Remembering The Cars

Ric Ocasek, the lead singer of The Cars, died this past Sunday; he made it to 75, despite his heart disease. Benjamin Orr, the bass player, died in 2000 of pancreatic cancer. They were the co-founders of The Cars, a band that has special memories for me. About the time I started graduate school in Manhattan (1978), I started working part-time in Greenwich Village at a company that resold collections of books and magazines to libraries and other organizations. I worked in the basement to start with, unpacking the large cartons of books and magazines that were shipped to this company from around the United States. The basement was large, dimly-lit, and packed with boxes. But one memory stands out, and that was that those of us who worked in the basement could listen to the radio, and we did. Two bands stand out in my mind from that time--one of them is The Cars, the other is The Police; their songs got a lot of airplay, and to this day, they remain two of my favorite bands.

I cannot hear their songs without being reminded of that time. I disliked graduate school, but enjoyed my job at this small company. Eventually I made my way up to the office floors, working as an administrative assistant. My boss liked me and I think she would have hired me permanently had I wanted that type of career. But I didn't. In retrospect, who knows? Perhaps I could have been just as happy working in the publishing/book world as I have been in science (at least before it became a bureaucratic world to rival any other). In any case, songs by The Cars and The Police got me through my days, and through that time in my life, which was the beginning of many changes for me, many good, some not. But as always, music got me through the bad times, and The Cars were one of the bands whose songs (still) put me in touch with a myriad of feelings.

Here are some of the ones I really like: