Posted on May 7, 2010.
Having their cake and eat it Not to be confused with the all-female rock trio dark, short, John Peel-approved 60s alternative band Cake is a Californian all men, which was defining the term "geek rock of the last decade and half.
Whether the quirky and often sarcastic content of songs, or the dry, monotonous rap-like singer and guitarist John McCrea, Cake have many qualities of the medium is idle to seek an alternative the, uh, alternative. This kind of fans has led to comparisons with groups like The Dead Milkmen, They Might Be Giants and Camper Van Beethoven.
Formed in 1992, Cake soon developed a healthy cult following on the live circuit in California, often playing the Blue Lamp intimate place in their hometown of Sacramento, a city that has produced a number of groups of Fame world, including the Deftones, Blackalicious and Jimmy Smith, a jazz legend dubbed "King of the Hammond B-3".
The city live scene remains healthy today, and the Sacramento hotels are available for anyone wishing to attend to themselves.
Cake released a self-funded, self-recorded an album and self-distributed, Motorcade of generosity, the following year before signing a deal with Capricorn Records, which lead to an antenna of the album track lead "Rock 'N Roll Lifestyle" on the influential U.S. network of student radio.
Their second album, Fashion Nugget, arrived in 1996 and was home to what would become the group's biggest hit and best known song "The Distance". The track was a massive hit radio replacement and even became the most unlikely sporting-event hymns. Riding the success of "The Distance", a single second was lifted from the album, the cover of the band Gloria Gaynor I Will Survive. "Mainly due to disinterest McCrea impassive vocal performance, many Critics saw the track like a fawning parturition, despite protests from the band they really liked.
Shortly after the release of Fashion Nugget, bassist Victor Damiani and guitarist Greg Brown left Cake to form a new wave influenced band Deathray. This left McCrea and trumpeter Vince DiFiore and keyboardist as the only other original band members, as the original drummer Frank French left before the registration of Fashion Nugget. For the third album, to prolong the magic, Cake employed a rotation system in the new team of five guitarists, each piece with a different coupling. The fourth album Comfort Eagle gave birth to another massive radio and MTV hit, and the number that the group alone, "Short Skirt Long Jacket". The video for the track featuring humorous pictures of people chosen at random in the street give their reaction to the song.
Cake's last album Pressure Chief, was published in 2004 and was followed by a b-sides and rarities compilation this year, with a live album planned for early next year. Now, after selling several million albums worldwide and continues to visit exhaustingly (including a secret return to below-capacity one hundred people - as the aforementioned Blue Lamp earlier this year), Cake seem to have their cake and eat it and enjoy it much.
