Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Mmmm... Cake

There's Cake on the menu tonight at the Vogue Theatre.


Cake - Long Line of Cars

Cake - The Guitar Man [originally by Bread]

Cake - I Will Survive [originally by Gloria Gaynor]
Arguably one of the most well-known covers in the past 10 years, people still love to whip this out in covers discussions as if they're the first one to have discovered it... appealing to the hipster douchebag in all of us, though I think Cake set an early precedent for indie bands ironically covering pop hits. Gaynor herself is not a fan of the cover, though simply because of John McCrea dropping the f-bomb once.

While we're on the topic of Cake and survival...

missFlag - Still Alive [originally by GLaDOS & Jonathan Coulton]
A few weeks ago this cover was featured on Coverville and for the life of me I could not figure out where I knew missFlag from. I checked the ol' gmail archives because I thought it was a band that had sent me mp3s for the blog or something. Then I searched my seldom checked hotmail account and found a myspace friend request... from missFlag. I was coerced into signing up for myspace over a year ago in order to access certain features from bands I like that are on myspace. missFlag became my "friend" though like most of the barrage of new artists that pile up in by inbox, they inevitably were forgotten until (surprise, surprise) my interest was piqued by a cover song. Not just a cover song, but a JoCo cover song, so that deserves major attention right there. Also notable is the fact that missFlag is a pop band from Israel, the 5 members having met amidst Jerusalem's relatively small music scene over a mutual love of Coldplay. Last year, KCRW gave their single Hidden Thieves plenty of spins. Check their official site and their youtube cover of Toxic.

4 comments:

boyhowdy said...

Mmmm...cake. One of my favorite bands. I always forget that second one is a Bread cover -- Cake just NAILS it.

I have three more covers BY cake, and one cover OF cake. Don't want to pre-empt anything, though -- do you have them, too, and are just holding off for a follow-up? Or do you want me to add another piece of cake?

Fongolia said...

I wasn't planning a follow-up Cake post, but they are definitely a cover-friendly band. Their B-Sides and Rarities album is almost all covers in fact. By all means, serve up some more Cake with one condition: No Mahna Mahna. THAT'S being saved for something special soon. And I swear I will actually finish that reciprocal guest post for CLD... even though that's about the 10th time I've said so since January. :) I'm pretty sure I don't have a cover of Cake so I'll be looking forward to that!

Fongolia said...

Oh yeah, for the record they played two covers last night: War Pigs and Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town. Great show!

Anonymous said...

Ha! My cover band does a version of "I Will Survive" that, structurally speaking, is the first 2/3s of the Cake version, followed by an extended disco outro a la Mme. Gaynor. It never fails to bring the proverbial house down.

We don't normally try to put "spin" on other people's songs, but that one seems to work...

-jrmy