Grab a hold of something, folks, and take a deep breath. Next week is Halloween, the unofficial start of the holiday season. Christmas Club accounts are starting to turn around, desperate retail outlets fearing one of the worst shopping quarters in decades are trying to pump up the good cheer, candy cane colors and “insane year-end prices!” The kids are starting to get in the spirit and while, for some, that means the spirit of getting more than giving, you can’t help but be just a little tweaked when they’re so happy. They don’t know the extremes of bad finance, credit crunch, etc. et. al. I hope that, when they get to my age and position, they’ll never have to.

Another thing that comes with the holidays is holiday music. I won’t go into that too much (we’ll just say there’s a nice lump of something coming in your Popdose stocking soon enough, and leave it at that) but I’ve made no bones about my opinion of such tunes. They’re a hat you can only wear once a year. Even my beloved A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack sounds slightly screwy in the midsummer heat, don’tcha know, so music of lesser stature and quality definitely doesn’t see the light of day until the temperatures flirt with the 40s. And besides, in my messed-up brain, I associate other music with holidays anyhow. Mostly, they’re involved with gifts received during festivities, but often it’s because they’re things I’d rather listen to any day rather than the standard “Holly jolly, nice ‘n rosy, comfy cozy, shove a fistful of mistletoe up your bunghole” repertoire. Feelin’ all jingle-belly now? Outstanding, let’s begin.

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A few weeks ago I was at a record show for a few hours flipping through thousands of $1 records. I fully admit that I am a nosy person — I like listening to conversations going on around me, and it’s almost impossible to avoid them in this setting. I pick up some of the worst-looking albums you could possibly imagine, so I usually don’t make fun of people for their purchasing choices, but sometimes it’s inevitable. The best time to do this is when people are flipping through records and loudly talking to their friends or family like they’re experts on every artist, album, and song ever made. They seem to be trying to impress the seller or other seekers to the point where we somehow magically ignore the fact that Debbie Gibson’s debut is in their hands. This brings me to my first character. We’ll call him “The Shrink.”

The Shrink was probably in his mid-20s and was there with a buddy around the same age. The friend picked up Michael Bolton’s The Hunger and held it up for show. The Shrink then went off on a tangent that I’ll attempt to re-create as much as possible here. He said, “Is that a greatest-hits album? If that’s a greatest-hits album you should put it back, because greatest-hits albums don’t truly reflect where an artist’s head is at the time, and that’s why you should be buying a ‘real record.’ Why would you want just pieces of albums thrown together when your purpose should be to listen to the artist’s mind-set in one period of time?”

Of course I had to let out a little chuckle, not just because of the Shrink completely ripping the greatest-hits concept — which I clearly am not against — but because a harmless Michael Bolton record is what set him off. I’m pretty sure there were no signs given off that this was indeed a greatest-hits record, because if it was, wouldn’t there be some sort of indication on the record sleeve?

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The Cars were on an extended hiatus in 1986 and its members were off doing their own thing. Ric Ocasek and Elliot Easton had both released solo discs since the group’s last studio album, Heartbeat City, in 1984. Since Lakewood, Ohio’s Benjamin Orr handled the vocals on that album’s biggest hit, “Drive,” it seemed only natural that he would do the solo thing as well.

Due to the astonishing similarity of his and Ocasek’s voices, people tend to forget/not know that Orr sang on many of the Cars’ hits, including “Let’s Go” and “Just What I Needed,” so an Orr solo album seemed like a sure bet. Orr scored right out of the gate with the ballad “Stay the Night,” a very “Drive”-ish adult-contemporary evergreen (you can probably hear it today on your local soft-rock radio station). “Stay the Night” was a fair-sized hit, and things looked good for sales on the accompanying album, The Lace.

“Too Hot to Stop” was chosen for the album’s second single — a sensible selection, thanks to its more upbeat sound. In fact, the song (download) was probably the most Cars-like pop single to come from their many solo projects (with the possible exception of Ocasek’s “True to You”), with the signature harmonies, glossy production, and participation from keyboardist Greg Hawkes and drummer David Robinson. And the video was from the ’80s school of teased hair and tons o’ hot chicks:

It seemed like a slam dunk, but “Too Hot” failed to make a showing on the charts (except for some middling action on the AOR chart). That doesn’t keep it from being a catchy lost Cars curio, though. Orr spent the next few years fiddling with an ultimately aborted follow-up to The Lace that never saw the light of day. Sadly, we lost Orr to pancreatic cancer in 2000, along with the last hopes for a full-fledged Cars reunion.

“Too Hot to Stop” peaked at #25 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks Chart in 1987.

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By 1989, The Cars were history and leader Ric Ocasek embarked as a full-time solo artist, flexing his Roxy Music/Iggy Pop/Suicide influences to the hilt with a more commercial pop sheen. Not surprisingly, The Cars and Ocasek had built up so much rock goodwill by the end of the ’80s that a second-generation Ocasek rocker was able to score a major-label deal.

Christopher Otcasek, keeping his surname’s correct spelling, formed Glamour Camp and signed to EMI Records, where they released their self-titled debut album. While there’s nary a trace of dad, Glamour Camp treaded on some similar ground, with Otcasek affecting an Iggy croon on the album’s leadoff single, “She Did It.” Anyone expecting a nepotistic train wreck were disappointed; while it was nothing too remarkable or groundbreaking, “She Did It” was perfectly serviceable, even charting on the Modern Rock charts and garnering some light rotation MTV play.

Unfortunately, “pleasant and serviceable” doesn’t necessarily always translate into “big seller,” so Glamour Camp’s debut served also as its swan song. However, the band did score somewhat the following year, when their remake of “Real Wild Child” — a song that, yes, Otcasek idol Iggy co-wrote — was featured on the Pretty Woman soundtrack, which went on to sell slightly under a gazillion copies.

So in that respect, Glamour Camp lives on in millions of CD collections, quite probably with no one even realizing it.

It’s currently out of print, but you can grab used copies of the Glamour Camp CD on Amazon for a whopping 1¢.