CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN: TELEPHONE FREE LANDSLIDE VICTORY (1985)
1) The Day That Lassie Went To
The Moon; 2) Border Ska; 3) Wasted; 4) Yanqui Go Home; 5) Oh No!; 6) Nine Of
Disks; 7) Payed Vacation: Greece; 8) Where The Hell Is Bill?; 9*) Wasting All
Your Time; 10*) Epigram #5; 11*) At Kuda; 12*) Epigram #2; 13*) Cowboys From
Hollywood; 14*) Colonel Enrique Adolfo Bermudez; 15) Vladivostock; 16) Skinhead
Stomp; 17) Tina; 18) Take The Skinheads Bowling; 19) Mao Reminisces About His
Days In Southern China; 20) I Don't See You; 21) Balalaika Gap; 23) Opi Rides
Again; 24) Club Med Sucks; 25) Ambiguity Song.
Those unfortunate (or fortunate) souls whose
youth was not spent in Eighties' America would probably, in retrospect, think
of «college rock» as represented by either leftist hardcore bands or leftist
folk-rock bands (of the more subtle variety, like R.E.M., or of the more straightforward
one, like 10,000 Maniacs). As one begins digging a little deeper, though, all
sorts of oddities begin to come out — including acts that are fairly hard to
categorize, since one of their intentions was to avoid becoming easily
pigeonholed, at all costs. And among such acts, few can boast a higher level of
oddball-ness than the oddball-some-titled Camper Van Beethoven (originally —
Camper Van Beethoven and The Border Patrol), founded by a bunch of eccentric
Californians with guitar player and singer David Lowery at the core center.
Unlike the abrasive, avantgarde-influenced
young noisemakers dominating the underground, Camper Van Beethoven did not seem
to care much about pushing forward musical boundaries (being largely content
with however wide they'd already been pushed) or about making their music as
basically «inaccessible» and «unlistenable» as possible. With minimal
exceptions (only a tiny handful of these tracks experiment with dissonance, e.
g. ʽNine Of Disksʼ), all the music on this album is well within certain
established traditions — Camper Van Beethoven like various forms of pop, punk,
punk-pop, pop-punk, and country-western, though their major love spot is
reserved for the venerable musical form of ska (or polka, if you'd rather like
an Eastern rather than Western hemisphere analogy, although Campers don't
exactly huddle the accordeon).
The ska-based tracks on the band's debut
largely seem to function as instrumental interludes — but do not make the
mistake of writing them off as insignificant, because if there's anything truly
exciting and original about Camper's musical agenda, most of it is concealed in
these instrumentals. With two guitarists and a talented multi-instrumentalist
(Jonathan Segel on violin, mandolin, and various keyboards) involved, they
present humorous and inventive twists on just about every musical genre that
ends up on the roulette wheel. Beginning fairly innocently with some pop electric
guitar on ʽBorder Skaʼ; they follow it up with a country twist on ʽYanqui Go
Homeʼ; go Near Eastern on ʽAt Kudaʼ; zip into Mexico for ʽColonel Enrique
Adolfo Bermudezʼ (there are some spoken vocals on that one, but it falls in the
same ska-based category); try to summon a Russian vibe — in my opinion,
somewhat unsuccessfully — on ʽVladivostockʼ; later try to do it again, with slightly more satisfactory
results, on ʽBalalaika Gapʼ (that's a mandolin, though, hardly an authentic
balalaika); and reach an absolute climactic peak on ʽMao Reminisces About His
Days In Southern Chinaʼ — a less smart band would probably just slap a title
like this onto any random piece of improvised shit, but the Campers actually
make an effort to play a doubled guitar/violin melody that is reminiscent of a
Chinese folk melody. It's catchy, it's funny, and, strangest of all, it is
actually touching in some way — I'm
still trying to figure out why, though.
It would be very easy to just write off this
«jamaicaization» of various music genres as a cheap gimmick, and I cannot, in
fact, exclude that, given the band's general penchant for satire and irony, all
of this was essentially performed as a tongue-in-cheek parody of the «world
music» scene that was shaping up in the mid-Eighties. But there's too much
thought and genuine feeling behind it all to reduce all the spectrum to just
humor and parody — you might as well say that the band breathes new life in
these clichéd old genres by grafting them onto an ʽOb-La-Di Ob-La-Daʼ kind of
stock. And although there is not a lot of complexity involved, the performances
are surprisingly diligent and well-rehearsed: these guys took the DIY ethics seriously
— if you really have to do it yourself, you might as well do it fuckin' good.
In between all the instrumental fun, you have
the actual songs — also with a fairly wide range, though not nearly as
all-encompassing as the ska bits. As could be expected, most of these are
written in an absurdist paradigm, but not a particularly nonsensical or dadaist
one: this is an American band, and the situations they invent are more Saturday Night Live than Monty Python, be it Lassie's self-sacrificing
journey to outer space (ʽThe Day That Lassie Went To The Moonʼ), the brainless
spasms of youth rebellion (ʽClub Med Sucksʼ), or lazy indignation at the
absence of a band member for the rehearsals (ʽWhere The Hell Is Bill?ʼ,
referring to the original drummer Bill McDonald, who actually left way before
these sessions even started — "maybe he went to see The Circle
Jerks!"). Musically, they sound strangely more rugged and amateurish than
the ska pieces — almost as if this were a completely different band playing at
times — but no less odd, particularly when they cover Black Flag's fifty-second
hardcore classic ʽWastedʼ as a slow roots-rock number with a prominent fiddle
part; and the best of these tunes also happen to be insanely catchy and even
uplifting — ʽTake The Skinheads Bowlingʼ is rightfully considered a classic not
because it deals with skinheads, but because it is a terrific piece of jangle-pop,
and once again, Segel's violin work is highly commendable.
Things are neatly tied together with the
closing number, ʽAmbiguity Songʼ, something that would not sound out of place
at your local hoedown, but whose main point is to deliver, in condensed form,
the main message of the entire album: "Everything seems to be up in the
air at this time / One day soon, it'll all settle down / But everything seems
to be up in the air at this time" — delivered in an ever so slightly
worried, but ultimately calm and ironic fashion. All the more ironic, that is,
considering how it was all baked way back in 1985, yet still seems so relevant at
the end of the distantly futuristic 2016: the album sounds every bit as
charming now as it did back then, and I am absurdly happy to render a
well-deserved thumbs
up verdict.
(Technical note: the 24-track CD issue of the
album is actually much longer than the original due to the insertion in its
middle of the entire contents of the contemporary EP Take The Skinheads Bowling, including an early version of the classic
ʽCowboys From Hollywoodʼ. Another technical note is that the album itself was
supposed to be named Telephone Tree
Landslide Victory, but apparently the label guys messed up and got Free instead of Tree — which, in my as well as the band's opinion, actually improves
on the original proposition.)
AT LAST! AT LONG LAST! DAVID AND GEORGE, TWO GREAT TASTES THAT GO GREAT TOGETHER!
ReplyDeleteBut seriously, I'm excited to see you approach the band and to see that you're on their wavelength. My comment months and months ago on some other album review have been answered!
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ReplyDeleteThanks for the cool trivia about the album title.
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