An Interview with Cars Get Crushed
By: Ash Newton
In 1996, Oakland, California’s post-hardcore band Cars Get Crushed performed on WMUC’s Third Rail Radio, one of the first since the live series’ inception. Of that set, one song made it onto the record label Zum’s #10 compilation, named for the zine curated by George Chen. For years that song, ‘Aural Fixation (live at WMUC),’ would be the only recording by Cars Get Crushed available on music streaming services.
This changed in 2024, a quarter century after Cars Get Crushed disbanded. On July 12, they released their debut album ‘Drag Explosive’ on Spotify through Numero Group, a record label that specializes in re-issuing old, obscure music. On November 22, the band’s second album, ‘Blue and West,’ became available for streaming.
“I’d been aware of Numero since they’d been reissuing old soul and jazz records,” said Cars Get Crushed bassist Paul Koehler in an interview over Zoom on March 7, 2025. Three days prior, on March 4, the band re-issued a single on Numero, titled ‘dejavu.’ Numero Records approached the band multiple times over the years, he said, but when they got the call last year, Cars Get Crushed finally decided to go for it.
“Everyone’s doing it,” he said, noting the success that bands like Duster have received. “We played with them back in the day … it’s remarkable how much of a resurgence there’s been.”
Duster is one of the many bands that shared the stage with Cars Get Crushed throughout their short career. “We toured with Unwound, and really looked up to them,” Koehler said.
They also shared bills with bands outside the burgeoning post-hardcore and second-wave emo scenes, including legendary hardcore crusts, Los Crudos, and straight-edge bands like Oppressed Logic. Cars Get Crushed’s Third Rail show also featured three local bands: indie rock legends the Dismemberment Plan, Dischord-signed Smart Went Crazy, and Quixote from Michigan.
Koehler remarked that touring the East Coast was often hectic. “We had no booking agent… so there were week-long gaps that we’d have to fill while on the road.” He noted that playing radio was also odd because the recording spaces were usually empty.
When first contacted for comment, Cars Get Crushed stated that the rest of the Third Rail session was “long gone.” In an Instagram DM, Koehler said he “reached out to the radio station a couple of times over the years to see if they archived it, but never got a response.”
In truth, the recording was likely unavailable for a long time. “Third Rail CDs came to University Archives around 2014 and after they were inventoried, each one was reformatted so it could be included in the digital archive. This took several years,” said Laura Schnitker, curator of the Special Collection on Mass Media & Culture at Hornbake Library.