The New Cars takes act on the road

The refurbished Cars includes singer Todd Rundgren.
By JOHN BENSON
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
You can be assured there is nothing even remotely punk rock about rock band The Cars.
However, when the group arrived on the scene in the late '70s, the music press wasn't quite sure how to pigeonhole the skinny-tie-wearing outfit so it was lumped into, well, punk rock.
But that didn't last as there were a number of bands that were decidedly different from the Sex Pistols and its peers.
This led to a new rock genre, called the new wave movement.
"I guess we sort of weren't really punk or in with the punk rockers but I don't know," said keyboardist Greg Hawkes. "It was sort of the beginning of what I guess what was, for better or worse, termed the new wave. There was us, Talking Heads, Blondie, Devo, The Police."
Amongst the aforementioned list of bands, arguably The Cars -- Hawkes, Ric Ocasek, Ben Orr (from Cleveland), Elliot Easton and Dave Robinson -- was the biggest commercially with a decade's worth of charting singles and platinum albums.
By the late '80s, the band split, with its members pursuing solo careers with little fanfare. Ocasek, who married model Paulina Porizkova, has become a highly sought-after rock producer, working with bands such as No Doubt, Weezer, Bad Religion and Hole.
Thoughts of reunion
Whispers of a full-fledged reunion of The Cars were silenced in 2000 when Orr passed away from cancer. Still, some of the band members -- Hawkes and Easton -- weren't ready to say goodbye to the band's popular catalog just yet. And considering the success of such retro-sounding acts as The Killers and Interpol, the timing appeared right.
Without a singer -- Ocasek apparently had little interest in pulling the hits out of the garage for another spin -- an old voice from the past was approached with an interesting proposition.
"The guys in the original group talked about the possibility on a couple of previous occasions since the band broke up and this last attempt started about two years ago," Hawkes said. "It was really just this past August that we took the step in getting in touch with Todd [Rundgren] and seeing if he'd be interested in this particular project."
What began as an off-the-wall idea quickly came to fruition with the outfit calling themselves The New Cars and writing three new tunes -- "Not Tonight," "Warm" and "More" -- to be featured on a recently released concert album, "It's Alive," which contains a number of Cars hits and two Rundgren songs.
Uncertainty
"I was nervous about it," Hawkes said. "I didn't know how people would respond to it, didn't know how much interest there would be. It was sort of an unknown quantity. I sure didn't think of it as a guaranteed sure thing."
So far, response on the group's initial outing, alongside co-headliners Blondie and billed as the Road Rage Tour 2006, has been warm. You can hear the "Good Times Roll" Sunday at Blossom Music Center. Hawkes said he hopes the new outfit will record a full-length's worth of material soon, but for now he's just pleased to be back on the road.
But what about The Cars' legacy? Considering it's been nearly 30 years since The Cars' 1978 self-titled debut release, the band is eligible for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Hawkes said such an accolade would be fitting but he isn't holding his breath.
"In the overall big picture," Hawkes said, "it doesn't really matter."