when_i_go_deaf | Albums In The Day: The Records Of My Life

Cake - Fashion Nugget (1996)

I had a friend of mine back in middle school/high school named Charlie Denis, who was probably one of the most unique souls I knew growing up. He was an all in all good guy, just a little bit... off. His favorite things to do were to tweak his prized Trek bicycle constantly, watch Red Dwarf re-runs on PBS, terrorize the neighbors in various ways while doing his newspaper routes, and come up with various jokes to pull on his friends at any given moment. One day sophomore year he came up to my locker singing some oddball song featuring the lyrics "The land of race car ya-yas / The land where you can't change lanes / The land where large fuzzy dice still hang proudly like testicles from rear view mirrors". After the obligatory "WTF?" look I gave him, he told me that he'd been listening to the new Cake album, whom I had never heard of to that point. The following summer Cake had a big hit with the track "The Distance", but after borrowing Charlie's copy I found myself preferring the opening track "Frank Sinatra". Cake can be a hard band for some people to get into with their off-kilter sound, lilting guitar lines, dot-and-dash use of horns, and off-the-wall lyrics, but if ever there was a good starting point Fashion Nugget would have to be it.

Give It A Try:
"Frank Sinatra"
"The Distance"
"I Will Survive"
"Italian Leather Sofa"
"Race Car Ya-Yas"