Going the Distance

Started: 2026-04-11 14:46:57

Submitted: 2026-04-12 21:40:36

Visibility: World-readable

Seeing sarcastic nineties alt-rock band Cake at a sold-out home-town show in Sacramento's hot new music venue

I think of the alt-rock band Cake as one of the archetypal nineties bands, probably because I heard them played on the radio while I was in high school. I knew they were from Sacramento, and I figured I'd need to see them if they were still performing. Then I saw that they would be playing three nights at Channel 24, a brand-new concert venue in Sacramento (it's so new that the satellite photo on Google Maps shows a construction site with bare dirt before the floor slab was poured) and I decided I ought to take the train up to see them in their home town. My parents visited the weekend of 21-22 March, so I saw the last show in Cake's mini-residency on Monday night, 23 March.

Caltrain operates the parking at San Jose's Diridon station for commuter rail, which means they don't expect people to park overnight (or at least, for more than 24 hours). There is a tiny Amtrak lot for overnight trips but to park there one is supposed to have a overnight reservation, then drop by the ticket counter, talk to a human, and get a parking pass. This seemed like a lot of work for an overnight trip so plotted a route parking overnight at Milpitas BART (where the overnight rate is more than double the one-day rate, but the kiosk is happy to sell me overnight parking) and a transfer to the Capitol Corridor at either Coliseum or Richmond. (This was sort of faster than actually taking the Capitol Corridor between San Jose and Oakland, because the train meanders through Fremont at slow speed; and it gave me the option of catching more Capitol Corridor trains running between Oakland and Sacramento.)

I ended up leaving early enough that I could take a detour through Oakland, getting off at Lake Merritt and walking a few blocks to Jack London Square. After buying my ticket at the kiosk I still had time before the train arrived so I walked to a coffee shop around the corner, then got a burrito at a taco truck (to eat on the train, since it would be in transit during lunch time and I wasn't sure what I could expect from the cafe car), before returning to the station in time to catch my train to Sacramento.

I arrived in Sacramento early in the afternoon, giving me enough time to see something in the city before my show in the evening. I of course love the California Railroad Museum but I saw a California Automobile Museum a short walk from Old Town. I walked there, through the bright afternoon sun of early spring (the temperature was in the low 80s, mild compared to the unseasonably warm weather in Santa Cruz over the weekend, and compared to Sacramento in the summer, but still warm).

The museum was based on the personal collection of Edward Towe, now expanded and operating independently. It organized its collection roughly chronologically, starting with a fact sheet on the domestic horse and a replica of the 1886 Benz Patent-Motorwagen, presented along side a video recreating Bertha Benz' first road-trip.

I was especially interested in the pedal controls for the vehicles, which were quite different from any modern vehicle. The first Model T had separate pedals for forward and reverse, both operated by applying varying pressure on a belt to a corresponding wheel on the drive shaft under the floor; plus a brake operating on the drive shaft itself. The Model A had direct mechanically-coupled breaks operating on all four wheels, but they required a great deal of work to align them properly. Some of the cars were displayed without the carriagework so I could see the chassis (usually just a couple of steel beams bolted together) and the mechanical mechanisms directly. I asked a docent wandering around and he explained the controls and proceeded to tell me other interesting things about all the cars in the gallery until another group walked in for him to talk to.

Among the competing technologies represented in the museum was a Stanley steam car. This model burned kerosene, getting 10 miles per gallon of fuel; and it was a non-condensing model so it exhausted the steam once it was used and only got 1-2 miles per gallon of water.

The exhibits traced the evolution of car styles with streamlined, Art Deco-inspired cars of the 1930s, and exhibits on postwar American car culture. There were a couple of more-modern alternative fuel vehicles tucked away into a gallery in the corner; but they were about 20 years out-of-date and didn't represent the current developments in commercial electric vehicles. The exhibits presented a romantic view of the automobile and car culture. The one car that I felt most represented my own American automobile experience was an original Plymouth Voyager, built on the same chassis and looking almost identical to the Dodge Caravan that my parents bought around 1990 (which I also saw represented National Museum of American History, and also felt seen by).

I spent about two hours in the museum, which was just right to see every exhibit. I felt a bit underwhelmed by my exit through the gift shop; the exhibit on Route 66 left me wishing for books on the cultural importance of the road trip (or ghost-town photographs of the route) and a guidebook for a modern road-trip through the American Southwest.

I stayed overnight in an even older method of transportation: the Delta King, a paddle-wheel riverboat built to carry passengers between Sacramento and San Francisco. It was built with 88 cozy passenger cabins for the overnight trip up or down the Sacramento River, before being driven out of business by the improved highway linking the two cities, and (after a series of mishaps) eventually converted into a hotel permanently docked on the waterfront in Old Town Sacramento. I got a river-side room, facing the dock across the river where sea lions had hauled out and were barking at each other like frat bros.

I ate supper in downtown Sacramento and caught the streetcar on the Folsom line to Channel 24. I was impressed that the streetcars have dedicated crossing guards, which is a step up from signal priority (and operate at least in places on a dedicated viaduct on its way out to the suburbs) but less impressed by the 30-minute weekday evening headway.

I joined the crowd waiting to see Cake on the crowded floor of the brand-new venue. Much of the crowd seemed to be a few years older than me, which makes sense if they were young adults listening to the hot new band in their heyday in the nineties.

Just before the band took the stage a voice came on the PA telling the audience not to take pictures or video of the show (and that violators would be subject to immediate expulsion from the show). The few people who did take pictures did so quickly and furtively, from their own eye level or below, so they avoided disrupting the rest of the audience. I honored the request during the show but I missed the opportunity to take a few pictures. I like having some pictures to remember a good live show, and sometimes I like taking video of a short clip of a song I like; but I get frustrated by other people taking long videos of multiple songs in a row and holding their phones above their heads to get a better view while obstructing the views behind them. (I'd like the venue to provide better pictures as part of the show package, ideally with a concert film of the show I attended, but they'd probably charge extra for it and find a way to not share the money with the artist.)

I know Cake mostly through their 2001 album Comfort Eagle, featuring the single "Short Skirt/Long Jacket", plus the songs that played on alt-rock radio while I was in high school in the nineties. To try to prepare for the show I listened to their music, starting with the essentials playlist and the top-rated songs on Apple Music. This meant that I had heard most of the songs they played before the show, but I didn't spend enough time with them (or at a formative time of my life) to fully appreciate them live. The band played the hits I wanted to hear: "Short Skirt/Long Jacket", "The Distance", "Rock 'n Roll Lifestyle", and "I Will Survive", in two sets followed by the obligatory encore. The band was playing a sold-out show for a home-town crowd, and the band and the crowd fed off each other for a great show.

During the show I spent most of the time watching lead singer John McCrea. It was a bit uncanny to watch him, in a full beard gone completely white, speak-singing the same sarcastic songs he's been singing for thirty years; the beard seemed like it should impart a sense of gravity or experience that belie the deadpan delivery of sarcastic lyrics about mundane things in life.

In the middle of the show the band gave away a citrus tree (a seedling in what looked like a two-gallon nursery pot) to an audience member who could identify the tree with enough specificity, who was then expected to take it home and plant it. I thought it would be fun to win the tree giveaway but I wasn't sure about the logistics of carrying the seedling all the way home.

After the show I caught the streetcar back downtown, ending up on Capitol Parkway a few blocks from the state capitol, lit up in bright white lights in the middle of a dark lawn surrounded by state office buildings. (The streetcar dropped me off in front of the state unemployment office.) I walked the rest of the way to Old Town, to my cozy stateroom aboard the paddle-wheeler permanently docked on the waterfront.