![]() It lead to perhaps the evening’s greatest moment, when singer Kay Hanley led the crowd through a singalong of their wonderful cover of Nick Lowe’s “Cruel to be Kind” - a really warm and quite inspiring thing to be a part of. As it happens, the power was down for a large stretch of Sunset, so nobody nearby was to blame. They opened with a lively rendition of the title track from 1997’s Go!, then into “Awake” from 1995’s Wholesale Meats and Fish, then an impressive “4 Leaf Clover” from the more recent Back to Nebraska EP (2016).Īnd then, with a terribly unfortunate twist of fate, the lights went off. There’s a reason we had them on the cover, and that reason is there are few better live bands on the circuit in Los Angeles right now.Īs for Letters to Cleo, things certainly started brightly enough. While Alex Dezen and the rest of the band performed their musical duties with masterful aplomb, Bollinger seemingly covered every inch of the massive stage (and some of the crowd space too) as Broken Baby blasted through magnificent tunes like “Manic Panic,” “Get the Piss Up” and “Madonna’s a Dick.” Thank you x 1000 Ric Ocasek.That was very much the case at the Roxy. I also feel lucky that I live in a time where a freakishly tall and skinny mysterious oddball with a weird voice was once the sexiest rock star on Earth. With Ric’s death, I’m reminded of all these delicious, transforming moments in my life that this man and his music had a hand in, both directly and indirectly. It’s easily the best video of our career. Much to our happy surprise, the song turned out so well that we made a video for it with Chris Applebaum. The Cars’ legendary keyboard player Greg Hawkes accepted the invitation to join us in the studio and play on the track. There was something about this assignment that made us all care more than we usually did, even about our own compositions. It was a terrifying prospect on a few levels, but for me as a singer, trying to somehow do justice to a song like that, translating from Ric’s disembodied baritone surrealism through my white alternagirl soprano, the challenge was to make something that didn’t sound like a novelty. Unlike my comically bad guess about the sound of The Cars, Ric Ocasek the guy was exactly what I thought he’d be: kind, generous, humble, knowledgeable, tall.Ī year or so later we were asked to record “Dangerous Type” for a film called The Craft. At that moment he was having a triumphant second act as Weezer’s collaborator/producer on their monster debut. ![]() “Are you Letters To Cleo?” he asked, and after we briefly ascended, we wound up talking to him for a bit. In 1995, Letters To Cleo was recording at Oceanway in Los Angeles when Ric Ocasek stopped short in our studio doorway. My band Letters To Cleo, being from Boston, was asked about The Cars a lot and we happily embraced any and all connections people wanted to draw. It wasn’t until I wound up traveling around in a band of my own that I realized how much of a link people made specifically between The Cars and Boston. To me, The Cars were one of the biggest bands in the world and I loved them, a general opinion shared by anyone with ears and a brain. ![]() However, I was able to cobble together a very decent Cars collection by hovering next to the stereo speakers with my tape recorder, switching between stations and waiting for the DJ to announce the song I was waiting for so I could press the record and play buttons. My mom was pretty strict about what albums I could own so I basically didn’t own any until well into my teens. Soon after, I started listening to WBCN and its rival station WCOZ (Kickass Rock n’ Roll!) and finally found out what I was missing. Being a fan of The Captain & Tennille and Pink Floyd's “Another Brick In The Wall” at the time, I was not even close. I was afraid to ask Margaret to play The Cars for me, so I made up an 11-year-old’s fantasy version of what the music would sound like. I was drawn in and repelled by it at the same time she looked like a bad girl from another place, and I wanted to be a nun and never leave Dorchester. One day, The Cars was facing out of the stack and I was transfixed, staring at the happy lady with shiny red lips behind the wheel every time I went over. ![]() My friend Margaret’s older sister had a stack of LP’s leaning against the living room stereo that I’d often glance at casually as a passerby does a sidewalk newsstand. I discovered the Cars initially through the cover of the band's debut album, before I’d ever heard a note of the actual music. ![]()
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