Cake at Forest Hills Stadium, Queens

Vincent DiFiore & John McCrea

Vocalist John McCrea spent most of the 1980s performing solo or in bands including John McCrea & the Roughousers in his native Sacramento, California. In the late 1980s, McCrea moved to Los Angeles with a band, but the band disintegrated and McCrea played solo acoustic in coffeehouses for a few years before returning to Sacramento. There, in 1991, he formed the concept for Cake as an antithesis to the growing grunge movement. He recruited trumpet player Vince DiFiore and other musicians from Sacramento's coffeehouse circuit and Cake became a fixture of the alternative music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area. Cake presently consists of McCrea, DiFiore, lead guitarist Xan McCurdy, bassist Daniel McCallum, and drummer Todd Roper. On August 3, 2018, Cake released "Sinking Ship," the lead single from its upcoming, as-yet-untitled, seventh studio album.

Cake built its career on creatively quirky music, and the band remained faithful to this mission at Forest Hills Stadium tonight. Performing original songs from four of its six album and covering a wide range, from Desi Arnaz’s 1948 hit "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps" to Willie Nelson’s "Sad Songs and Waltzes" and Black Sabbath’s "War Pigs," the band proved to be as eccentric as ever. These renditions were not necessarily performed well, but came stamped with the weirdness seal of approval. Throughout the performance, the band tapped into punk, funk, country waltz, lounge music, and hip hop, teamed with zany lyrics and airy, playful arrangements. McCrea's flat vocals and frequent rattlesnake-sounding vibra-slaps countered by DiFiore's brassy trumpet solos added to the oddity. McCrea's error, however, was that though he noted midway through the set that he saw lightning in the distance and subsequently was informed that the performance would be cut short, he nevertheless blabbed extensively between songs and engaged the audience in tedious singalongs. The concert indeed was terminated early due to the threat of an approaching thunderstorm.

Visit Cake at www.cakemusic.com.

Setlist:

1. Frank Sinatra
2. Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps (Osvaldo Farrés cover)
3. Long Time
4. Sinking Ship
5. Stickshifts and Safetybelts
6. Sad Songs and Waltzes (Willie Nelson cover)
7. Opera Singer
8. Sick of You
9. Never There
10. Short Skirt/Long Jacket
11. The Distance

Encore:

1. War Pigs (Black Sabbath cover)