NEW MODELS

“Permanent Vacation”

(Boston 1981)

The Cars don’t get enough credit for all the effort they put into helping other Boston bands in the early ’80s. Maybe they felt obliged because Ric Ocasek and Ben Orr had struggled for years in Cap ‘n Swing, never quite getting a record deal. Even David Robinson’s time in The Modern Lovers had amounted to a few great record reviews and almost zero record sales.

When the checks started rolling in, the Cars bought Synchro Sound in the Back Bay and Ric produced amazing records by ex-La Peste singer Peter Dayton and Bebe Buell.

New Models got to open for the Cars at Boston Garden in 1980 and Ric later produced this single that was released on Newbury Comics’ Modern Method Records.

By the time I moved to Boston in the fall of 1981, “Permanent Vacation” was playing all the time on WBCN. It seemed like a complete miracle that a local band with no record deal could have a real, live radio hit on Boston’s #1 commercial station (not that it wouldn’t seem like one now) and I bought this single in spite of endless abuse from everyone at the college radio station.

New Models never got that major label deal, releasing one EP on New Jersey’s PVC Records. Leader Casey Lindstrom played guitar on Ric’s first solo album but the band faded away.

Unfortunately, “Permanent Vacation” has also disappeared; a song that proposes suicide as an escape from a toxic relationship seems more inappropriate now than it did in 1981.

Art note: a computer scan doesn’t quite do justice to the record’s extra-hot pink sleeve.

• Download: Permanent Vacation

(Modern Method Records MM 009)

This entry was posted on Friday, June 8th, 2007 at 8:09 pm and is filed under Boston, Rock, 80s. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.