Customer Reviews

Heartbeat City

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Beaches, convertibles, MTV showing real videos. Think Andy Warhol flash-cutting grainy images to "Hello Again." Watch Ric Ocasek walk on water during "Magic." Think of cruising to "You Might Think." And remain in awe of the late Ben Orr's best vocal since the debut, on the groundbreaking smash ballad, "Drive."

That's what makes The Cars' final great album, "Heartbeat City," their most consistent album since that perfect first disc. It marked a creative highwater level in the band's evolution, mixing in the best of their Buddy Holly pop with their "Panorama" darkness. It also moved away from their Roy Thomas Baker sterile sheen to "Mutt" Lange's polished pop glow (he who made Def Leppard both shattering and melodic) and fed it to the masses as fantastic cotton candy summer tunes. Place this record next to Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A.," Huey Lewis' "Sports," ZZ Top's "Eliminator," Van Halen's "1984" and Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell," and you had the party records that stuck in your memory for that year.

"Heartbeat City" still holds fast to its best moments. It gave The Cars' their biggest seller to that date, and their highest charting single. But it also gave them one of the most haunting songs in their canon, with the mysterious title track. Vaguely hinting at what almost sounds like a drug addiction, the enigmatic Jacki has "happy days we count on thumbs." The domicile of "Heartbeat City" is both an alluring and distant place, and Ocasek mutters "it's my life" as the song fades away. Oddly enough, that song bids goodbye to The Car's last decent album; I am sure there aren't too many folks with ecstatic summer memories of "Door To Door."

Which also begs the question; this was a major seller from a band that had consistent platinum plus successes. Why are their no remastered Cars albums other than the debut? An album this great really deserves better than the old, flat original CD transfer. An upgrade is due, and soon, please!

5 stars for the album.
5 stars for the sound quality
1 star for the HDCD glitch and missing segues between songs
2 stars for the artwork which is missing the lyrics.
-Average of 3 stars.
***

A classic album "Heartbeat City" may or may not be the best album the Cars released but one thing for certain it's the most controversial reissue in recent memory. Steve Hoffman remastered this CD from the original master tapes and the result is stunning if also stunningly frustrating for many fans; the album has better detail and a terrific, wide dynamic range BUT the original album had all the tracks with running into each other with minimal gaps. Hoffman's version of the album, however, doesn't. The songs fade out and have the gaps you would traditionally expect between the tracks.

Three additional problems have cropped up one with the HDCD encoding. Evidently the HDCD encoding is flawed--with the CD shifting out of HDCD mode unexpectedly as the volume goes down on a track. That won't be a problem IF you don't have an HDCD player.

The next issue is that if you rip this CD to your iPod (perhaps due to the encoding error)the tracks are missing small sections of the music. I haven't ripped my edition to my iPod yet but others have and have had problems.

The final problem is a simple one that Audio Fidelity immediately addressed; evidently the CDs were shipped without the lyrics (the original album had the lyrics on the sleeve that held the vinyl record). There have also been some complaints that the scan of the artwork is a bit shoddy but I that wasn't an issue on my copy. Audio Fidelity will be shipping out a lyric booklet to those who purchsed this CD just contact them at their website or call them.

So why three stars? The album deserved four or five stars originally (depending on whether or not you feel it was The Cars best album. For me the debut and "Panorama" were my favorites). Hoffman's wonderfully detailed, warm remaster sounds good but this CD has a number of flaws which prevent me from giving it five stars. The flaws bring this Audio Fidelity edition down to three stars. Is it an essential album? Absolutely. Does this sound better than the Target or regular version of the CD? Yes but IT IS severely flawed and you should be aware of the shortcomings of this CD before you order it. If you don't have an HDCD player you won't notice the problems I mentioned and you may or may not have the issues with your iPod just be ware of what I mentioned.

When The Cars entered the music scene they were part of the New Wave music that would become the dominant music of the 80s. However, as happens with many variations on a theme, New Wave became the New Pop as pop music realigned itself with New Wave influence. As the 80s drew to a close, new wave began to sound like old hat, and a little dated as the newness wore off the no longer novel sound of synthesizers imitating a host of instruments with occasional sound effects.

"Heartbeat City" was released in 1984 as pop was starting to realign itself to the influence of New Wave. Change is not accepted well by many people, and thus this CD (read "album" as in vinyl album at the time) was not well-received by some of The Cars earliest fans, who saw it as more pop than New Wave. However, if you take this CD and pretend it was released in 1980, it would not have been considered pop and would have been another then sort of counter-culture album.

So when you read reviews, consider whether the writer is being objective regarding the CD or whether they are expressing their opinion of how the CD was received by the public at the time. If you are a rebel in any era, the last thing you want to hear is that one of your icons was accepted by "The Establishment".

Forgetting the context of when the album was released, this album is classic New Wave 80s music. Several of the songs are instantly recognizable as pop classics that will forever be among the greatest pop songs ever recorded, albeit with the 80s New Wave flavor.

Probably the three most readily recognizable of the songs are "Drive", which would be a great song in any era, "Magic", which also has a truly great video to go with it, and "You Might Think".

As you move away from these well-known songs, the other songs are classic Cars, with Ric Ocasek's voice often taking the lead vocal. Among the remaining songs, I especially like "It's Not the Night", a song about a couple where one of the two is getting ready to break up, but the other one doesn't really want it to happen. Two great points about this song: first, the word love is not used once; second, the song doesn't mention "he" or "she" even once, thus the song could be about either.

"Why Can't I have You" is another excellent song. Lush vocals including an excellent harmony fully explore the unusually evocative lyrics. Check out a couple of lines from the song:

"glossy mouth taste untamed moving"
"your eyes like mica lethal pout hinting"

Lyrics like this do not come in teen pop passages. This music is very serious, with some of the best lyrics by any rock group.

Enough details. The rest of the album is Cars. Heavy beats. Cool lyrics. Lots of keyboards (it WAS the 80s!). But the guitars and drums make themselves known. This album represents 80s music at its peak, and was a harbinger of New Wave becoming pop and pop becoming New Wave. The music is a little dated. It is generally instantly recognizable as 80s music. But that is as it should be. After all, isn't a lot of music from the 50s, 60s, and 70s readily recognizable as being from that era? That means that this album is being recognized as one of the great representative albums from its era.

Great rock is great forever. As it ages, sometimes it is reinterpreted in the contect of now, but, as with fine wines, age usually enhances our ability to understand what we heard then. Go back in time to an era when rock music was trying to find a new direction and listen to a great album by a group that helped rock music to find its new direction.

This "audiophile" CD is amazingly full of errors- the original flow of the album, as intended by producer Robert John Mutt Lange and the Cars has been ruined by sloppy mastering. On the original vinyl, cassette, and CD, the songs went one right after another with no gaps. In this version, the mastering engineer, Steve Hoffman, decided to put gaps between the tracks, making this "Heartbeat City by Steve Hoffman featuring the Cars". Also, this disc is labeled as an "HDCD", which stands for high definition CD. Some higher-end players can play these discs back with a little clearer sound. Well this disc is semi-HDCD, as during playback the HDCD light on my Denon 3910 went out near the end of several songs, sometimes adding an audible click. I also tried my friend's Oppo, and it did the same. As for the packaging, the lyrics came with the original versions, but missing on this one. Not very good quality control.

Whether or not this release represents "the best sounding music you can buy, period!" is a purely subjective call. However, some facts are as follows: 1. There are documented defects with this disc including errors with the HDCD encoding and extended gaps between tracks that do not exist on prior issues of Heartbeat City. Steve Hoffman implies these gaps were always the intention of The Cars and Mutt Lange and the segues were added after the fact. There is ample evidence to suggest that this is not the case. 2. This "Kensei Audio Transposer" that Audio Fidelity touts DOES NOT EXIST anywhere outside of being mentioned in promotional materials for Audio Fidelity. People who ask about this device on Steve Hoffman's own forum are subject to having their posts deleted and are subsequently banned from the forum. It seems to me that the more impressive they try to make the name of something, the more likely it is to be snake oil, particularly when it comes to audio.

I would advise anyone in the market for Heartbeat City to sidestep this mess and get the standard issue CD.

This "audiophile" gold CD is ruined by the "mastering engineer" Steve Hoffman's decision to ignore the original pacing,presention and intent by the band and producer Mutt Lange by adding unnecessary gaps between the songs.On the original LP,tape and CD,the songs flowed without interruption.Secondly,the HDCD(means "high-definition CD")encoding causes audible popping and clicking sounds at the end of each song.And lastly,the sound isn't even that much improved over the old 1980's CD which you can buy for only $6.99-7.99 at most retail outlets.Don't waste your money on this bastardaztion of an 1980's rock classic,which get 5 stars in its original CD form.

In the early 1980s, the Cars were beginning to gain significant popularity. Their syntho-pop/new-wave sound and looks fit perfect with the trend of the early 1980s. By the time the Cars would release "Hearbeat City" in 1984, the timing couldn't have been better for a monster hit album. The syntho-pop/new-wave sound of the 80s was reaching its peak. The Cars had been knocking on the door for several years with albums such as "Candy-o", "Panorama", and "Shake it Up". 1984's "Heartbeat City" would not only bring commercial success to the group, but the group would really show their strongest work to date.

Up until 1981, the Cars would be produced by Roy Thomas Baker. Following 1981's "Shake It Up", the band went on a 3 year hiatus and would bring in a new producer - Robert John "Mutt" Lange (better known as Mr. Shania Twain). Baker had done a solid job with the Cars, but it would be Lange who would really show his strength that would put the Cars over the top. The Cars would now cross-over as full-fledged Superstars and in addition continue to maintain strong to their New Wave roots. Lange had been more known as Def Leppard's "Pyromania" producer and would prove he would have a lot of diversity as well (he would go on to produce artists such as Bryan Adams, Shania Twain, and Billy Ocean).

Despite Lange's presence, the Cars themselves deserve an enormous amount of credit. Top to bottom, this is one heck of an album. Lead singer and guitarist Ric Ocasek writes all ten songs (9 of the 10 are written by himself with the other co-written by Keyboardist Greg Hawkes). Ric Ocasek does the lion's share of the lead vocals, but bassist Benjamin Orr gets the opportunity to do lead vocals on three of the most interesting tracks on the collection. It's Orr's vocals on what is perhaps the album and group's signature song "Drive". This is the song that really showed the crossover as it hit big on the pop and adult contemporary charts. In this song, The Cars take their syntho-pop sound and basically take it down to a ballad level. While Orr's stirring vocals really make the song, Ocasek writes a masterpiece about someone fighting for a chance to keep a relationship going. The Cars have their more traditional sound on "Stranger Eyes". This song has more of a tech-rock sound. This was a song largely ignored by the radio, but still is a solid song. Orr takes lead vocals on this song, but sometimes it almost seems as if his voice is "fused" with Ocasek's even though Orr has a solo lead on this. Greg Hawkes on keyboards and David Robinson on drums are really going to play a key role on this song. The third Orr led "It's Not the Night" song has more of a haunting feel (it could have easily have been a Halloween song). Orr provides some great haunting lead vocals. Excellent background vocals and excellent guitar work by Ocasek and Elliot Easton on this track.

The Cars gained a lot of popularity through the very pop like hits "Magic" and "You Might Think" in which Ric Ocasek does lead vocals. These songs fit very well on the radio and are good songs, but Ocasek lends vocals to much stronger tracks. The first two tracks "Hello Again" and "Looking for Love" are prime examples of this. "Hello Again" is another techo-rock song. This did get radio airplay, but by the time it did - the album had already peaked. The keyboards take a strong lead on the intro to the song. There is some great keyboards on this song by Hawkes - especially during the chorus. The techo feel of the song really takes center stage after "you leave it all, to fade to blue" - a computer like sound is played, with some nice guitar work. The background vocals of "Hello" also compliment Ocasek's lead perfectly. The second track, "Looking for Love", should have got some more airplay - but didn't. This song has a great intro with some nice bass work by Orr, and Ocasek's spoken vocals of "Come on Lover, make the switch". Finally, the title cut of the album "Heartbeat City" deserves a lot of credit. Along with "Drive", this is another masterpiece on the album. It has a techno rock theme to it with a futurist "car and garage" sound at the beginning. The song overall seems to show how the Cars have taken their syntho pop roots and showed how they can stay true to them while maturing as a group. Sometimes this song is referred to as just "Jacki". Ocasek also provides some stirring vocals and Hawkes again comes alive on keyboards. The only weak song on this album is the song "Why Can't I Have You". I'm surprised that this was released as a single when there was so much more this colleciton offered.

A word on the music videos. This album produced some of the most imaginative and creative music videos of all time - including the award winning "You Might Think" that really made the Cars a pioneer in using technology in their videos. "Drive" is another classic with Paulina Porizkova (Ric's wife) playing the role of a woman going insane. There were other videos, but it is important to note that this album stands on its own and if there were no videos, this album should still be considered a classic.
Liner notes are outstanding with all lyrics included on this album as well as songwriting and instrument credits of the band.

Following "Heartbeat City", as the music landscape in the 80s changed to a more hard rock sound, the Cars would have trouble gaining commercial success on the follow-up album "Door to Door". This album however stands the test of time.

1984's Heartbeat City is the Cars most commercially successful album. Featuring the hits "Hello Again", "You Might Think", "Drive", "Heartbeat City", and "Magic" is one of the Cars finest albums, second only to their debut album. To bad the Cars only lasted for one more album after this one.

I saw the Cars in concert in 1984 and was very impressed with their
music.This album was a commercial success and a highlight of MTV
at that period in music. This music is instantly recognized as 1980's music. I still think this album is a great one and wonder why The Car's have not been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

My introduction to The Cars was hearing the haunting Drive on the radio in 1984, watching its hypnotic psychiatric patient video on TV had me hooked. Hearing the sublime title track Heartbeat City was the impetus to buy the album, and I was not disappointed with what I found.

Now I was a new romantic boy (minus frilly shirts and make-up) so I was drawn to the keyboard sound used in this era, so I am not what I would consider the typical The Cars fan. I am aware that a lot of these fans hate this album, and after hearing the Greatest Hits album can understand why. The change in style for this album was quite significant, but for me I never heard anything previous that surpassed anything on this album. I'm not sure if it was the involvement of Mutt Lange or just the natural evolvement of their sound, but whatever the cause the result was good.

The song Drive was also used an anthem during the build-up and the concert Live Aid, new video footage of the starving Ethiopians instead of the original video. The lyric "you can't go on thinking nothings wrong" seemed to be what brought this to the organisers attention. Not much of a link to the heart rending situation, but then you can forgive them a bit of poetic licence. The Cars played both this and Heartbeat City during their Live Aid performance, one of my many highlights of that day in 1985.

The follow-up to this album in 1988/89 was a flop, and they split up shortly after. This album should be their epitaph. Die hard fans aside, I defy any 80's music lovers not to like this album.