Cake!

Everyone I know, apparently, is going to see Cake tonight.

Not that that means the show is sold out or anything. I don't know that many people.

But Yay! Cake has been one of my favorite bands since way back in the day, specifically 1994, when I made a cassette copy of the promo disc. Yes, we were still using things called cassettes, all you little young things out there. This was a time when IPods were not even around yet. Devices such as they were like jet packs or flying cars - something that one might read about in a geeky science magazine speculating on the future.

One of my favorite memories of that time, a kinder, gentler, pre-Dubyah one - one when I could still party like a rock star and make it to work, hungover and sleepless - is riding in the back of a pickup truck with a bunch of other drunken, smokey 20somethings listening to Cake's first album, Motorcade of Generosity, on a tape-playing boombox as we drove out into the country outside that boozy little town in which I used to live. Since it was a cassette - and this is something that will no doubt shock the little young things who think CDs are an archaic bit of technology - it had a second side. So when we got done listening to Cake, we'd flip the tape over, hit rewind, and listen to the other side, which had my other new discovery at the time, Afro-Peruvian Classics: The Soul of Black Peru.

The two albums fit perfectly. They fit the landscape, and the whole Gen-X thing as much as I despise that stupid stereotype, and the fact that it was summer and we were bundled up so as not to get hypothermic in the back of that truck. (It was summer on the coast, y'all.)

My first favorite Cake song was "Rock and Roll Lifestyle."

"Well, your CD collection looks shiny and costly.
How much did you pay for your bad Moto Guzzi?
And how much did you spend on your black leather jacket?
Is it you or your parents in this income tax bracket?

Now tickets to concerts and drinking at clubs,
Sometimes for music that you haven't even heard of.
And how much did you pay for your rock'n'roll t-shirt
That proves you were there,
That you heard of them first?

How do you afford your rock'n'roll lifestyle?
How do you afford your rock'n'roll lifestyle?
How do you afford your rock'n'roll lifestyle?
Ah, tell me.

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?
And how long will the workers keep building him new ones?
As long as their soda cans are red, white, and blue ones.
And how long will the workers keep building him new ones?
As long as their soda cans are red, white, and blue ones.

Aging black leather and hospital bills,
Tattoo removal and dozens of pills.
Your liver pays dearly now for youthful magic moments,
But rock on completely with some brand new components.

How do you afford your rock'n'roll lifestyle?
How do you afford your rock'n'roll lifestyle?
How do you afford your rock'n'roll lifestyle?

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.
You'll never really kill it.
Yeah, excess ain't rebellion.
You're drinking what they're selling.
Excess ain't rebellion.
You're drinking,
You're drinking,
You're drinking what they're selling. "