocasek who did most of the singing and creative work of The Cars, although Ocasec is the more recognizable face of the band.

Ironically, even though this concert captures the Boson club sound, it was filmed in a club in Germany!

Sound Quality I have to say the Club quality of this performance is really captured. Like the clubs of my youth like the Channel and the Paradise, the sound is tinny and barrel like. Regretablely, small rock clubs in Boston were not designed for acoustics, even though they always had live entertainment. Thus, although I think they did a good job capturing a classic performance here, the sound is not of the calibre of many of todays concert releases. It truly suffers from that bad barrel sound that small clubs sometimes have, nonetheless, it captures the bands sound, and most likely captures how the band sounded in small clubs. By the time I had seen them live, they were filling major venues, I saw them at the Worcester Centrum.

Picture Quality This is VHS quality all the way. Its shot in the 4:3 format, and the images didn't exactly look razor sharp projected onto my 105" movie screen. However the camera work was quite good, and captured the bands facial expressions, guitar playing, drumming and crowd reactions very well.

Extras An interview with the band some 20 years later is included. It was interesting, and was done prior to Ben Orr being ill.

Summary This concert DVD really is a piece of 80s music history, and a good capture of how the band sounded in its hey day in the clubs of Boston. Because of the average to poor sound quality and video quality, and dare I say it, the average performance of the band, (they really were much more of a studio album, not made for live performances), the album gets a solid C or 3 stars.