Cake is a band that has been lurking at the edge of the mainstream music world for many years now. Their second release, 1996’s Fashion Nugget, saw it’s single, The Distance make significant headway on pop and alternative charts. Beyond that blip, however, Cake has failed to register on the pop radar. And that’s most likely a great thing. Their art has been about rebellion against the mainstream; it has had a political and social commentary to it that could never be easily digestible enough for common-man’s radio.
It is an arguable but widely-held view that Cake’s debut, 1994’s Motorcade of Generosity, is their most original in style, sound, and lyrics. Their weirdly catchy, wholly original melodies cause you to quickly find yourself drumming and singing along. While the dime-store acoustic guitar of lead singer John McCrea bangs out the basic track, poorly recorded drums provide some noise in there somewhere…but it is really the amazing melodies, the call-and-response chants, and the poetic lyrics which make the album soar. This is authenticity at its high-talent, low-budget best.
Originally financed by the band while they continued holding down their day jobs…perhaps this is the reason that John’s lyrics so honestly slam the consumerism and personal politics of American society while at other times delve inward and expose the alternately cynical and soft workings of his psyche.
It starts with Comanche, a simple yet profound comment on society’s pressures to be perfect:
yeah, come comanche, comanche, comanche, commode.
yeah, if you want to have cities, you’ve got to build roads.
you need to straighten your posture and suck in your gut.
you need to pull back your shoulders and tighten your butt.
That thread continues with a bizarre satanic theme (the use of Christian/satanic good/evil light/darkness ideas will become common) of Pentagram:
Your pentagram is down below our floor.
Your naked body shimmers in the night.
Dancing and chanting in a sacrificial rite.
Your feet are dry with the ashes from dead babies,
Who have passed the test just like all the rest,
But never really understood the reasons why
They took it in the first place.
Followed up with a sharp critique of our hypocritically Christian culture which balances both irony and self-revelation in Jesus Wrote a Blank Check:
Jesus wrote a blank check,
One I haven’t cashed quite yet.
I hope I’ve got a little more time.
I hope it’s not the end of the line.
Yeah, Jesus wrote a blank check.
One I haven’t cashed yet, all right.
But if I had to choose a number,
I’d want it to be number one.
I don’t want to be number two.
Yeah, I don’t want to be number four.
But I can hear a knock on the door.
Jesus wrote a blank check, all right.
And of course the anthemic anti-consumerist classic, Rock n Roll Lifestyle:
Well, your CD collection looks shiny and costly.
How much did you pay for your bad Moto Guzi?
And how much did you spend on your black leather jacket?
Is it you or your parents in this income tax bracket?Now tickets to concerts and drinking at clubs,
Sometimes for music that you haven’t even heard of.
And how much did you pay for your rock’n’roll t-shirt
That proves you were there,
That you heard of them first?How do you afford your rock’n’roll lifestyle?
How do you afford your rock’n’roll lifestyle?
How do you afford your rock’n’roll lifestyle?
Ah, tell me.How much did you pay for the chunk of his guitar,
The one he ruthlessly smashed at the end of the show?
And how much will he pay for a brand new guitar,
One which he’ll ruthlessly smash at the end of another show? And how long will the workers keep building him new ones?
As long as their soda cans are red, white, and blue ones.
And how long will the workers keep building him new ones?
As long as their soda cans are red, white, and blue ones.Excess ain’t rebellion.
You’re drinking what they’re selling.
Your self-destruction doesn’t hurt them.
Your chaos won’t convert them.
They’re so happy to rebuild it.
You’ll never really kill it.
Yeah, excess ain’t rebellion.
You’re drinking what they’re selling.
Excess ain’t rebellion.
You’re drinking,
You’re drinking,
You’re drinking what they’re selling.
You can almost see the video here: the masses in their red, white, and blue uniforms hold up cans of soda while chanting “How do you afford your rock’n’roll lifestye?” over and over, the intentionally ironic nods to Pink Floyd, McCrea as some Bill Gates of popular culture, ruling over the throngs of thoughtless buyers. But alas, there were no videos back then. Cake was barely surviving the 200+ concert dates a year in some ratty van. Health insurance was still out of reach.
Right now, so many things are absolutely ludicrous, and absolutely tragic.
– John McCrea
Nobody would dare come up to me and give me shit in this town because everybody knows I’m an asshole. I would have something to say in response. I don’t necessarily celebrate my celebrity, and that makes me less vulnerable than someone who does. I don’t get off on it. In fact, it bugs me.
– John McCrea
Then came along Fashion Nugget. Was this the beginning of the end for Cake? The song The Distance became a theme for frat boys and jocks the nation over. At a concert in Tucson, Arizona, sometime after the single’s explosion, McCrea said before they played it, “After this, all of you who came to hear one song can go home.” They were definitely propped for one-hit wonderland.
Socially and consciously, however, the band was still at the same level. Take Frank Sinatra:
Beyond the suns that guard this roost
Beyond your flowers of flaming truth
Beyond your latest ad campaigns
An old man sits collecting stamps
In a room all filled with Chinese lamps
He saves what others throw away
He says that he’ll be rich someday
Or Nugget:
Heads of state who ride and wrangle
Who look at your face from more than one angle
Can cut you from their bloated budgets
Like sharpening knives through Chicken McNuggets…
Now nimble fingers that dance on numbers
Will eat your children and steel your thunder
While heavy torsos that heave and hurl
Will crunch like nuts in the mouths of squirrels
And how The Distance was turned 180 by the listening public is beyond me, especially given the biting nature of the first lines:
Reluctantly crouched at the starting line
Engines pumping and thumping in time
The green light flashes, the flags go up
Churning and burning they yearn for the cup
They deftly maneuver and muscle for rank
Fuels burning fast on an empty tank
Reckless and wild, they pour through the turns
Their prowess is potent and secretly stern
As they speed through the finish, the flags go down
The fans get up and they get out of town
The arena is empty except for one man
Still driving and striving as fast as he can
The fame might have dulled the band a bit, however, and after the departure of the guitarist and bassist, McCrea really took the reigns of the band once and for all. He decided he didn’t want to be pigeonholed as the ironic anti-hero and toned down the words while he popped up the music. Even so, his personality still came through and the sound of Cake continued on relatively intact through 1998’s Prolonging the Magic. The opening track, Satan is My Motor, is both a brutal self-disclosure and an attack on hypocrisy:
my intentions are good and earnest and true
but under my hood is internal combustion power
Satan is my motor
There was, however, something else happening. Hem of Your Garment is a graceless tome that practically cries as you read it:
i am intrinsically no good
i have a heart that’s made of wood
i am only biding time
only reciting memorized lines
and i’m not fit to touch
the hem of your garment
no, no i’m not fit to touch the hem of your garment
The fire, confidence, and conscience that had guided the earlier two recordings is gone. Strangely, some of the tunes on this record were written during the same time as those on earlier records and simply remained in McCrea’s large backlog until Prolonging. Was this intentional in order to create these differing moods album to album or was it just a natural occurrence?
And so we come to the final record of this retrospective, their latest, Comfort Eagle. The “new” sound, if it could really be called that, has solidified, incorporating the quirky characteristics that make Cake Cake–the group shouts, the hand claps, the unique and abused percussion choices, the trumpet–into a slightly more musically sweet concoction. This time, however, we sometimes never know if McCrea is singing about some mythical instrument of social injustice (in this case, Commissioning A Symphony In C, the music industry), or just himself:
You’re sitting there thinking your thoughts
They are not about what is but what is not
You are sitting there breathing in your breath
You are seldom breathing life but mostly death
I’d rather just get played on college radio and public radio and have a small number of people understand what we’re doing, who come to our shows and appreciate what we think is worth appreciating; but there is no middle ground–it’s like you have to have the big dumb rock experience or you don’t have health care.
– John McCrea
I will listen to a song even if it’s not by the right band if I like the way the sound waves affect my ears. I don’t see rebellion in a luxury culture like music as anything other than a Coke versus Pepsi dynamic. Listen to what you like. You have to be precocious if you like music.
– John McCrea
It seems that at many times, the plight of the uninsured, struggling artist in a Central Valley town has been quieted by the constant rumoring about girls and cars. The symbolism is not so much Babelic as it is phallic.
Somehow, though, one can still hear the struggling soul somewhere deep beneath the hardened veneer. Maybe someday the demons of the music industry and the “adoring” public will leave John McCrea and Cake. In the meantime, Cake, like all of us, will struggle in the fight for love and honesty; and every once and a while, he’ll prophesy for us…
Love You Madly
I don’t want to fake it
I just want to make it
The ornaments look pretty
But they’re pulling down the branches
Of the Tree
Pretty Pink Ribbon
Without the pretty pink ribbon
You’d end up just like me
Without the pretty pink ribbon
You’d burn all these dying leaves
Your muscles would bulge underground
Your demons would all be around
Without the pretty pink ribbon
You’d end up just like me
Comfort Eagle
We are building a religion
We are building it bigger
We are widening the corridors
And adding more lanesWe are building a religion
A limited edition
We are now accepting callers
for the pendant key chainsTo resist it is useless
It is useless to resist it
His cigarette is burning
But he never seems to ash
He is grooming his poodle
He is living comfort eagle
You can meet at his location
But you better come with cash
Now his hat is on backwards
He can show you his tattoos
He is in the music business
He is calling you “DUDE!”Now today is tomorrow
And tomorrow today
And yesterday is weaving in and out
And the fluffy white lines
That the airplane leaves behind
Are drifting right in front
of the waning of the moon
He is handling the money
He’s serving the food
He knows about your party
He is calling you “DUDE!”Now do you believe
In the one big sign
The doublewide shine
On the boot heels of your prime
Doesn’t matter if you’re skinny
Doesn’t matter if you’re fat
You can dress up like a sultan
In your onion-head hatWe are building a religion
We are making a brand
We’re the only ones to turn to
When your castles turn to sand
Take a bite of this apple
Mr. Corporate Events
Take a walk through the jungle
Of cardboard shanties and tents
Some people drink Pepsi
Some people drink Coke
The wacky morning DJ
Says democracy’s a joke
He says, “Now do you believe
In the one big song?”
He’s now accepting callers
Who would like to sing along
She says, “Do you believe
In the one true edge,
By fastening your safety belts
And stepping towards the ledge?”He is handling the money
He is serving the food
He is now accepting callers
He is calling me “DUDE!”
Now do you believe
In the one big sign
The doublewide shine
On the boot heels of your prime
There’s no need to ask directions
If you ever lose your mind
We’re behind you
We’re behind you
And let us please remind you
We can send a car to find you
If you ever lose your wayWe are building a religion
We are building it bigger
We are building a religion
A limited edition
We are now accepting callers…
For these beautiful…
Pendant key chains…