Cake Live at the Chatauqua Auditorium

Last night, my friend Leslie & I went to see Cake play at the Chatauqua Auditorium, as the title of this post suggests. Cake is another one of those bands that thrived when I was in musical denial during the ‘90s and early ‘00s, but I guess I discovered them for myself a few years ago. I love their sound, their lyrics and their “whatever” attitude. Their lyrics touch on so many of my cares and beliefs that it’s uncanny. They mock music groupies in “Rock & Roll Lifestyle” (and interestingly they probably hurt their own t-shirt sales in the process; read the lyrics, you’ll see what I mean), the insanity of war in “I Bombed Korea”, and, in what is probably my favorite Cake song from a lyrical/message standpoint, “Tougher than it is”:

Well there is no such thing as you
It doesn’t matter what you do
The more you try to qualify
The more it all will pass you by
Some people like to make life a little tougher than it is
Some people like to make life a little tougher than it is
Well the more you try to shake the cat
The more the thing will bite and scratch
Its best I think to leave its fur and to listen to its silky purr
Some people like to make life a little tougher than it is
Some people like to make life a little tougher than it is
Well there is no such thing as you
It doesn’t matter what you do
The more you try to qualify
The more it all will pass you by
Some people like to make life a little tougher than it is
Some people like to make life a little tougher than it is
Some people like to make life a little tougher than it is

Sadly, they did not do “Tougher…” last night, but they rolled out a lot of the faves, including a great rip at “Short Skirt, Long Jacket” for the encore, with a rousing crowd participation for the “na-na-na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na-NA-nas”. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ridden home from work with my iPod blasting that tune, rolling into the twists and turns of the Skunk Creek bike path singing the “na-nas” out loud, so it was fun to do it along with a few hundred other fans in the auditorium last night.

It also appears that 70’s metal/rock is the thing to cover these days, because just as the Eels covered “Zep’s “Good Times, Bad Times” at the show I saw a couple months ago, Cake covered Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” last night. Good choice, fair execution, I thought.

Brenda is fully into 12-hour days at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival already (two weeks in), and so even though we bought the tickets together a few weeks ago, she begged off at the last minute so she could get some well-deserved couch time. I’m glad Leslie was willing to tag along and check out the show, and to show me where the hell the auditorium was in the first place.

The Chatauqua Auditorium is a nice venue, a semi-open arena with good acoustics and a great location at the base of the Flatirons. It also turns out that you can get a decent listen of the show just outside the place, and if you get there early enough, you can plop a blanket down on the grass just outside the seating area and not only listen to the show but even see the show. I’ve made a mental note of that for next time.

All in all a great night in Boulder.