It has been 21 years since Cake first baked their genre-bending recipe of funk, country, rock hip-hop and mariachi music. Ahead of the Californian group's return to Australia for the Harvest Festival, singer John McCrea asserts to Nick Milligan that Cake's lack of widespread popularity has insulated them from oblivion. You've
been touring your new record, Showroom of
Compassion, since 2011. Have you noticed a fresh
generation of fans in the crowd? I'm not sure why, but yes. It's
always been a mixture of ages, which I take pride in - in that [the music]'s not
so tribal and ageist. A lot of music seems to be about defining boundaries. So
yes, there's some kids that are quite young [at the shows] and there's adults.
There's old people, even. Because Cake's sound was so unique, do
you think it was ahead of its time? Is that why young people are also
appreciating it? Has Cake enjoyed its previous
shows in Australia? Oh yes, always. We have not enjoyed our plane
flights to Australia. If there's any hard feelings that we're not visiting
Australia enough, it doesn't have anything to do with Australia. We love
Australia. We just wish we could move it a little bit closer. Australia feels
almost familiar to us and really odd at the same time. There's a lot of
similarities between Australia and California. Similar pleasures and similar
fears. Similar bouillant prosperity and sometimes
over-friendliness. Cake have been together for over two decades.
When you formed in 1991 did you have desires on longevity? I really
didn't think about that... well, maybe I did. It's hard to remember. I didn't
set out to become explosively successful. It was more about 'can we have a job
[where we] play music?' We did for quite some time, before we even got a record
deal. We were selling our own records on our own record label, and sort of
earning enough money to eat food and pay rent. So it was very do-it-yourself in
the beginning. We were so busy in the beginning that I never really had any
grandiose thought about looking way into the future. We were travelling so
much on the West Coast [of America]. We would be up and down, up and down the
coast within two week periods. We drove this fan that used to catch on fire all
the time. I'm really glad that we've been able to exist this long. It's
definitely been no picnic, but I feel greatful at the same time. A lot of the
bands that we started out with - all the other bands were really huge. We were
this weird oddity and didn't seem as important. Then three years later all of
those bands would be gone and a new set of bands would be a big deal. It's like
that feeling you have when you work at a fast food place too long and all the
people who were there when you started working are gone. It's kind of a creepy
feeling, but it's a point of pride too. It seems Cake's career
has come full circle - you're now an independent band again. Do aspects of your
career in 2012 feel familiar to those early days? Yes, actually. It
feels more comfortable than letting people make aesthetic decisions who don't
really understand your aesthetic. That's what it means to be on a label that is
located in some other city with people who maybe don't even like your kind of
music. They're the ones making decisions on how to market you. I was always
uncomfortable with that. I lost so much time trying to explain various ideas to
these people that didn't really understand. I don't know if you remember the
video for our song Short Skirt/Long Jacket, but we were trying to find a way
to avoid making a video with five white guys lip-synching in an urban decay
setting. Our having animators animate us - any of the other short list of things
that have to happen when a band makes a music video. So we thought okay, let's
do it like an infomercial and go around with cameras on the street with
headphones and have people give their honest opinion of what they think of the
song. I worked really hard editing this video. It was very difficult because we
had the sound of the people criticising the song over the song itself. It had
subtitles - it took a long time to edit it together and have it make sense. When
I was finally finished I got a call from the record company and said, "Oh we
love this video! It is so great. It is really going to work great for
advertising... now go make a real video." I just closed down. I didn't answer my
phone for a week. It was so frustrating. Then someone from MTV saw it and I got
a call a week later from the record company and they said, "Oh we love this
video! MTV are going to play it." The same people who told me to go make a real
video were suddenly saying it was innovative. That's a good example of what
happened all the time [with a record label]. Almost every day of the week there
was a frustrated effort on our part - so much energy wasted that could have been
used creatively. We feel very comfortable now investing in ourselves rather than
begging other people to understand us. Do you feel you've been
drawn to particular subjects in your lyrics since the band started or have you
approached different subjects as you age? I'm still pretty negative
in my assessment of human prospects. I tend to take a plaintive voice to my
writing. In the tradition of the blues, and country [music] to a certain degree,
it's not celebratory music by any means. But there's a certain amount of
celebration in some of the rhythms of our music. But lyrically and melodically it's
somewhat more pessimisstic and sometimes mournful. Hopefully that creates a
cognitive dissonance for people that can take them somewhere
else. Cake perform at the Harvest Festival in Sydney,
alongside Beck, Sigur Ros, The Dandy Warhols, Mike Patton's Mondo Cane, Silversun Pickups and Ben Folds Five, on Saturday,
November 17 at Parramatta Park.
It has been 21 years since Cake first baked their genre-bending recipe of funk, country, rock hip-hop and mariachi music. Ahead of the Californian group's return to Australia for the Harvest Festival, singer John McCrea asserts to Nick Milligan that Cake's lack of widespread popularity has insulated them from oblivion.
You've
been touring your new record, Showroom of
Compassion, since 2011. Have you noticed a fresh
generation of fans in the crowd?
I'm not sure why, but yes. It's
always been a mixture of ages, which I take pride in - in that [the music]'s not
so tribal and ageist. A lot of music seems to be about defining boundaries. So
yes, there's some kids that are quite young [at the shows] and there's adults.
There's old people, even.
Because Cake's sound was so unique, do
you think it was ahead of its time? Is that why young people are also
appreciating it? Has Cake enjoyed its previous
shows in Australia?
Oh yes, always. We have not enjoyed our plane
flights to Australia. If there's any hard feelings that we're not visiting
Australia enough, it doesn't have anything to do with Australia. We love
Australia. We just wish we could move it a little bit closer.
Australia feels
almost familiar to us and really odd at the same time. There's a lot of
similarities between Australia and California. Similar pleasures and similar
fears. Similar bouillant prosperity and sometimes
over-friendliness.
Cake have been together for over two decades.
When you formed in 1991 did you have desires on longevity?
I really
didn't think about that... well, maybe I did. It's hard to remember. I didn't
set out to become explosively successful. It was more about 'can we have a job
[where we] play music?' We did for quite some time, before we even got a record
deal. We were selling our own records on our own record label, and sort of
earning enough money to eat food and pay rent. So it was very do-it-yourself in
the beginning. We were so busy in the beginning that I never really had any
grandiose thought about looking way into the future.
We were travelling so
much on the West Coast [of America]. We would be up and down, up and down the
coast within two week periods. We drove this fan that used to catch on fire all
the time. I'm really glad that we've been able to exist this long. It's
definitely been no picnic, but I feel greatful at the same time. A lot of the
bands that we started out with - all the other bands were really huge. We were
this weird oddity and didn't seem as important. Then three years later all of
those bands would be gone and a new set of bands would be a big deal. It's like
that feeling you have when you work at a fast food place too long and all the
people who were there when you started working are gone. It's kind of a creepy
feeling, but it's a point of pride too.
It seems Cake's career
has come full circle - you're now an independent band again. Do aspects of your
career in 2012 feel familiar to those early days?
Yes, actually. It
feels more comfortable than letting people make aesthetic decisions who don't
really understand your aesthetic. That's what it means to be on a label that is
located in some other city with people who maybe don't even like your kind of
music. They're the ones making decisions on how to market you. I was always
uncomfortable with that. I lost so much time trying to explain various ideas to
these people that didn't really understand.
I don't know if you remember the
video for our song Short Skirt/Long Jacket, but we were trying to find a way
to avoid making a video with five white guys lip-synching in an urban decay
setting. Our having animators animate us - any of the other short list of things
that have to happen when a band makes a music video. So we thought okay, let's
do it like an infomercial and go around with cameras on the street with
headphones and have people give their honest opinion of what they think of the
song. I worked really hard editing this video. It was very difficult because we
had the sound of the people criticising the song over the song itself. It had
subtitles - it took a long time to edit it together and have it make sense. When
I was finally finished I got a call from the record company and said, "Oh we
love this video! It is so great. It is really going to work great for
advertising... now go make a real video." I just closed down. I didn't answer my
phone for a week. It was so frustrating. Then someone from MTV saw it and I got
a call a week later from the record company and they said, "Oh we love this
video! MTV are going to play it." The same people who told me to go make a real
video were suddenly saying it was innovative. That's a good example of what
happened all the time [with a record label]. Almost every day of the week there
was a frustrated effort on our part - so much energy wasted that could have been
used creatively. We feel very comfortable now investing in ourselves rather than
begging other people to understand us.
Do you feel you've been
drawn to particular subjects in your lyrics since the band started or have you
approached different subjects as you age?
I'm still pretty negative
in my assessment of human prospects. I tend to take a plaintive voice to my
writing. In the tradition of the blues, and country [music] to a certain degree,
it's not celebratory music by any means. But there's a certain amount of
celebration in some of the rhythms of our music. But lyrically and melodically it's
somewhat more pessimisstic and sometimes mournful. Hopefully that creates a
cognitive dissonance for people that can take them somewhere
else.
Cake perform at the Harvest Festival in Sydney,
alongside Beck, Sigur Ros, The Dandy Warhols, Mike Patton's Mondo Cane, Silversun Pickups and Ben Folds Five, on Saturday,
November 17 at Parramatta Park.
Cake are returning to Australia for the Harvest Festival.
