I don't talk about it often on NP1, but I'm a huge fan of the band Cake. I can remember one night when I was about thirteen, I found a show called "Rage TV" on late at night on a fuzzy station that I could get on my rabbit ear antenna. "Rage TV" was a sort of alternative-rock video program, which was kind of hit-or-miss, but I'd still watch it because I didn't have cable. I remember seeing some clever videos on that show, and discovering a few bands, including The Cardigans and a couple of others that I forgot about. But one band was featured on this show on more than one occasion (read: twice) that had a strange impact on me. That band was Cake.
The first time I saw Cake on this show, they played the video for "The Distance." I think I've only seen this video once, but I can remember that there was a guy who worked in an office who decided to get up from his desk and start running for no real reason, being cheered on by people in furry suits. I remember the song being a catchy blend of funk rock and borderline rap. In following weeks I tried to catch the video again with my VCR, and although I didn't get to see "The Distance" again, I did manage to capture their jazzy cover of "I Will Survive," in which singer John McRae played a cop handing out tickets for expired parking meters.
Years later, when I was getting out of high school, I would fall back in love with Cake for no real reason (I must have heard "The Distance" on the radio or something), and I purchased their album Fashion Nugget. The album was a kind of a revelation for me, featuring track after track of clever lyrics and catchy guitar work, not to mention the best use of a trumpet in a rock band that I'd ever heard (I had a falling out with ska around this time). In the coming months, I snatched up the rest of their albums, and today I'm the proud owner of all five, with Pressure Chief having been released in the fall of 2004.
So imagine how happy I was to notice that Cake would be playing the Palladium. A friend of mine had seen them the last time they came through Boston and she told me to take any opportunity I had to see them. Well, this was it, and so I made up my mind to head to "downtown" Worcester and catch them in action on the opening evening of a new leg of the Unlimited Sunshine Tour. After work that night, I went on down, got my ticket, and found myself a nice spot in the orchestra pit.
If you're in a city on the Unlimited Sunshine Tour, get your tickets now. All three of these groups won't disappoint.
John McRae greets the crowd.
John McCrae came out around 8:00 to greet us all and the crowd went crazy. I was surprised that so many people had come out for this show, as indeed there were a lot. Of course, with the addition of Canadian twin sensations Tegan and Sara playing the bill, I figured that the bulk of the kids had shown up for them. I'd be proven wrong, but I'll get to that later.
Eugene Mirman does his thing.
The evening's master of ceremonies was standup comic Eugene Mirman. Now, I think Eugene is a pretty funny guy, and I was happy to get to see him in person, but the crowd wasn't quite as pumped. To be honest, we were here for a rock concert and not for a comedy routine. It's also hard to work a room as big as the Palladium, but he fared pretty well to start the evening, as you see him here. He revealed that he used to live around here, and understood that people in Worcester aren't all too high on the city, so he gave us his mottos for Wormtown, including "Worcester: Meh," and "Worcester: At least we can kick Leominster's ass!" He also mentioned a huge billboard near his home in New York City that reads, "Don't leave a baby anywhere." So Eugene came up with some other blatantly obvious billboards of his own, like "If you're going to start a band, don't call it Huey Lewis and the News because there's already a band called that" and "Try not to wake up on fire." But as the night progressed and the acts were getting hotter, he decided to make his bits brief. Too bad, but hey, it's only the beginning of the tour, he'll get a rhythm. I hope.
And that brings me to the first act of the evening, a group calling itself Gogol Bordello...
GYPSY PUNKS!
I didn't know what to expect. I hadn't heard of these people before. And out come two middle-aged guys playing an accordion and a violin. Then the drums, bass, and guitar started to play a curious punk beat behind them... and then, without warning, a lanky, mustachioed and mulletted man named Eugene Hütz stormed the stage and started singing in an Eastern European accent. Then two Asian women in bizarre clothing backflipped onto the stage and started screaming the chorus. A mosh pit soon exploded in my area. It was as if the Arcade Fire had decided to use their powers for evil instead of good. After they wrapped their first song, the place went nuts, as only a handful of fans knew what was going on, and now the whole audience was in on it. I stood there in disbelief, wondering if this was all a joke or if it was legitimate. But I also couldn't help but get caught up in the amazing show going on before me, as well as the infectious beat they were pumping out. It was one of those live performances that has you talking for days.
Hütz gets up close and personal.
Also of note, people said they spotted Elijah Wood, of Lord of the Rings fame, in the wings during the set. I didn't see him, but I realize now after reading up on the band, Eugene Hütz and Elijah Wood were both in the film Everything Is Illuminated. Pretty cool for a show at the Palladium.
Gogol Bordello are loud and fresh, and that's something that we need more of these days. If they can blow the rest of the tour away like this show, you're likely to hear more from them.
A hell of a closing number.
Here's one more shot of either Pamela or Elizabeth (I couldn't tell them apart) during the last number, sitting atop her bass drum supported only by the audience. What a way to get the show underway!
Tegan and Sara open their set.
Up next were Tegan and Sara, who I knew only for their song "Walking with a Ghost," and I only knew that song because the White Stripes covered it. Still, I was looking forward to seeing them. The pit became much more crowded for this set, mostly with tons of MySpace girls who had come solely to see this performance. It was certainly worth coming to see, I think, because they were pretty damn good. Their band was pretty tight and they managed to kick out some heavy rock as well as turn it down a notch for some good moody tunes. I'm going to have to pick up their album So Jealous now that I've seen them live.
Apparently, Tegan was stage left and Sara was stage right. I've got photographic evidence above that they are indeed two different people, as I only was able to see one at a time with people standing in front of me that were a lot taller than I am. I hate that.
After Tegan and Sara wrapped up, I attempted to get into a charge forward in the pit, as I'd been pushed back somehow. Unfortunately, the MySpace kids didn't bother leaving as I'd been hoping. What resulted was a temporary logjam that squished me right in the middle for about five minutes. However, it would loosen up again before the main event.
John returns.
John came back out to thank all of the acts for putting on a great show and to thank us for being a cool audience. After a little bit of setup, the rest of the band would join him, going right into "Frank Sinatra." And the whole place jumped right in on it. There was a chorus of voices throughout the Palladium, "We know of an ancient radiation / That haunts dismembered constellations..." Sure, John was in great voice, but he was drowned out by hundreds of eager fans who apparently had all the albums themselves. And that was cool with me. Really cool. So John banged away on his ratty old acoustic, Xan McCurdy put his soul into his Gibson, Gabe Nelson kicked out that funky bass, Paulo Baldi kept the time, and Vince DiFiore was the King of Cool on keyboards and trumpet. It was an amazing sight.
After the second song, "Sheep Go to Heaven," someone in the front decided it would be cool to throw the top of a pineapple onstage, hitting John in the head. The perp was kicked out, but John was inquisitive. "Who'd do something like that?" he asked in his laid-back manner. "Hey, does anyone know what you call this part of the pineapple? Anyone? Come on, you'll throw one at me but you don't even know what to call this part of the plant." That's when Vince chimed in, adding, "I believe that pineapples are a part of the Bromeliaceae family, John." We were all amazed at the botanical prowess of Cake's multi-instrumentalist.
The show continued, and the band managed to get in songs from every one of their albums, which was really cool. Some of the tunes included "Daria," "Comfort Eagle," "Wheels," "Ruby Sees All," and "Satan Is My Motor," which John prefaced by saying, "It's only a metaphor."
Cake in action. It wasn't this dark.
One of the best songs of the evening was "No Phone," which they took down into a short jam session while John led us in a sing along. "Are the men of Worcester powerful men? Is Worcester a powerful city?" This didn't really elicit much civic pride out of us, but I also guess that people wanted to know what he was getting at. "I need you to be powerful. I need to be able to count on you to do this." He then got all the men in the audience to sing the chorus "No phone, no phone, I just want to be alone today," as he said, "You're all Vikings! Put on your helmets! You can smell meat cooking on a fire!" And it worked, we really did feel like Vikings. The ladies joined in, and as the song drew to a close, he said, "Thank you, wonderful voices of Worcester, now all of you here can rest assured that you don't have to talk to your significant others on the phone every half hour about the same thing... your relationship can withstand it." After they played "Never There," they headed offstage and we called for an encore.
The guys ran out after only about a minute of our chanting, and they played the down-tempo "Mexico." "One of the worst things that has happened in the last hundred years is the near-disappearance of the 3/4 time signature in popular music," John explained. "Once in a while it'll turn up on an album and sometimes on college radio, but you'll never hear it on... Music Television. That's for sure."
John took one more opportunity to thank us all for coming out ("even the morons who kept throwing shit at us"), Eugene Mirman and the other bands, but it was all a clever ploy to distract us from the opening line of the final song of the evening, the one we all knew was coming. "Reluctantly crouched at the starting line / Engines pumping and thumping in time..." It was on. "The Distance" had begun in Worcester. The pit started jumping and singing, and everyone in that room put their hearts and souls into a great rendition of a collective favorite song. When it was over, I was out of breath and completely drained of energy, and that's the way I like it.
If you're a fan and you ever have the opportunity to see Cake live, go do it. They're a great group with tight chops and a dedication to audience satisfaction. And guaranteed, you'll meet up with plenty of other people who happen to love the band as much as you.