Cake "Rock'n'Roll Lifestyle" (29.3 MB) from Motorcade of Generosity Riverside Theater Milwaukee, WI January 1, 2007

It's sort of ironic that this is the song with which I debut my flashy new graphics for 2007. It's also sort of ironic that it's from a show we paid almost $200 total to see. Easily the best song from Cake's first album, it's a bouncy screed against scene kids, music industry stooges and the product that we call "rebellion." Most of the people there didn't get it, I think, in particular the people behind us who kept screaming out random lyrics without a hint of self-awareness -- these same people had spent the intermission loudly complaining about some guy they thought was a "fuckin' homo," so maybe I'm just choosing not to give them the benefit of the doubt. The point is, it's as good a reality check as there is for the Gen XYZ narcissists who think their $30 Hot Topic t-shirts make them unique, and that anyone thinks they're scary. Whatever happened to rock and roll, anyway? I don't mean the music, which remains at least as vibrant as it's been for the past ten years or so, and I don't even really mean the attitude, but the viewpoint. Why do I see band members' parents at every fucking local show I go to these days? Why do I see 98-pound boys with four-inch spacers singing songs that land somewhere between John Mayer and James Blunt? How did contemporary American youth come to absorb marketing imagery to such a degree? Can I assume this is somehow the fault of the Baby Boomers? I hope so, because I do.

"Excess ain't rebellion," the song says, "Your chaos won't convert them." And all they want to say is that they want to be heard.

(Oh yeah, halfway through the song, some woman somehow got on stage and started shaking her junk, and it just happened to be right in frame. Serendipity, I'd wager.)