We’re delighted to be joined by CAKE all this week at TVD which just so happens to be the release week for the band’s Limited Edition (5,000 only) six disc 7″ vinyl box set of Showroom of Compassion, CAKE’s January 2011 self-produced release.
We’ll have an opportunity later on today for two of you to win the set—autographed!—but we’re kicking off CAKE Week, Day #2 with a deep personal revelation from guitarist Xan McCurdy. (Let’s try to keep it between us, ok?)
Xan McCurdy: The first vinyl record I bought with my own money was the soundtrack to the film The Wiz. Yes, THE WIZ. What?! How?! What an awful record, you say. Yeah, I say it too, for the most part.
Once I got older and into the world of other boys competing for ‘cred’ with their first albums and such, I was for the longest time so embarrassed about this that I would lie to my friends and say that the first record I bought was AC/DC’s High Voltage, which is only a half truth. (My older brother Erik actually bought that album, but I was with him and it was the first record I had SEEN being bought. That counts, right? Okay, maybe not so much).
But the reason I bought the Wiz soundtrack was because my Aunt Patty noticed I was listening to my older brothers’ albums (Ted Nugent’s Free For All, Santana’s Abraxas, Pink Floyd’s DSOTM and the aforementioned AC/DC album) all the time and decided that for my 8th birthday she’d take me to Leopold’s Records in Berkeley to buy an album of my very own.
So, we went to the store and we perused the bins. I was intimidated by the freedom of choice, I think. The albums with demonic looking (to me, at that age.) Images of KISS and other hard rocking bands caught my eye the most because my brother loved those and I wanted to be just like him. But being with my aunt made me nervous. So when I spied the Wiz record I went for that, because A) I didn’t want to freak my aunt out and most importantly because B) my mother had recently taken me to see the film at the local movie theater.
CAKE – Mustache Man (Wasted)
So, I went for what I knew. Kind of pathetic logic, but that’s what a kid will do sometimes. I actually listened to that record a lot. I still know the words to “Ease On Down The Road” (Michael Jackson) and “Slide Some Oil To Me” (Nipsey Russell). And now if anybody asks me why the Wiz was my first record I tell them it was because I wanted to study Quincy Jones’s production style.
Don’t tell anyone the truth, please.
