Last night I purchased Cake’s album “Motorcade of Generosity”. This stuff came out when I was 8 years old, and I’m just hearing it now for the very first time. It’s kind of like a time capsule.
I like to imagine the people around me that went out and bought it in 1994 at record stores in Sacramento - at Tower Records and at Dimple, who bought tickets to hear Cake perform live. Meanwhile I was waking up early in a little house in Carmichael with my Mom and my brother and my sister and we were doing sun salutations and saying our decrees every morning. I was playing in the backyard, imagining I was a soldier in some futuristic space-going world. I didn’t have a computer, I didn’t know what the internet was. I knew 2 rock and roll songs that my Dad taught me: “King of the Road” and “Jamaica Farewell”. I was doing my best to get invited to friends houses, looking forward to soccer practice and cheerios for breakfast.
Meanwhile, people in my town were blaring this beautiful, strong music, singing along at the top of their lungs and strumming the air guitar. Road trippers were cruising down Engle road with beer in the cooler and this cd in the player, rolling down the windows and heading for highway 80. I was learning about the Romans and the Greeks (the Romans were my favorites because of their helmets with the long gleaming side guards and thick bright-red crests).
Young men in high school were listening to these songs and closing their eyes and thinking about girls, thinking about how badly they wanted to kiss them and feeling better as the song played on. I had no idea. I was sitting in the living room listening to my folks read “The Secret Garden” aloud, getting sleepy at the end and gong to bed at 8:30.
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