Cake's Basic Facts of Life

So were any of you aware that you CAN have your cake and eat it too? So many people have told you throughout your life that you cannot but today I am here to tell you that you indeed can. That would of course require you to acquire your own baked delicacy. I am of course referring to alternative rock band Cake. For those of you not quite sure who Cake is, they are a rock band that have been around since 1991 and have released such hits as "Short Skirt/Long Jacket" and "The Distance." If you would like to indulge your appetite for some Cake, check out the band's website or Wikipedia.

The reason I bring up Cake is because of their recent album release Showroom of Compassion. When the album was released back in January it became the lowest-selling number-one album on the Billboard 200, with 44,000 copies being sold. I mention Showroom of Compassion not for its stellar success and critical reception, but for the methods by which it was produced and distributed.

To put it lightly, Cake was fed up with all the hoops they had to jump through with their major record label. They also were more in tune with the growing trend of music being a downloadable and sometimes free commodity.The band's solution was simple really: build a solar powered recording studio and independently release all of their future albums on their own label. This method is certainly not conventional but it was obviously what the band was looking for. They went about leaving their old label and created their own, ILG, which would also serve as their distributor. In an interview with Electronic Musician, Cake's lead singer John McCrea had this to say,

      "It’s our own label, and we’re pretty much doing it ourselves, and it’s all on our schedule, which is great.   One of the things that frustrated us and a lot of other bands is having to work so hard on recording your album and then handing it over to somebody and being really at their mercy, being at the mercy of things that we’re not related to at all, to their business model, or their hiring and firing of employees—just random corporate hi-jinks. The stupidity of corporate culture sometimes affects something that you’ve worked on your whole life."

It is just like I said, this move was obviously what Cake was looking for. Now Cake is no stranger to independent releases; they released their first album independently by selling it out of their tour van. This bold move is no van store though; the band has multitudes of overhead. Every single thing they do they must pay for, but I am sure that the solar panels help with that.

Cake is showing us how to be creative in order to keep up with the changing times. Who else would have thought of building a solar powered recording studio? The idea is clever and aims to be very successful, albeit with longer periods of time in between album releases. They are also a prime example of musicians distancing themselves from all the corporate micromanaging of record labels to set off on their own. They are representative of a transitory climate that many refuse to recognize. As metal band Metallica would say, sad but true. Until next time.


Source(s):

Levine, M. (2011, March 1). Cake- nothin' fancy. Electronic Musician. Retrieved from
     http://emusician.com/interviews/feature/cake_showroom_compassion/