An Interview with Vince DiFiore of CAKE
So... New Album!
Yeah! We love having a new album out. I’m a little more cognizant of this one. We’ve had albums out before, th is one is our sixth, but there’s something extra special about this one to me because I just understand the phenomena of making an album better. We’re also doing a lot of the promotion ourselves this time, which makes it a more significant event.
What is the significance of the title Showroom of Compassion?
It sounds good. People sometimes say life is an illusion or it’s hard to really say exactly what life is; I think the album title reflects that. It’s hard to feel an emotion or thought. A lot of times it feels like some sort of representative of the actual experience instead of the experience itself. You have to pinch yourself to know that you’re in reality. I guess that’s why I like the album title so much...it’s like, if there were a Showroom of Compassion, what would it look like?
And the album was recorded in a solar powered studio?
Basically it’s a two bedroom house that we’ve been rehearsing and recording out of, but we have thirteen solar panels on the roof. So we have all the electricity we need to do the kind of work that we want to do there.
Have you come across any issues?
No, we have a negative balance with the utility company, I think they owe us like $24 or something like that. It’s connected to the grid, so any extra energy that we have goes back into the grid. We always produced more energy than we needed and we did the math before we put the panels up. And it seems a little more care free when you know the energy is coming from the sun.
What’s your favorite song on this record?
I really like “Federal Funding”. It’s pretty gritty, and chock full of melodic lines; so many hooks in it. That’s my favorite one. It’s just a very instrumental tune.
Is that the reason why you made it the opening track on the Showroom of Compassion?
Gosh, the sequence of songs has always been something that’s important to us and we labor over it intensively. We made up a lot of different orders and passed them around to each other and listened to them. That landed in the first slot because it just sounded good, and it was a good way to start the album. After that, tracks just kind of fell into place. We were just really happy about making an album. There was a question whether you would or not because of the way that music is consumed now, people picking songs one at a time through iTunes and stuff. So when we decided to make an album, we put our heart into it and heavily considered the song order and the whole album experience. How was one song going to flow into the next - from one key to the next... from one subject matter to the next subject matter...
You guys were going to release a live album a few years back. What happened?
You know, people always say how much they like to see us live, but it felt a little bit like a greatest hits record. It felt like going out in public naked; it didn’t feel right putting it out. What we did is put out a B-sides and Rarities album instead. I think we just wanted to keep the live performance as a special event; Something where you really need to come see us to see us. There’s no substitute for a live show. I think we realized that you can’t really capture the energy of a live performance on a record, so we didn’t put it out.
I hear there’s now a Cake book coming out for one of the new songs?
Yeah. For Bound Away, a song on the new record; it’s a touring song, about being on the road. There’s a place in San Francisco called the San Francisco Center for The Book, and it’s people who are still interested in making a book the old fashioned way with home made paper and letter press machines, so we actually contributed to almost every aspect of the making of the book. We brought in some old cotton T-shirts and jeans, and saw those go into a machine that shredded them up and created pulp to make the paper. It’s like a children’s book; a picture book where you turn the page and there’s a picture and a line from the song. It’s a cool little item and it’s like vinyl where it’s tactile - you can experience it by touching it.
How will the book be available?
It will be available through our website and through the SF Center for The Book. It’s not ready quite yet, but when it is, that’s where it can be found.
