Let Them Listen to Cake

NEWPORT -- Within Newport Yachting Center’s stage was a hanging image of the Cascade Range—a snow-dusted mountain and its spiny surroundings.  But something was askew.  The rocky image was in blurry 3-D and fixed below a revolving disco ball.  And after a strange, moaning, indie-ambient introductory act by “Winterpills” the congested, sold-out tent teemed and shook to—what in the world?—Rocky IV’s training montage?  Friday’s CAKE concert did not disappoint if its goal was to push the audience off-center.    

The Sacramento-based band’s reason for being is challenging the status quo, politically and musically.  With helmsman John McCrea’s quirky style and inspiringly radical lyrics, CAKE is one of the great contemporary band’s to keep track of.  CAKE’s songs are clever in their minimalism; McCrea has said that he was inspired by the “skeletal simplicity” of Hank Williams, Sr.’s songs.  (Not to be confused, he specifies, with Williams’ son, an absurd and forgettable conservative whom McCrea loathes.)  Like any interesting performing artist, CAKE uses the best of the old to shape and produce something new—the band’s notable 1996 single being a remake of Gloria Gayner’s “I Will Survive.”  CAKE also refuses to shirk from taking aim at the blowzy frauds and sacred cows of contemporary culture.  In their funky 1993 single “Rock and Roll Lifestyle” McCrea writes of indulgent hipster hypocrites and their corporate patrons, “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.”  And in “Comfort Eagle,” religion’s false comforts are taken on with punchy verve:  “We 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 keychains.”

Friday night the audience was treated to these and some of CAKE’s jumping best, most notably, a tour of the band’s early greats--the slowly evolving, delightful, riff and trumpet-heavy “Jolene.”  The audience, heavily comprised of CAKE enthusiasts, seemed to quake and echo as the band performed 2001 chart-topper “Short Skirt, Long Jacket” in which the ideal woman is glibly described using only business clichés.  She can only be accepted with “uninterrupted prosperity” and “smooth liquidation” and the “right dividends.” 

It’s challenging to write a review of CAKE without including the word “irony.”  (The staunchly progressive band was performing at a yacht club.)  McCrea wears the costume of the anti-lead singer, appearing on stage with a foam trucker hat, aviator shades, rubber gloves, an unsubtle tummy, and a mountain man beard.   But beneath such winking and gimmicks, McCrea’s egalitarian lyrics transcend mere irony and often include the urgently political.  The bearded vocalist later dedicated a song to Mexican workers victim to a “disingenuous border policy.”  Beside him on the stage throughout most of the night was a five-foot tall potted tree—not because CAKE are environmentalists or hippies McCrea said, “but because we like trees…they produce food and we might need some in the next twenty years!”  
The concert stopped for nearly five-minutes as McCrea questioned the audience:  “What kind of tree is this?  Don’t shout out. Raise your hand.”  After numerous misfires, one audience member guessed that it was indeed a peach tree.  (CAKE posts pictures of these growing donations and their new owners on the band’s website.) 

McCrea mentioned in a 2005 NPR interview that he thought it was “unfair to put all the focus on the performers.”  He said dryly, “Sometimes people just want to be part of [the show] somehow…I think that’s why in the 1960s people would lift up their shirt(s) and show their boobies; in order to connect with the center of the fire.”  Perhaps that’s why McCrea spent twenty percent of the Newport performance arranging sing-alongs.  First, by gender and then by seating-section, the audience was encouraged if not directed to participate.  (No winners were announced.) 

With a soon to be released album from their own label, CAKE has put Lefty rhetoric into material production.  The album, created through the use of 100% solar power, has shamed the sloppy relativism of indie hacks, money-obsessed rappers, and other contemporaries willing to dutifully walk the corporate line.  If anything, CAKE showed Newport on Friday that there was more to the band than irony.