Eli's Mile High Club, tucked away on the fringe of beautiful downtown Oakland, California, bills itself as "The Home of the West Coast Blues." It's the kind of dive bar that has black-and-white glossies of journeyman guitarists stapled from floor to ceiling, with Christmas lights strung around the cramped stage in back.

Twenty years into its existence, Eli's has surely never hosted a band with one gold record to its credit, let alone two platinums. Cake, the oddball Sacramento band that mashes together all kinds of pop music into a patented, unprecedented alternative-funk-hillbilly hybrid -- nothing bluesy about it -- played a secret, short-notice gig there on Wednesday.

The group was gearing up for next week's release of Comfort Eagle, its fourth album, first for major label Columbia.

By the midpoint of the group's lively, loosey-goosey evening, the 150 or so fans on hand had exhausted the club's supply of cold Budweisers. By the end of the night, the shelves behind the bar looked like they'd been looted. "They're a good band," conceded the weary bartender, a dentally challenged old-timer in a long gray ponytail and matching ZZ Top beard.

Gone were the matching Marlboro Man outfits that Cake wore onstage to commemorate the release of the band's last album, 1998's Prolonging the Magic. Lead singer John McCrea, always a hat man, wore a mesh baseball cap advertising a building supply company. "This next one is from our last album, which was . . . what was our last album called?" he said at one point, calling over his shoulder to his band mates.

Right now, the group can afford that kind of nonchalance. "Short Skirt/Long Jacket," the first single from Comfort Eagle, has already landed in the Top 10 on Billboard's Modern Rock chart, and MTV has taken a shine to the song's unconventional, self-produced video, in which man-on-the-street interviews chatter incessantly over the music.

The band played several songs from its 1994 debut, Motorcade of Generosity, which was originally released on cassette. After opening the first of two sets with "Comanche" and "Ruby," McCrea asked for a show of hands: How many people knew those songs? "We used to sing these back when we played small places," he said. Most of the partisan crowd knew them by heart.

Inveigling the little assembly to sing along to "Frank Sinatra," the ever-wry McCrea offered an impromptu science lesson: "When you sing in a group," he said, "it raises your endorphin levels." The obliging audience grinned and sang louder.

The band -- guitarist Xan McCurdy, trumpeter/keyboardist Vince DiFiore, bassist Gabe Nelson and new drummer Pete McNeil -- played "Never There," the big hit from Prolonging the Magic, but passed over the previous album Fashion Nugget's smash, "The Distance," which was written by ex-guitarist/Deathray founder Greg Brown. The title track to Comfort Eagle, with its mocking refrain about an annoying record-industry hipster ("He is calling you dude!"), seemed a certain concert favorite-in-the-making.

McCrea, well-known for his acute ambivalence about the performer-fan relationship, was on his best behavior, gently teasing front-row patrons who weren't singing. Soliciting requests, though, he couldn't help himself: "OK, we'll play the song some asshole just shouted out," he said, leading the band into "Satan Is My Motor."

A three-song encore included new numbers "Shadow Stabbing" and "Love You Madly," capped with the band's deadpan white-guy remake of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive." As always, DiFiore blared the weepy-inspirational theme music from Rocky as the song reached its climax.

"Tonight, you have nothing to lose," McCrea had said a little earlier. He was talking about the audience's unabashed singing, but he might have been referring to his band, too, which finds itself on the brink of another unlikely hit record.

JAMES SULLIVAN
(July 19, 2001)