Just What I Needed (Not!)

If Ric Okasek decided to get the original Cars back together and tour, the chances that I would go see the show would be about point-five percent.

Like most people who went to college in the 80s, the Cars were certainly a part of the soundtrack of my life. I was never a huge fan, but I owned many of their albums on vinyl, and generally liked most of their songs. But I saw them in concert a couple times, and was underwhemed both times. They were a studio pop band, and to me it just never translated very well to the stage.

So add 25 years, and how does their music hold up? Not very well. You know how I know this? It's the age of the IPod. I have 1000+ songs on my IPod. I have made quite the effort to round out my primary music of choice (postpunk, power pop, and alternative country) with good tunes and even guilty pleasures from every other genre. So in addition to The Replacements, Old-97's, and Fountains of Wayne, my IPod contains everything from Dean Martin to the Monkees to Duran Duran. I even have a Tom Jones song, a Tony Orlando and Dawn song and a couple Neil Diamond songs. Yet I have not a single Cars song.

Now to some degree that is probably an oversight, but their stuff just does not hold up very well.

So what would be less interesting than a reuinted Cars tour? How about The New Cars. What a ridiculous concept! Ric Okasek was smart enough to sit this one out, but original guitarist Elliot Easton and keyboardist Greg Hawkes must have needed some cash bad, so they hooked up with Todd Rundgren, a relic of an even earlier era, and a couple other members of his band to go on tour as The New Cars.

Now who the hell would go to see this? If there were still any diehard Cars fans, why would they go to a show without Ric Okasek? It's friggin crazy. The best people could hope for, I guess, would be for them to roll out Todd's one hit "Hello It's Me" a song that probably actually holds up better than any of the Cars songs.