How Gary Numan's "Cars" changed pop music

I have no idea how Gary Numan influenced anything, I just know Cars sounded awesome on the Pioneer Super Tuner in my '74 Vega or Capri. (can’t remember which one I was driving when the song came out)

It also reminded me of a Detroit rock station, WRIF, that had a morning show with a Dick The Bruiser character. Dick The Bruiser was a fixture in Detroit since the 60s. They had a band that spoofed stuff.

2 Likes

I think I remember an interview with Alison Moyet, where she said that she and Vince had zero contact outside of recording, preforming and promotion; so no socializing.

6 Likes

So, in other words Erasure erasure

6 Likes

Monkey Pirates GIF

5 Likes

“Cars” was his biggest hit, but maybe “Are Friends Electric?” was his most influential single? At least to me, and I hear it in later stuff I like.

5 Likes

Came here for this; wasn’t disappointed.

4 Likes

Devo are especially interesting to me in that at least two members were anti-war protesters who were present at the Kent State massacre, which clearly changed their lives forever

7 Likes

Horseshit: Eno/Roxy, then Eno. I’d wager “In Cars” would not have even been without those precursors.

1 Like

The point is that Cars (or Are ‘Friends’ Electric?) was a gateway to non-mainstream electronica and renewed interest, not that it was the first or best or the most influential.

3 Likes
3 Likes

I agree. His recent stuff is quite good. I appreciate his earlier work like Cars, but I like his more recent work even more so.

2 Likes

That’s why I think folks like Jean-Michel Jarre were influential too, despite not being necessarily “pop” or “rock”.

5 Likes

noel fielding vince noir GIF

Seems like they had the correct response to being present at that massacre… starting a band to examine modern society…

3 Likes

I remember Cars getting lots and lots of airplay. For a single, it really did have a certain something. It’s really hard to put something like this down to just one artist as to “changing everything”, though. I always remember having a certain affinity for hearing the electronics in lots and lots of music - and a lot of that came before. I mean, Pink Floyd was obviously very, very prominent as far as album sales, etc., and are also named as influential to people like Reznor for good reason. Then there is stuff like Clockwork Orange soundtrack. And that’s fairly mainstream stuff. I think it was here on BoingBoing in the mid 00’s in which a podcast was linked that dealt with very obscure experimental electronic music going way back to the 1940s? The 1930s? Wish I could dig up that podcast…it had some very obscure artists I had never heard of before or since. Also: in “similar articles” - dubstep is “dead”? LOL, says WHO? I remember people declared “disco is dead” and “house is dead” (after Madonna raided it). Neither are true.

1 Like

Oh, Jarre. Such memories. This video and this thread are making me think I need to make a few playlists. :slight_smile:
Was Jarre much more “mainstream” in Europe at the time? It seems nearly everyone of a certain age and who grew up in Europe knows who he is. Most Americans I know of the same age (unless they are kind of music geeks) give me a blank look when such names come up. Same with Eno, though.

1 Like

I couldn’t really say for sure. What I do know is that in Kansas in the late 70s (outside of KC or Lawrence), you were hard pressed to find folks who knew who any of these folks were. My friend and I had access because his dad lived in California, and my friend could go on music-finding expeditions to Tower Records, while I perused any available media in my area for synth-based bands. I can remember the day my friend brought home Unknown Pleasures and we listened to it for the first time.

I can tell you we were often openly mocked by fellow schoolmates for our taste in music. :man_shrugging:

Devo were influential in my dive down the rabbit hole. Devolution was the main attraction for me.

7 Likes

Whether that song was influential to music as a whole, I’m not qualified to answer, but it certainly changed my life. I remember seeing him perform it on SNL, and google tells me that was February 1980, so I was 9 at the time. I don’t know if I had heard the song before, but I can tell you that I vividly remember that particular performance. It sparked my interest in synthesizers, which ultimately led me to a career as a sound engineer, which I’m still enjoying today. Thank you, Gary!

7 Likes

Thanks for the mention of the BBC special; I am seeking it out right now! Also, I mentioned a podcast I wish I could find again - I found it! It’s “The Tone Generation”, by Ian Helliwell. In addition, it seems he has continued working on it and has many more episodes (originally it was 10) up on mixcloud.

1 Like

Oh, not me. That was @annachronica .

2 Likes

I think that last part is more or less nearly-inevitable if you have any kind of opinions on music at all. Except for a few exceptions, I used to dismiss most “pop” - esp. New Wave in the 80s (but have since revisited a lot of stuff from back then) and liked stuff like heavy metal, Misfits, and just about any rap I could get my hands on as a kid in the hinterlands. The metalheads laughed at my like of rap, for the most part, and the people that liked rap thought metal was slumming it. Later, most of my college (goth) friends snickered at my love of Black Sabbath. My deadhead friends hated Skinny Puppy, or anything industrial or goth and my ever-expanding love of all things electronica…people I knew in the rave scene LOL’ed at the “hippies” that followed the dead. These days, I get puzzled looks/chuckles from co-workers and friends when I am playing a bluegrass podcast, most especially if they know some of my other tastes, lol. What can I say, a lot of those artists can play unbelievably well, and I’ve always been a fan of what I used to know as “car chase music”, h/t to the Simpsons… :slight_smile: I figure life is way too short to stay devoted to one genre/time period.

3 Likes