CAKE: The Slow Burn of Never Selling Out
CAKE is the best 90s band. A bold claim, sure, but I guess I’m just a sassy little provocateur. Other bands might have more hits or influence, or even sell more rock n roll T shirts, but CAKE lived to define the era.
Generational breakdowns have become trite shorthand to call an old person stupid, or a young person too sensitive, or a person your exact age smart and good. They’ve always been like this but for the past few years we’ve really seen the internet pumped full of stories that try to section us off. I generally hate them because they’re used as a divide and conquer technique so we don’t all stop buying copies of The Economist, but as a rough guide the breakdowns have some shorthand value.
Gen X, for example, is the never sell out generation. I could spend a ton of time talking about selling out, its nuances and how it really should be addressed case by case. Or how this messaging was convenient for lots of musicians that were kept afloat by giant record labels. Or that most people that stayed true to the ethos either had nothing good to offer, or died penniless in obscurity. But what a drag that would be!
Instead how about we talk about CAKE, a band that is, to me, the pinnacle of the Gen X ideology. Not in corny ways, or blustery performative ways, just in a very lived-in, lead by example ways. They didn’t really not sell out, but didn’t really cash in either. They just did their own thing in an environment conducive to it, and enough people responded.
They put out their first record Motorcade of Generosity in 1994, a beneficiary of the last wave of indie radio before the Telecommunications Act of 1996 allowed Clear Channel to kill the format. It put them on the map in their own small way. I think to be a proper 90s band you had to have staked your claim before radio turned into a mostly homogenized dead zone. They got in under the wire by the time “The Distance” came out in 96 and cemented them as bare-minimum, one hit wonders.
They’d end up with more radio hits though. But even with a string of alt rock radio singles, CAKE weren’t rock stars. That’s another element you need to fit my criteria. You’ve gotta reject the trappings of the genre. Bigger bands like Nirvana or Pearl Jam did this too, but they ended up being rock stars anyway. CAKE was just some dudes. Isn’t that enough for you people? Most people would struggle to recognize a member of the band in a lineup if they robbed you on the street while yelling, “I am Xan McCurdy of CAKE!” Sounds like gibberish to me.
CAKE was just some dudes. Isn’t that enough for you people?
Not only were they not rock stars, they clearly despised the idea. Not a ton of bands would release a prickly scene-denouncing song like “Rock n Roll Lifestyle” on their first record for fear that it’s only going to serve as an example of their future hypocrisy. Maybe they wrote and released the song to keep themselves honest? Whatever the reason, criticizing posers in the cash cow alt-rock world in 1994 is putting your money where your mouth is.
That song might even be new to you. Who knew the “Short Skirt/Long Jacket” band was so salty! But that’s not a rare tone for CAKE. Part of their appeal is being over-it deconstructionists that often wrote about Satan and Hell and rock n roll and fast cars, but in a real casual way. Post modern, but without being annoying about it. Another hallmark of the era, but pulled off way better than… I dunno, a jam band cheekily covering a rap song. They’d never pander like that.
Maybe what keeps them out of the conversation is the musical style. No one really sounds like CAKE, and CAKE always sounds like CAKE. Blending country and rock with pedal steel guitars, melodica, and trumpet. They’re usually good for a big guitar riff here and there. Their best songs are a blend of earnestness and irony, punctuated with a vibraslap that functions as a little wink that says, “I’m just fuckin’ around, man.” The songs speak for themselves, even if that leaves you a little confused.
No one really sounds like CAKE, and CAKE always sounds like CAKE.
John McCrea won’t guest on The Masked Singer, CAKE doesn’t occupy the lobbying conversations for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. They’re not on the short list of musicians to call for a talking head spot on an HBO doc. They never really played arenas and they didn’t license their songs to Glee. They just made some music and lived by the belief that that should be enough. Art for art’s sake.
CAKE represents a better world. One where we can create how we want to create, outside the predetermined paths of commerce. Making things that people want but don’t know how to sell. You don’t have to be the biggest to be the best, you can be your own weird little trumpet band and put yourself out there to the world and the world might say, “oh, cool.”
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