Eleven Seven Music
2006
It's Alive
About This Album
It's easy to be skeptical of reunions of classic rock bands, especially when they're lacking such crucial members as the group's two lead singers and songwriters. There have been plenty of embarrassing reunions of this nature -- ranging from Creedence Clearwater Revisited to the David Byrne-less Heads -- so the initial prospect of the Cars getting back together without their frontman and songwriter Ric Ocasek and the deceased Ben Orr doesn't seem enticing, or even logical. But Cars guitarist Elliot Easton and keyboardist Greg Hawkes do something unexpected for the New Cars, their cleverly named reunion of 2006: they hired a strong personality to fill the shoes of Ocasek. They've brought in Todd Rundgren, a pop maverick and chameleon who never quite ran in the same circles as the Cars -- his late-'70s arena rock band Utopia occasionally played shows with the Cars, but he never had the same quirky, nervy new wave sensibility of Ocasek -- to front the band, and he in turn brought in Utopia's bassist Kasim Sulton and Tubes drummer Prairie Prince to fill out the lineup. Rundgren smartly treats this gig as work-for-hire and fits into the requirements of the job instead of trying to bend the Cars to fit his style.
Track List (try tracks 1,5,7,14,16 and 17)

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