Cake's John McCrea on the Kings Arena Situation

Cake is playing at UC Davis tonight and tomorrow night. Here are tickets. I posted an John McCrea last week, but I omitted one question. I’ve posted it below.

Fisrst, some context: Cake has an instrumental song called Arco Arena, and it’s one of my favorites. I assumed that to mean McCrea is an expert (even thought the song has no lyrics), so I took the opportunity to let him tackle the issue. His perspective probably lines up with those of many people from Davis.

You have a song called Arco Arena. What can you say about the Kings arena situation?

We’ve got to be careful about deals that are made between public and private sector, especially if we commit ourselves to a lot of tax dollars. It’d be nice if there were a certain degree of consensus around it.

It’s rough, though. The problem is that our self-esteem is tied in with a professional sports team, but I understand. It’s certainly a quandary. A lot of cities around the country have made some really lousy deals – a lot of behind-the-scenes deals made between entrepreneurs and city hall. They tend not to be in the best interests economically for the people.