CAKE has been joining us at TVD all this week, 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. (Your chance to win one of two copies of the box set is still right here.)
We’re closing out TVD’s CAKE Week! with some final thoughts from front man and vocalist John McCrea—with a nod to looking forward:
For all kinds of reasons, the music business is in precipitous and perhaps permanent decline.
Record labels, big and small, indie and major, are getting more and more desperate, and CAKE knows from experience that when folks are desperate they can rationalize all kinds of desperate behavior. We decided to start our own label in an attempt to distance ourselves from the kind of downsizing and economizing that are obviously necessary when one is selling a product that for an increasing number of people is free.
As a band we have always tried to avoid waste, but being attached at the hip to another business entity which has for years been fundamentally very wasteful seemed in many ways antithetical to our values.
Upbeat Records was a way to skirt some of the tumult and confusion of a giant sinking ship.
