When John McCrea, the driving force behind the California-based alternative band Cake, gets his hands on a classic, you can guarantee you will not be getting the same-old-same-old. You can tell that with the 1996 release Fashion Nugget. They recorded the classic wirtten by Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris, I Will Survive, most well-known by the version of Ms. Gloria Gaynor in 1978, and sung at Pride Parades world-wide. The band made it into the angry white boy anthem for the ages!
They also took a 1947 Cuban hit, Quizás, Quizás, Quizás, (also known as Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps in English), by Cuban songwriter Osvaldo Farres. Farrés wrote the original Spanish lyrics, but Joe Davis wrote an English version, not a translation. Well, the boys from Cake put their twist on this classic, and this is what they came up with.
It seems as though the band also had so much respect for Willie Nelson, they could not resist covering a song of his as well. HEre is a clip of the boys performing Sad Songs & Waltzes at a live show.
Perhaps the best known song off the Fashion Nugget album was The Distance, written by Greg Brown, a founding member and guitarist for the band. However, in 1998, Brown left to pursue other opportunities. But in 1996, The Distance made it into the US Top 40, and was #4 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart.
For more about the band, check out their official website here. You can find Fashion Nugget on iTunes and on Amazon.com.
Ooh... there are a couple of Cake songs other than 'The Distance' but I can't think of them right now.
ReplyDeleteLove their re-interpretations of these classics (event though I am only familiar with GG and '...Survive'!)
Big Mark, see, the problem is they weren't ultimately all that memorable. But they had great style!
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