Down Boys

The Zoo Crew is spinning "Down Boys" tonight, and if you have been riding with the Zoo Freaks for a while you already know this one sits a little off to the side of the big Cars hits. It is not "Just What I Needed," it is not "Let's Go," and it is not "Drive." It is side two of Panorama, the record The Cars put out on Elektra on August 15, 1980, and it is one of those deep cuts that sounds better the longer you live with the album. Ric Ocasek wrote it. Benjamin Orr sings it. Roy Thomas Baker produced it, same man who had already pushed the band through the debut and Candy-O. The track runs a little over three minutes, and if you still have the vinyl, it is the second song on side two, right after "Misfit Kid" and right before "You Wear Those Eyes."

Here is the part the old airchecks never spelled out. "Down Boys" was also the flip side of the "Touch and Go" single, Elektra E-47039, out about ten days after the album. So a lot of folks who bought the 45 because the radio was hammering the single ended up with this sharper little number on the back. The words are pure Ocasek cool-kid arithmetic. Somebody is trying to be cute, and it does not work out. Trying to be charming, and it does not come off. Trying to be clever, a big waste of time. Trying to get rough, and they are still waiting in line. Then the chorus lands like a door closing: you cannot make it with the down boys, they do not hear a word you say, just stay out of their way. Later verses pile on sharp, eternal, smooth, hysterical, trying to be in, and still getting left out. It is an outsider song dressed up as a brush-off, which is pretty much the lane Ocasek liked to drive in.

Panorama was the record where the band quit handing people exactly what they expected. The first album and Candy-O had already sold in the millions. Panorama still jumped into Billboard's Top Five about four weeks after it came out, but the mood was colder, the rhythms less polite, and the stacked Roy Thomas Baker harmonies were pulled back. In a Rolling Stone cover story from that same season, Ocasek shrugged at the idea that a band has to be loved by everybody. He said that denial of love eased his mind, because when he put the work out he already knew some folks would like it and some would not. He did not always like giving people what they expected. Elliot Easton later told interviewers that the "experimental" label was mostly hindsight. At the time it was just that year and that batch of songs. He still loved "Touch and Go." Critics who stuck with the album noticed that "Down Boys," with Orr out front, could have sat comfortably on either of the first two records, a hooky new-wave rocker in the middle of a frostier set. Apple Music's later notes on the album put it plainly: sung by smooth-voiced bassist Ben Orr, "Down Boys" is as strong as anything on Candy-O.

The sessions ran April and May of 1980 at Cherokee in Hollywood and the Power Station in New York. Same five guys who had been the lineup since the end of 1976: Ocasek on rhythm guitar and the other lead voice, Orr on bass and this lead, Elliot Easton on lead guitar, Greg Hawkes on keyboards, David Robinson on drums. Robinson had a hand in the look of the records as well as the beat. If you want the long view of that Elektra run, the band's own site still keeps the Panorama expanded edition up front, bonus tracks and all, including the old B-side "Don't Go to Pieces" and the unreleased "Shooting for You." That page lives at thecars.org.

To get how a song like this showed up in the first place, you have to go back to Cleveland, not Boston. Richard Otcasek, the kid from Baltimore who became Ric Ocasek, caught Benjamin Orzechowski on a local TV showcase, The Big 5 Show, sometime around the mid-1960s. Orr was out front with a band called the Grasshoppers. The two of them started playing together and kept at it through a string of bands that did not stick: the folk outfit Milkwood, which already had Greg Hawkes on keys, then Richard and the Rabbits, then a Boston pop-rock band called Cap'n Swing. Elliot Easton, a Berklee dropout, got talked into Cap'n Swing by the group's soundman. They were popular around town. They were not popular with the industry showcases. After those rooms went cold, they tore the band down and built it back up.

Orr picked up the bass and started splitting the lead vocals with Ocasek. David Robinson, already known from the Modern Lovers, came in on drums and is the one usually credited with the name The Cars. Hawkes came back on keyboards. The first gig under the new name was in December 1976. A couple of months later they cut a demo that included early passes at "Just What I Needed" and "My Best Friend's Girl." Boston DJ Maxanne Sartori put "Just What I Needed" on WBCN, the phones lit up, and Elektra came calling. The debut was cut at AIR Studios in London in February 1978 with Roy Thomas Baker, and from there the band opened for anybody who would have them, including nights Ocasek later said they did not enjoy, like the Styx bills. By the time Panorama arrived they had already done the shell-shock years. Orr told Rolling Stone in 1980 that it had taken two years for the band to come out of that shell, and that what they were doing onstage was still them, just at a pace that felt comfortable.

Ocasek kept the writing. He also kept a simple rule about the microphone. In a later group interview he said if a song needed a good voice, it should be Ben. "Down Boys" is one of those calls. Orr's low, even delivery makes the brush-off sound like a fact instead of a pose. That split, Ocasek's nervous talk-sung cool against Orr's smoother lead, is the whole Cars trick, and it is why a deep cut from the cold album still works on a rock station that likes the long way around the hits. The band ran through Door to Door in 1987, went quiet, lost Orr in 2000, reunited without him for Move Like This in 2011, and lost Ocasek in 2019. The five of them went into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018. The records did not go anywhere.

If you want the band the way the camp keeps it now, the official pages are still easy to find. Facebook is the verified page at facebook.com/TheCars. Instagram is instagram.com/thecars, where they still post Panorama-era notes, including "Gimme Some Slack" from that 1980 album. On X they are @thecarsband. Fans who want a room instead of a press feed have The Cars Forever Fan Club at facebook.com/groups/302364603899509, a long-running group where people still load up Panorama and argue about which side hits harder. The station spinning this one for the Zoo Freaks is THE ZOO. Stay out of the down boys' way, or turn it up. Either one works.