Cake (band) - Influences and Musical Style

Influences and Musical Style

Cake incorporates a wide range of genres into its music, including country music, Mariachi, rock, funk, Iranian folk music and hip-hop. McCrea himself cites Hank Williams, Tom Zé, the Golden Gate Quartet and Sly and the Family Stone as particular influences. The band is most often noted for three things: the prominence of DiFiore's trumpet lines, McCrea's ironic, sarcastic lyrics, and his "droll, deadpan ... monotone" vocals. DiFiore's trumpet work originated with McCrea's desire for a second melodic instrument to go with a song he had written; "A lead guitar playing those lines would have been really hokey. I like it when it's a contrapuntal thing, where the guitar is doing one melody, the vocal is doing another melody, and the trumpet plays this third melody. If the music can be transparent enough, you can hear all three at the same time".

Read more about this topic:  Cake (band)

Famous quotes containing the words influences, musical and/or style:

    However diligent she may be, however dedicated, no mother can escape the larger influences of culture, biology, fate . . . until we can actually live in a society where mothers and children genuinely matter, ours is an essentially powerless responsibility. Mothers carry out most of the work orders, but most of the rules governing our lives are shaped by outside influences.
    Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)

    Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.
    —Anonymous. Popular saying.

    Dating from World War I—when it was used by U.S. soldiers—or before, the saying was associated with nightclub hostess Texas Quinan in the 1920s. It was the title of a song recorded by Sophie Tucker in 1927, and of a Cole Porter musical in 1929.

    One never tires of what is well written, style is life! It is the very blood of thought!
    Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)