Cake

CAKE

Formed: 1991, Sacramento, California

Members: Vincent DiFiore, trumpet, keyboards; John McCrea, vocals, guitar; Xan McCurdy, guitar; Pete McNeal, drums; Gabriel Nelson, bass. Former members: Greg Brown, guitar; Victor Damiani, bass; Frank French, drums; Sean McFessel, bass; Todd Roper, drums.

Genre: Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: Fashion Nugget (1996)

Hit songs since 1990: "The Distance," "Rock 'n' Roll Lifestyle"

Rock and roll history is littered with the carcasses of oddball, one-hit wonder bands that were able to capture the public's imagination for a moment, then quickly fade into obscurity. Sacramento's Cake, however, were able to launch quirky hit after quirky hit with songs such as "The Distance" and "Short Skirt/Long Jacket," driven by an unusual combination of country waltzes, trumpet solos, and founder John McCrea's dead-pan vocals and oddball lyrics.

The brainchild of veteran musician John McCrea, Cake was founded in Sacramento in 1991, after McCrea spent several fruitless years in Los Angeles playing coffeehouses while attempting to launch his music career. Upon moving back to Sacramento, McCrea recruited the band's first lineup and released Cake's self-produced, self-financed debut, the offbeat Motorcade of Generosity (1993). With 1950s-inspired graphics and a sound that owes more to Mariachi, classic country, and lounge music than to the aggressive, guitar-based alternative rock and roll of the time, the group was an anomaly.

The album introduces the soon-to-be familiar combination of McCrea's deadpan, often inscrutable vocals and lyrics, Vincent DiFiore's brassy trumpet solos, and the liberal use of the rattlesnake-sounding vibraslap percussion instrument. The airy, playful arrangements are matched by songs with bizarre, often humorous lyrics, such as the jazzy, spoken word piece "Mr. Mastadon Farm," in which McCrea sings/talks an homage to birds plummeting from window ledges.

Capricorn records signed the group in 1994 and re-released the album in its original form. The album produced a bona fide radio hit with the novelty song "Rock 'n' Roll Lifestyle," a sarcastic jab at the excesses of rock stars that became a staple of alternative radio two years after the album's release. "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?" McCrea sings as a combination of rattlers, bluesy guitar, and cocktail drums play behind him. Despite its unusual, cocktail lounge arrangement and a sarcastic tone that mocked some of the very fans who bought the album, the song set the standard for the group's future success.

French and Nelson were replaced by Todd Roper and Victor Damiani after a distribution deal with Capricorn records was completed; it would be the first of many lineup changes for the group.

In addition to their own off-kilter originals, Fashion Nugget (1996) features an odd cover that would become a staple of the band's live show. In typically deadpan style, McCrea sings/talks the lyrics to Gloria Gaynor's disco classic "I Will Survive," re-imagined here as a sarcastically bluesy rock number with Neil Young–style classic rock guitar solos by Greg Brown, nimble, jazzy bass lines from Damiani, and a Tijuana Brass–like trumpet solo from DiFiore.

Among a trio of automobile-themed tracks on the album is "The Distance," which would be one of the group's biggest hits. Combining elements of bleating, urgent jazz horns, white boy funk, and chunky rock guitar lines, the song tells the story of a race car driver hell-bent for speed. "Reluctantly crouched at the starting line / Engines pumping and thumping in time / The green light flashes, the flags go up / Churning and burning the years for the cup," McCrea sings, his poker-faced vocals purposely not rising to meet the excitement of the lyrics.

With songs honoring Frank Sinatra, a Willie Nelson cover ("Sad Songs and Waltzes"), and a pseudo-rap/beat poetry song ("Nugget"), though more aggressively rock in parts, Fashion Nugget continues Cake's disregard for the trends of the day—be they mainstream pop, thuggish hip-hop, or the tail end of thrashing grunge rock—in favor of McCrea's singular vision.

Prior to the release of Prolonging the Magic (1998), the band's lineup shuffled again, with Nelson returning in place of Damiani, and Brown, author of "The Distance," departing to start the group Deathray with Damiani. The album, which trades some of the group's signature smirking irony for more sincere sentiment, again taps into McCrea's defining influences, sad country waltzes ("Mexico"), acoustic, jammy funk ("Guitar"), and absurdist jazz rock story songs ("Alpha Beta Parking Lot," "Sheep Go to Heaven"). In the latter, a funk-inspired meditation on death, McCrea sings, "And the gravedigger puts on the forceps / The stonemason does all the work / The barber can give you a haircut."

The album spawned two songs that became minor radio hits, the Latin-jazz-meets-funk "Never There," which adds elements of retro 1970s keyboard sounds to the group's repertoire, and the twitchy, midtempo rock song of unworthiness, "Hem of Your Garment."

Guitarist Xan McCurdy joined the group following the album's release and was on board when they recorded Comfort Eagle (2001). Safely clear of one-hit wonder status, the group embellished their sound on their fourth album with keyboards and drum machines. Still partial to jokey funk rock songs about oddball characters ("Opera Singer"), Comfort Eagle retains the band's quirky sensibility while it turns down the irony.

Jack-of-all-trades McCrea directed a low-budget video for "Short Skirt/Long Jacket" that looked like an infomercial in which people on the street were asked their unrehearsed opinions of the song. The honest reactions to the driving, disco rock song about the search for the perfect woman spawned yet another radio hit for the group.

With a consistent, yet unconventional sound and sardonic attitude that might normally have doomed them to a "whatever happened to . . . ?" career in one-hit wonderland, Cake managed to bend the ears of listeners time and again by sticking to their guns.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Motorcade of Generosity (Capricorn, 1994); Fashion Nugget (Capricorn, 1996); Prolonging the Magic (Capricorn, 1998); Comfort Eagle (Columbia, 2001).

gil kaufman