TS: Ric Ocasek vs. Benjamin Orr

It's a tough call. I've been thinking about this all weekend. I'll go with Orr (he had the nicer voice, and his songs were just as good as Ocasek's, perhaps more consistently good). A side note: Why do all the best rock 'n' roll identity-crises (Madonna, Dylan, Rocket from the Tombs) come from the Midwest?

Interesting question - what if Ocasek sang "Just What I Needed", "Bye Bye Love", "Candy-O", "Let's Go", "You Can't Hold On Too Long", and "Down Boys"? I'm curious as to whether he didn't want to or whether he was persuaded not to. If the former is the case then that a) makes Orr Daltrey-esque b) reinforces suspicions about those opaque lyrics. If the latter, then he was smart to take the advice because he still comes out of it looking better as a)he probably would've sounded really shitty doing above-mentioned songs, and b)trying to imagine Orr singing "You're All I've Got Tonight", "Good Times Roll", "Double Life", "Got a Lot on My Head", "Dangerous Type" or "Misfit Kid" is painful, he would've just ruined them. Maybe I'm going too much by a) writer credits and b) the fact that 'The Lace' kind of sucked. Have to think about this some more...

Orr didn't produce Suicide or Jonathan Richman records.

Ocasek wins!

also: moore vs. ranaldo (the experimentalist noize-boi vs. the moody deadhead)

I still can't tell Ocasek/Orr apart.

Very tangentially related (ask Paulina), but in the book 'Kiss and Sell' it says there was alot of tension between Simmons and Stanley at one point as Simmons was seen with all these A-list celebrities like Diana Ross and Cher, while Stanley was out'n'about with bit players from 'Knots Landing' and 'General Hospital', not to mention all the gay rumours about him

I liked Orr way better, though it is amazing how well he could do Ocasek. I always thought "Let's Go" was Ocasek on lead vox until I saw the video.

ah yes, Cher and Diana Ross, those icons of heterosex

I thought "Drive" was blech at the time, I guess it's ok now but I like the edgy, nervous stuff better, hence Ocasek.

Great question, btw.

When you're from the midwest, nothing belongs to you and nothing you do makes any difference. So standing up and being anything is, even when you pull it off, pretty ridiculous. Rather than rising up in a scene/culture/system that surrounds you, you live w the knowledge that it all comes from Somewhere Else. Fame = urban, you = not. For talented folks like JBR mentioned above, it must have been so galling to read/watch/listen and see how simple and transparent it was, to live with your good ideas ringing in your ears and not be able to act on them unless you up and left.

But maybe it's that Prot work ethic thing again, "worldly goods," "my public stature is something I DID, not something I AM, so I'll do what I like with it." (Louise Ciccone is Catholic I know but climate trumps theology)

haha g--ff I'm East Coast born and raised; they've got magnet schools for people like me.

Good question, JBR: in retrospect, it seems like vocally they're both doing late-'70s Iggy ("that's right, I did the Iggy!"), with Orr's generally running lukewarm -- I often found his "hotter" vox oddly stressed and out of context, like Shatner line readings ("you don't easily get -- a-MUSED!" at the end of "Cruiser" stands out as I'm typing this) -- and Ocasek's ice cold.

Related question: other than "Drive" (which stands out for me as the most atypical song in their repertoire, so I can believe it's written by someone else even if it wasn't), did Orr write any other lyrics for the band? I recall hearing some of his solo singles and being really underwhelmed by the lyrics, so I always assumed Ric wrote all the Cars stuff (lyrically, if not musically). True or false?

Urgent delivery with robotic backing makes me nuts (in a good way); "Cruiser" is a stand-out track on Shake it Up. Just saying.

True, fellow Sean: "Cruiser" is indeed a fine tune, and the tension between cryptic borderline-nonsense lyrics and rockstar emoting is savory -- I just sometimes question the words/syllables that Orr chose to convey those emotions. Makes me wonder, "how much did he and Ric ever talk about these tunes?" Coming out of Ocasek's mouth, they rarely sounded anything other than numbed and vaguely wounded; on the other hand, it doesn't seem like they ever said "oh, let's give Ben the [happy/rockin/sensitive] tunes" -- lyrically, they all scan pretty much the same...

chicken counters fill your bowls!

Hmm. Asking myself, "which syllable/word in the above line would *I* stress to convey the emotion and urgency therein?" Then wondering whether I'm talking out of my ass (or at least whether Ocasek was). You've gotta give props to Orr, he could take a line like "Sucker punch is in your heart" and make it deathlessly cool.

Otcasek and Orzechowski were actually both from Cleveland. So added to being from the Midwest they also had the ethnicky thing going on. (David Thomas - "The West Side was all black and bohemian and the East Side [I might be confusing these - making a mistake by the 'Mistake' as it were!] was all Polish and Eastern European. Of course we started off hanging out in the West Side but then we found out that the East Side was cooler!")If pop music fans are supposed to be smarter than sports fans, then how come you can be a famous athlete with a ridiculous name but it's gotta be some Anglo-Celtic two-syllable thing that fits on a licence plate to get somewhere? Names like Presley, Wilson, Lewis etc would be riding pine for any team all season simply due to being forgotten. Now, Zimmerman, Feld, Erdelyi, those are cover-star names! Also Warhola, cuz the visual-arts bunch is supposed to be smarter even than the pop fans.
This begs the question as to why they left Cleveland (THE place for early-70s misfits who found Detroit a bit too 'mainstream' for them) for Boston. Maybe the guy from the Electric Eels beat them up or something. Who knows, but an odd choice, the symbol of the Olde America where ppl with 27-letter names would be designated as local color at best. (The place where the actual Rich White People do the stuff that gets the 27-letter ppl tarred with the same brush so they grow old and bitter and sit around playing weird card games and eating stuff that looks like it was dug up out of a cistern and moaning about how the country's going to hell before going bowling.)
Whatever, maybe they had some friends there or they wanted to see David Robinson's porno collection, but the stuff they came out with definitely followed the pattern of ppl wanting to appropriate some idea of cool/culture (the 'Midwesterner' thing) and finding out that it's not really all that great and neither are the ppl, but you can't record songs saying "You're all a bunch of brain-dead pretentious cretins and this whole scene is a big circle jerk with worse drugs" cuz a) you'll just be setting yourself up for (yet)more snickers and b) there's still a lurking benefit-of-doubt that maybe you're just not getting it ["surely the engine of pop culture cannot be this hamster-treadmill-powered hot-air machine that I've just seen? Huh? That just squirted hot antifreeze all over my leg?"]. Problem 2 is pop is supposed to at least pay lip service to some idea of authenticity, and how can you do that when your weird name and vacuum background mean that nobody is going to 'relate'/'verify authenticity>>>give a fuck? Solution - like Zimmerman and Warhola and (different set of outsider credentials) Feld and Dave whoever-the-fuck from Brazen Hussies, be all gnomic and enigmatic and contradictory and ambiguous and sometimes sci-fi (like writers of earlier generations like Asimov, van Vogt, Kornbluth) The double-O's have a licence to kill cuz alienation is the craze when you lead a double life. ("You wear those eyes that never blink/ You always were the missing link"! Take that media whores!)

(Besides "Double Life" I think they also got, well if not 'explicit', at least acknowledging what they might have been 'feeling' with the "Misfit Kid"/"Down Boys" sequence on 'Panorama'. The first (sung by Ocasek) is smug and self-referential in a way that makes you kind of root for the country hick who's taken all the city slickers ("all-American" Mr Porizkova?), taken at a leisurely tempo, the second (Orr) is a stream of condescending putdowns, combined effect of which is like having one of those dreams where you're wandering around with no pants on, unless you actually like doing stuff like that. Caricature? Nagging inner voice? Reminder of the penalty of failing, ie the voices you hear when you fail in the big city and move back home? It's made even more complicated by the fact that Orr sounds both flatter and more insistent than usual simultaneously (unusually for such pristine producers his voice actually breaks into that atonal 'screech' that hurts yr throat at times - which Ocasek's does in "Gimme Some Slack" too!) In any case, "MF"'s "I'm on the inside" is a fitting chorus, and I take it to mean that it's no small thing to even know there's an 'inside' and 'outside' in the first place!

It's a tough call, so I'm kinda grateful I don't give a shit. The Cars are a'ight, but frankly most of the time I'm not even sure which guy is singing (VH1 Classic has proved my guesses wrong numerous times).

Re Ocasek/regional identification/ethnic-outsider identification/creative-outsider identification: Curiously, one of the only times Ocasek ever drops his crypto-guard and lets the bon temps rouler (as it were) (ok, I don't speak French or nuthin, I'm just remembering a popular local catchphrase from the five minutes your humble third-generation Ashkenazomutt-American misfit-kid narrator lived in the fratboy-Epcot vomit sewer that was early-'90s New Orleans) is during the melancholy powerballad "Since You're Gone," when for the briefest instant he does a HILARIOUS (as it were) send-up of R. Zimmerman ("yerrrr so treacher-REHHHHHSSSSSS," with the familiar nasal upturn that sounds like the whirr of a cheap food processor sputtering into action).

(heh - that line reminds me of Tom Petty, everyone's OTHER favorite bar-band-filed-under-Noo-Wave (even more inexplicably, as the Floridians didn't even bother changing their clothes or buying a synth, until "You Got Lucky" which is mysteriously the exact same song as "Touch and Go", kind of like the solo debut "Don't Come Around Here No More" is the same I-IV-V as Ocasek solo "Emotion in Motion", both of which were big hits because bar-band>new-wavers were pretty rare in their amazing ability to reinvent themselves even bigger as MTV stars when that whole thing happened, unlike the bar bands who stayed hockey arena bar bands)(c'mon Petty haterz "You Got Lucky" is a really great song! [every time I say a song from 78-83 or thereabouts is 'really great' Americans always say "well I got sick of it years ago they play it on the radio 78 times idea" but I haven't BEEN over there in a decade so how would I know!] The lyric is pretty audacious in its essence d'unstilled tete du viande and the guitar is a great Elliot Easton rip on top of aforementioned synth)

(re 'classic rock radio', right now I'm in a net cafe where the last three songs they played on the inoffensive-for-cafes LCD station were "Theme from S'Express", "Circle in the Sand" and Tiffany's "I Saw Him Standing There". Now I imagine most ILX'rs in North America would say "That sounds PRETTY FUCKIN' GREAT. What the FUCK is he complaining about, London sounds like 'Heaven on Earth' heh heh." Actually now that you mention it I suppose it's alright, I was about to say "I'd just love to hear "Double Vision" or something for once" but then, I suppose there's always my stereo for that! heh heh)

it's been a long time since i've listened to the cars. this thread is making me kinda sorta want to do it again. even if just for the sociological insights.

amazing, too, that in some ways the cars were even more robotic than the self-styled noo-wave robotniks like ralf und florian, and messrs. numan, mothersbaugh and oakley. and nothing is more alien than an android or a wax dummy with a mullet (see video for "drive.")

"Orzechowski." geez, that makes my name seem pronounceable in comparison thereto!

and where would the cars have gotten their robot schtick from, anyway? i guess everything gets back to bowie, eno and kraftwerk as far as that schtick goes (and esp. for the aforementioned messrs. numan and oakley). still, it wasn't as if the electric eels or rocket from the crypt, or jonathan richman (from whose modern lovers one of the cars came) were some sort of proto-showroom dummies.

(jbr: it's a little late to correct this but I meant to say "like the ones JBR mentioned above," [who doesn't know you're from nyc?] but I bet you knew that and were bein funny in which case haha.)

secret to success of You Got Lucky: when I was trying to teach myself guitar in college, I got some tab for YGL. Someone wandered by and wondered why I was playing the theme from the Young and the Resltess.

it starts with the same three letters!

zing?

Orr v. Oocasek = chalk and cheese. Orr , a smoother more tradional voice , Ocasek is less than that to me. So whos better? Tough call but im calling it a draw. They both tended to sing very different stuff. Just what i needed could never have been done as well by Ocasek BUT i cant have seen Orr doing Magic or Panorama..... Two great voices two fantastic performers who i cant really compere !

the synth riff from "candy-o" is SO waiting to be stolen or sampled. why hasn't it?

Ocasek. Intentionally or not, he almost always sang the ones I like the best, including my alltime fave "I'm In Touch With Your World."

On an unrelated note, can anyone tell me how to italicize a previous message for the purpose of posting a reply?

Ric Ocasek: produced Bad Brains and Suicide, big-upped the Cure and YMG in 1979 (first time I heard either of those names = radio interview with Ocasek), sang "Moving In Stereo"

Benjamin Orr: sang most of my enduring faves from first three Cars albums: "It's All I Can Do," "All Mixed Up," "Bye Bye Love"

I guess I'd have to go with Ocasek overall, though it's a toss-up within the band itself.

Kathleen Hanna actually did steal a Candy-O riff ("It's All I Can Do") for the Julie Ruin CD.

For overall career performance and contribution to music, the award goes to Ric Ocasek. Aside from writing and singing with the Cars, he's produced some good bands and albums. Orr never contributed, outside the Cars, to anything like Weezer. Ocasek's solo albums are better. "Quick Change World" is solid, an "Beautitude" might be the best of the Cars side projects. In the Cars, Orr sang some great songs. "Bye, Bye Love" is undervalued, "Let's Go" is classic, "JWIN" is essential, "Drive" is "Titanic"; but for all those, there is a lesser known Cars song that Ric put over, like "Misfit Kid", "Nightspots", "Touch n' Go", "Double Life".

On an unrelated note, can anyone tell me how to italicize a previous message for the purpose of posting a reply?

-- Myonga Von Bontee (scottyfield...), March 4th, 2004 9:03 PM

Geez, these people who don't know how to italicize....

"Emotion in Motion" vs "Stay the Night."

I'll take "Stay the Night."

Ben Orr was the better singer while Ric Ocasek was (is) the better songwriter. Hard choice, but I think I'll pick Ocasek.

I can tell most of you aren't cars fans. Yes Ric was a great songwriter but Ben was the cars. The guy was golden, most of you would be surprised by what songs he sang. He should have sang 90% of the cars songs but Ocasek had a little bit of jealousy towards him and didn't give him many. Ben being the humble and good man he was didn't fight for more even though he sang over 40% of the songs. This group was one of the best of all times and it was a shame they broke up.

love ben's voice as much as ric's.
this IS tough...as they sorta have the best songs equally betwixt them...
i guess it's ric o. based on just producing the Blue album and for essentially being the 'face' of the Cars...
that's not good reasoning, but hey.

This is a secretly genius thread.

I like both singers, Orr though takes the prize, he sang quite possibly the most emotional song ever made, Drive, and also, I thought, has a great solo album, The Lace, even though the only real way to hear it is download it (or pay $80 for it on Ebay), but there are some REALLY good songs on it besides Stay The Night, re: When You're Gone and The Lace, he has a certain softness to his voice that makes him top 10 singers ever, while Ocasek had a certain edge to his singing that was the Cars, Orr was something more, he was the voice of the genre.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Orr didn't write ANYTHING for the Cars. He may have been the secret ingredient that made the band classic as opposed to minor 80s new wavers, but Orr alone would never even have registered.

I love "Stay the Night" even though it's pretty generic. So is "Emotion in Motion," I suppose.

I do know this, even with everyone arguing between Orr/Ocasek, both are way better than Rundgren, I saw "The New Cars" last night on Leno and he was straight up bad singing "Good Times Roll".

I went thru Jr. High and High School(1976-1981) listening to 'The Cars' and followed them until they went their separate ways in '87. Take it from an 'old' fk'g fan who saw them LIVE 4X, the last being the 'Heartbeat City' tour @ the "Meadowlands" in New Jersey July '84...both Benjamin Orr & Ric Ocasek were the perfect voice for each of the songs they sang so I think Orr vs. Ocasek should NOT be something up for discussion. Credit should be given to the band for recognizing what made it work for them...I wonder if THEY wondered who was the better singer!! Great writing by Ric, great bass by Ben and GREAT singing by both. RIP Ben!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah, but which one was better looking? Discuss.

WHO CARES???