THE CARS WENT INTO PANORAMIC EXPERIMENTAL OVERDRIVE

Electric pop rock charttoppers THE CARS recorded five innovative albums between 1978 and 1984, but only four of those five were commercially successful.


The band's experimental outing PANORAMA sunk in the charts badly, it was only marginally salvaged by the minor singles success of the song TOUCH AND GO, which actually is one of the best vocals RIC OCASEK ever performed.


Despite its experimental flavour this song still bears some of the commercial edge that characterised the first two CARS albums. The next closest thing to a hit on PANORAMA that never eventuated is this baby - DOWN BOYS, with lead vocals taken by BENJAMIN ORR.


Generally speaking, my favourite CARS songs are sung by ORR and not OCASEK, who of course wrote all the songs for the band and sung just over half of them.


DOWN BOYS is definitely my favourite song off PANORAMA, a bit more experimental than TOUCH AND GO but trad sounding enough in comparison to the other eight songs. The album in general proved to be an experiment gone wrong for THE CARS and they quickly reverted back to melodic pop rock for their fourth album.