Shoo Be Doo / Candy-O

Hey there, all you Zoo Freaks tuned into THE ZOO, the Zoo Crew's got The Cars rolling right now with that one-two punch of "Shoo Be Doo" sliding straight into "Candy-O" off the Candy-O album. It's one of those seamless album moments where the weird little electronic swirl of "Shoo Be Doo" just dumps you into Benjamin Orr's cool, almost whispered delivery on the title track, and Elliot Easton's guitar comes in like a siren cutting through the night. No big production fanfare, just the band locking in tight the way they always did.

Ric Ocasek wrote the thing and handed the lead vocal to Ben, which was pretty standard for those early records. When folks asked him later if "Candy-O" was some real girl he knew, Ric flat-out said he never knew anyone by that name. Ben cracked a joke right back about how Ric never even told him if there was one. Then there was the time a writer from Trouser Press pressed Ric on whether the "O" stood for Ocasek or Orr, and Ric just deadpanned that it stood for "obnoxious." That dry sense of humor was pure Ric. The song itself never got released as a single in the States, but it became one of those deep cuts the fans kept coming back to, the kind of track that shows up on the live sets and the anthologies because the groove is just that sticky.

The whole Candy-O album has that story behind the cover too. Drummer David Robinson was the guy who handled a lot of the band's visual side, and he was a big collector of those classic pin-up paintings. He tracked down Alberto Vargas, the legendary artist who'd done those Esquire and Playboy girls decades earlier, and somehow talked the old man out of retirement. Vargas was in his eighties, and his great-niece happened to be a Cars fan, which helped seal the deal. They set up a photo shoot at a Ferrari dealership so Vargas would have something to work from, and the model ended up being a woman named Candy Moore. Pure coincidence on the name. The finished painting of her stretched out on the hood became one of those covers that sold records all by itself. Some folks called it sexist back then, but Robinson always said he'd rather talk to anyone who had a problem with an eighty-something-year-old painter's work than get worked up about it. Vargas even showed up at one of the shows later and told Robinson the music wasn't really his thing, but he could tell the band worked hard and he liked seeing all the pretty girls in the crowd.

The Cars themselves came together in Boston after a long stretch of false starts for Ric and Ben. Those two had met years earlier when Ric saw Ben's band on a local Cleveland TV show. They played together in a folk outfit called Milkwood that put out one album nobody bought, then tried a more rock-oriented thing called Cap'n Swing. Guitarist Elliot Easton sat in with them one night and stuck around. Keyboardist Greg Hawkes had already crossed paths with the pair earlier. When the lineup still wasn't quite clicking, Boston DJ Maxanne Sartori suggested they get a better drummer, and that brought in David Robinson from the Modern Lovers. Robinson also suggested the name The Cars, and suddenly the five pieces fit. They weren't a bunch of high school buddies who grew up listening to the same records. They came from different corners of the country and brought different influences, but the chemistry locked in fast once they started playing Ric's songs.

The big break came when they sent a demo of "Just What I Needed" around to the Boston stations. WBCN started spinning it, and the phones lit up. Record companies that had passed on them earlier suddenly showed up asking what label they were already on. They signed with Elektra, headed over to England with Queen producer Roy Thomas Baker, and cut that first album in a couple of weeks. By the time Candy-O came out the following year, they were already a known quantity, but they still pushed back when the label wanted to delay the release. Ric told them if they held the record back, they were holding the band back, and the guys weren't interested in sitting around. They recorded it at Cherokee Studios in Hollywood, dialed back some of the multi-tracked vocal sheen from the debut, and let the band have more of a say in how the songs turned out. Ric would bring in a rough cassette, the five of them would talk it over, and if he got outvoted, the song didn't make the cut. That more open approach is part of why Candy-O still feels like its own thing even while it rides the same sleek new wave groove as the first record.

If you want to dig deeper into the band and the album, the official site is over at thecars.org, where they've got the expanded editions and the old stories from the guys. You can also find them on Facebook at The Cars, Instagram at @thecars, and on X at @thecarsband. There's a solid bunch of longtime fans hanging out in the The Cars Forever Fan Club group too, trading stories and old photos. The Zoo Crew's gonna keep this one spinning for a while, so kick back, crank it up, and let that Easton solo take you wherever it wants to go. You Zoo Freaks know how it is.