With the help of new and new-ish venues, downtown San Jose saw some great shows in 2015. Sir Mix-A-Lot proved that big butts will never go out of style, and Mac Sabbath demonstrated the power of drive-thru metal with energetic sets at The Ritz; Kirk Hammett brought djent masters Meshuggah and stoner metal veterans High On Fire to the RockBar Theater, with his two-day Fear FestEvil; The Velvet Teen returned with a full-length album and a powerhouse performance at Cafe Stritch; and The Continental Bar, Lounge and Patio hosted some fantastic, forward-thinking dance music—hosting, among others, Ali Shaheed Muhammad of A Tribe Called Quest fame.

Some notable big-name acts rolled through town, as well. Taylor Swift brought her 1989 World Tour to Levi’s Stadium, while Aziz Ansari got big laughs and The Weeknd hit high notes at the Shark Tank.

Also, this year in the realm of musical WTFs, Chris Brown presided over a terrible party (see Pg. 14) at the Fiesta nightclub in south San Jose, where five fans were shot; and Steve Harwell—frontman for the reviled San Jose-bred alt-rockers, Smash Mouth—had a meltdown after the crowd at a Colorado music festival started throwing slices of bread at the band during their set.

“I’m gonna come find your ass, I’m gonna beat your ass, whoever the fuck you are out there, OK?” Harwell can be heard saying into the microphone in a viral video of the bizarre spectacle. A Vine clip of Brown’s “Capricorn Bash” shows the self-styled bad boy R&B singer flinching as shots ring out in the middle of his song, “Loyal.”

And 2015 was also a great year for local releases. Here are my five favorites:

Will Sprott—Vortex Numbers
Former frontman for The Mumlers—one of the better indie rock outfits to emerge from the South Bay in recent memory—released his debut solo LP. On Vortex Numbers, Sprott, who now lives in Seattle, lays out a stripped-down, 10-song set, which recalls his work with the Mumlers, as well as the dusty, shuffling beats, warm guitar lines and shaky harmonies of The Rolling Stones.

Rey Resurreccion­—Heart of the City
When he isn’t rocking shows, writing raps or working on beats in his downtown studio, Rey Resurreccion can often be found teaching chess to young kids. One day in late 2014, Resurreccion told a group of his mentees to “make sure every move you make counts.” Rey Res knows a thing or two about waiting for the right moment. The local emcee made sure that everything was just so before dropping his third full-length, Heart of the City, on Jan. 27. The album is his strongest to date.

Forgotten Gods—Twin Sisters
Anyone who has recorded a full-length record on a tight budget and in a professional studio knows just how stressful the process can be. That they managed to record their sophomore LP in just two days is, in itself, a testament to the work ethic of local stoner metalheads Forgotten Gods—especially considering how good it is. There wasn’t much room for error, says guitarist Dave Stoltenberg. But that didn’t get him too worked up. “We figured that Black Sabbath did Paranoid in one day. We had twice that amount of time.”

Citabria—Exit Reality
After local alt-rockers Citabria released the excellent, if scrappy, The Stereo Guillotine EP in 2010, local fans couldn’t get enough. But then internal tensions led the band to take a long hiatus. They returned in 2015 with the highly polished and ultra-catch Exit Reality. One of the album’s standout tracks, “The Animal,” features a stuttering, Moog bass line, soaring vocal harmonies and jet-plane guitars; it sounds like a cross between Muse, Depeche Mode and Dredg.

Eric Victorino—“Captured”
The frontman for Strata and The Limousines decided to step out on his own this year. Initially calling the project Gestalt—a nod to the psychological concept that underpins the project—he has since changed his moniker to E. James. A record is due out in mid-2016, according to his PledgeMusic page, but at least one full track has been released: the moody, downtempo, electronic track, “Captured.” A snippet of another song, “Stumble Back To You,” recalls the exuberance of Passion Pit.

Well, Halloween is over, and if you’re anything like us, Sunday wasn’t enough time to fully recover from the weekend’s festivities. Whether you’re hungover from sugar, drinks or sugary drinks, we’re happy to provide you with a quick break from the grind. Check out these photos captured by intrepid Metro photog, Greg Ramar, as he braved the creeps and cooks on an epic Halloween pub crawl from Hollister, through Los Gatos and Campbell, and on to San Jose.

When it comes to truly prolific bands, examples abound. From The Rolling Stones to Radiohead, we all know and love groups with deep catalogs and decades-long careers. But few veteran bands have flown so gracefully under the radar and for so very long as CAKE. How fitting is a name that means to collect and stick, to “cake onto” something, for a band that has managed to cling to massive notoriety while just barely dipping into the mainstream of radio rock for over more than 20 years?

In that time, the Sacramento band has managed to trudge the rocky road of a music industry in flux. They’ve stayed the course without ever compromising their unique and utterly quirky aesthetic—a poppy amalgam of hip-hop beats, rough-hewn indie-rock, Jonathan Richmond-esque absurdist lyricism, and a sprinkling of no-nonsense country sensibility, which they will bring with them when they play the City National Civic this New Year’s Eve.

It hasn’t always been easy. CAKE first hit it big in the mid-’90s, just a few years before Napster and iTunes flipped the recording industry on its head. In the ensuing years, the band found that many labels were wary of taking a chance on them, despite the successes of massive early hits like “I Will Survive” and “The Distance.”

“They barely knew that we existed,” says John McCrea, CAKE’s frontman and maestro. “It’s just a corporate culture. People come and go and there’s not a real relationship between people.”

The band finally got tired of the dance and decided to start their own label, Upbeat Records, in 2007.

“We didn’t want to sign to a label and then have them close down or be bought by another label,” McCrea says. “There’s been just so much upheaval over the last 10 years.”

While some bands are excited to operate their own label and relish the creative control it affords, McCrea sees it as just another necessity to survive.

“I’d rather—to be honest—not have to (form a label), but in the current precipitous decline of the music business, I think it’s the only responsible thing to do,” McCrea says.

This responsibility is perhaps a lesser known trait on the list of what makes CAKE unique. While the group distinguishes itself musically with an eclectic mix of horns and country western influence—still somehow managing to qualify as alt rock in the process—a social- and eco-conscious identity certainly sets them apart as well.

Building a solar-powered recording studio, using their website to promote voter registration and community banking, and passing out sequoia trees at shows may seem strange for a band that doesn’t sound very political. And McCrea admits it might not be the smartest move for bands out to become household names.

“I’m sure it hurts us commercially,” he says. McCrea confessed they suppressed the urge to assert themselves on issues they cared about for years before deciding it was too important.

“We know that we’re just musicians and the prime directive of our band is to play music and entertain people.” McCrea says. “But a certain amount of our biases are going to slip through no matter how hard we try.”

Agendas aside, CAKE is currently recording their latest album since 2011’s Showroom of Compassion. While this undertaking is still in the very early and rough stages, McCrea still has plenty details with which to tease us.

“I think there will be some things (on the new album) that will be surprising to people,” he says. “Certainly things that have never happened before with CAKE will happen.”

If one thing is true of CAKE, they have a formula—the country western and alt rock with trumpet chaser—and they generally stick to it. But it may be going out the window this time around.

“I just thought some of these songs needed, well, strings,” McCrea reveals. “It just kind of happened. I’ve always been stalwartly opposed to that for this band but I want to do the right thing for each song. What I hate is what happens with concept albums where people try to bend a song to the will of some over-arching, intellectual narrative when the song doesn’t want to do that.”

Whichever direction CAKE is headed musically, it clearly isn’t a means with which to break through into super stardom. It’s safe to assume they are content with where they are and what they are—a band many seem to know but rarely talk about.

As with everything else, McCrea has an eloquent answer for this, too.

“Maybe something that gets too popular has a very short shelf life,” he says. “Perhaps the fact that we were never hugely, explosively popular has actually allowed us to survive.”

CAKE play the City National Civic Auditorium in San Jose on Dec. 31. More info.