Cake - Club Suede

Cake
Club Suede
Jan. 25, 2005

Cake is at the top of my list of "Bands I Love that I Still Haven't Seen in Concert." You can only imagine how happy I was when Neal Baugh tipped me off to a virtually unannounced Cake performance in Park City.

We - Ty McHenry, Neal and me - headed up through the almost impenetrable fog to make it to Club Suede for the 8 p.m. start time. Despite the weather-related delays we made it to the club right on time - right on time meaning we got there at 8 p.m. and quickly found out that Cake would be taking the stage at 11 p.m.

They were worth the wait. Clad in a hunter-orange zipup hoodie and trucker hat, John McCrea and his acoustic guitar started off the show with "Daria." The band quickly kicked in - the rhythm section was tight, the guitars were smokin' and Vince DiFiore took care of the trumpet, keyboards, back up vocals and various percussion. When not wielding his guitar, McCrea pointed his vibra slap at the crowd like a weapon.

(this is a vibra slap)

Cake sounded just as good in real life as they do on record. I tried keep count how many times McCrea sang "Oh no-s" or "Alright-s," but lost track after the first song.

The band played songs from each of their five albums, with the majority coming from 1996's Fashion Nugget. [A complete set list is included below] The only slow points in the evening came during the extended singalongs - the audience was recruited as back-up singers during the expletive call-and-response of "Nugget" and the anti-cell phone anthem "No Phone."

It wasn't surprising that a band whose lyrics are full of irony and sarcasm left their biggest radio hits - "The Distance," "Rock and Roll Lifestyle" and "Short Skirt/Long Jacket" - off of the set list. Fortunately, Cake has so many great songs that those three weren't really missed. Highlights of evening included: "Frank Sinatra," "Comfort Eagle" and a very unexpected track from Motorcade of Generosity, "Come Comanche."

Cake ended its encore with "I Will Survive," a song that McCrea dubbed the anthem of "Angry Black Women factions, Gay Men factions, European Soccer Player factions, and even Angry White Guy factions."

The opening act was The Ditty Bops. I don't really know how to describe them. It's two girls that play the guitar and mandolin, backed by an upright bass player, a violinist and an organ man. The ladies were wearing matching black corsets, with one girl in a pink and the other in a green tutu. They played music I figure you might do the lindy-hop to (I don't really know what the lindy-hop is) or some dance that our grandparents used to do. They were talented, but a bit out-there for me. Go here to listen to their music. "Sister Kate" is a good example of how they sounded live.

Their music was not engaging enough to distract me from the creepy (but not too creepy that I could stop watching) scene happening next to me -- a 20-year-old boy repeatedly licking his forty-year-old girlfriend. Disgusting. It was like "Harold and Maude" in real life.

Complete Set List, By Album

Motorcade of Generosity

• Comanche
• Is This Love

Fashion Nugget

• Daria
• Nugget
• I will survive
• Stickshifts and Safety Belts
• Frank Sinatra

Prolonging the Magic

• Never There
• Sheep Go to Heaven

Comfort Eagle

• Comfort Eagle
• Love You Madly

Pressure Chief

• Wheels
• No Phone

*plus one country cover song that I didn't know