Not that they sat entirely on their laurels. The band continued to record as a unit and on solo projects. They also worked on other musicians projects. Ric produced the Peter Dayton Band. Greg Hawkes played on those sessions, and on other Boston band recordings as well. And hell, they almost all chased down gorgeous models to marry- and that takes time and energy, y'know. Ric is still producing- last year he did Jonathan Richman's eleventh album, even convincing Jojo to let him overdub guitars and electronic keyboards, perhaps a Richman studio first (though Andy Paley may have done some piano playing on his 80's production of Jonathan). Jonathan was very happy with the results, as was drummer Tommy Larkin, Jonathan's "band".

I have only one real Cars story, beyond the fact that every now and then Ric Ocasek would drop into the Record Garage, that legendary guitar store in Harvard Square that was the real start of my musical career. One day I noticed that besides the dune buggy mirror on this guy's Gibson SG was a Pseudo Carol stamp. Carol, who played for the Rentals, had taken these pictures where she was wearing just a nazi helmet and a bra fashioned from a pair of doll heads connected by chain; one head was white, the other black. "Hey, isn't that Pseudo Carol?", I asked the guy, and he said "Yeah- she gave me one of these when I noticed one on her guitar and asked about it". We talked for a few minutes about what a trip Carol was, and how we'd both been at the wild Harvard Square Theater show the when Rentals opened for Bo Diddley and the Clash (!), and I asked this friendly-but-kinda-odd guy, who looked like he'd been stretched on some alien rack device, who he played for. "The Cars", he says. "I just heard your record- it's great!" says I, "Thanks" says he...end of story. But that's not my Cars story. By the way, I eventually ran into Carol and she gave me four stamps (or a block, as stamp collectors would say), which I carried in my wallet for 20 years, until they were lost with all my other pictures in Columbus, Ohio.

What happened was this...the Cars LP took off so fast, and it must have been unexpected to face playing these enormous rooms all of a sudden, especially trying to recreate the dense, Roy Thomas Baker production, with all it's track layering (Baker was one of the pioneers of the technique of building up sounds- especially vocal tracks -by using an entire extra tape machine...24 or more tracks synced to the first 24...to record layers of overdubbed vocals, then flying the whole collection back to two stereo tracks for a thick, chorused effect). Queen, another Baker act, had finally thrown in the towel on recreating Baker's magic on "Bohemian Rhapsody" live, when I saw them at the Orpheum they were using a tape machine for playback during the complex operatic vocal section, with the band coming in on the rock section after "Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me...". The band Boston would face a similar problem on their first tour, when the first few shows were decidedly less-than-stellar recreations of the dense Tom Scholtz production of the LP. Both the Cars and Boston used the same solution: they retired to the Cambridge Music Complex to rehearse their asses off.

At this time I was alternating between the Record Garage and the music store that owner Jack Griffin had set up over at the Cambridge Music Complex, on Alewife Brook Parkway. I worked some days with Peter Lembo, who would later ecome the Stompers manager, and some days on my own. Jack, who also owned the Complex itself, had come up with an idea to set up a sound stage just for big bands, and Boston had rented it out exclusively for quite some time. Jack decided to find another room for the same purpose, and with that in mind got a lease on the disco next to the Aku Aku Chinese Restaurant, just across the street from the Complex and the Rindge Ave. housing projects. Jack wanted someone to work the door there, to keep out groupies and rabid fans and non-approved drug dealers. So i got my first shift babysitting the Stranglers when they came in from the UK, eager to break the US market. That was cool, although they weren't too friendly. My next mission was a month or so later, when the Cars booked in for extensive rehearsals. That was a blast. I already liked the band, and they were a lot more friendly. Eliot Easton had a huge collection of guitars, almost all specially made for him as he was a leftie. I recognized one as a copy of a red Les Paul Mary Ford model, a super-rare guitar that my friend and co-worker Billy Cole owned at the time (now owned by Rick Risti...I had it for a week and returned it 'cuz it wouldn't hold tune for me, something I'll always regret). We got to talking guitars, and Easton pulled out a little pipe and got me thoroughly stoned, demonstrating how he got his sounds through a stereo combination of Lab solid-state amps and another tube rig- Marshall maybe? He literally pulled out all his guitars...like, a dozen of them, showing how he got this tone and that, for this solo or that. I felt bad that the band sounded really rough compared to the records, but then considering the recorded sound who wouldn't?

Ben Orr and significant other at a party in 1975, probably at the Reddy Teddy "Mansion" in Alston.

RIGHT: John Jules of Foxpass, Willie "Loco" Alexander and Matthew MacKenzie (Reddy Teddy) share a laugh and a brewski.The shy fellow highlighted in the circular inset in the background is the Cars' bass player Benjamin Orr.