The Cars - B'Ginnings, Schaumburg, IL, 7-1978

The Cars were one of the biggest new wave bands. So it's rather surprising to me that they never released an official live album. There has been one such album, "Live at the Agora 1978," but it was only a limited release for Record Store Day in 2017. This is from the same year as that, and has most of the same songs, but in my opinion this actually is superior, with better sound quality.

The Cars had a pretty slick sound that they perfected for their studio recordings. But that doesn't mean they were worthless live. I was particularly interested in hearing a concert from the start of their career, when they were young and hungry and had more of a raw, bar band sound. 

This concert took place one month after the release of their debut album, simply titled "The Cars." That was a great album, and even the band members themselves informally called it their "greatest hits" album, because every song on it was a hit, or could have been a hit. But one of the most interesting things here is that they played a few songs that are good but didn't make that album, or any later one: "Night Spots," "When You Gonna Lay Me Down," "Take What You Want," "Hotel Queenie," and "Somethin' Else." That last song is a cover of a 1950s classic. It wasn't sung by either of the band's usual two lead singers, Ric Ocasek and Ben Orr. Instead, it was a very rare lead vocal by the band's lead guitarist, Elliott Easton.

I listened to samples from a handful of Cars bootlegs from 1977 and 1978. All of them are soundboards, but this one sounded the best to me. Like I said above, it actually sounds better than the official album from this time period. However, there was one problem: the vocals were too low in the mix, in my opinion. So I used the UVR5 audio editing program to boost them. I boosted the vocals for the banter between songs even more.

There were three songs on the Agora album that weren't played at this show, so I added those at the end. Also, I don't know the exact date of the show. If you do, please let me know so I can fix that.

This album is 57 minutes long. It's only 47 minutes long if you don't include the three songs at the end from the Agora show.

01 talk (Cars)
02 Good Times Roll (Cars)
03 talk (Cars)
04 Bye Bye Love (Cars)
05 Night Spots (Cars)
06 talk (Cars)
07 My Best Friend's Girl (Cars)
08 Moving in Stereo (Cars)
09 talk (Cars)
10 Don't Cha Stop (Cars)
11 When You Gonna Lay Me Down (Cars)
12 talk (Cars)
13 You're All I've Got Tonight (Cars)
14 Just What I Needed (Cars)
15 talk (Cars)
16 Take What You Want (Cars)
17 talk (Cars)
18 Hotel Queenie (Cars)
19 I'm in Touch with Your World (Cars)
20 All Mixed Up (Cars)
21 Somethin' Else (Cars)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15634175/TCar_1978_BGnningsSchaumbrgIL__7-1978_atse.zip.html

I couldn't find any good color photos of the band in concert in 1978. So I picked one from a concert in Hyannis, Massachusetts, in August 1980.