The Camper Van Beethoven Albums Poll

xp: I don't know if I prefer it to the studio versions, but it also has My Baby Just Got Out of Jail and James River.

i think i prefer the played faster version to the revolutionary sweetheart versions, but that's an album i've kinda avoided due to immediate sonic distaste - if you heard the studio cuts first and plenty before the live takes it'd be a very different experience

After nearly 15 years with the Our Revolutionary Sweetheart versions it was a breath of fresh air.

voting for telephone free, if only for the mind-blowing drum fills in the ska instrumentals.

can I just say

crispy derson

incredible band. my favorite '80s alt group I got into via the '90s work of a more mainstream follow up (filed alongside sugar/husker du, westerberg/replacements)

KLP by a mile. I can listen to the pedal steel intro on Sweethearts on repeat.

man I totally forgot Garth Hudson plays on KLP

Can't choose just one. CVB were the most important planet in my orrery for a good chunk of the 80s and 90s.

I can listen to the pedal steel intro on Sweethearts on repeat.

yes. It's the song that got me into pedal steel.

II & III - it may seem strange but this album seemed pretty radical at the time mostly because indie/alternative/whatever music then was mostly derived from the punk and post-punk canon and this felt like it came out of nowhere. I think they were a big influence on a lot of Scottish bands at the time (BMX Bandits and Teenage Fanclub covered them, Pastels cited them) and certainly the gig they played in Glasgow back then felt like a huge epiphany...like hey you can be a great musician in a more or less traditional way and not have to reinvent your instrument or be confrontational, self-conscious about your limitations and all that other stuff that was going on at the time. Just being creative and entertaining with normal instruments seemed...unusual. (Maybe it was just me.)

The first Camper Van Chadbourne album is actually my favourite but correctly not included here. It's part of the Eugene Chadbourne oeuvre.

Ah, Garth Hudson is "Interlude".

http://www.davidlowerymusic.com/300-songs-blog/blog/59-stairway-to-heavan-sic-in-praise-of-half-baked-ideas-and-unfinished-things-the-importance-of-not-being-earnest

Come on Darkness is a better album closer than Closing Theme.

s/t is my favorite with Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart a close second

when the debut came out, it was really an unexpected curveball in indiedom

hey you can be a great musician in a more or less traditional way and not have to reinvent your instrument or be confrontational, self-conscious about your limitations

This is so totally key to how great they were!

Nice to see the love on this thread

if any of you haven't heard Lowery's wtf interview w/Maron from last year, you should check it out.

Loved his story about a fan telling him that he had a dream that their next album was going to be called Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart and Lowry was all like "whoa no way! well, guess what, buddy!"

I got snippy with Lowery in a certain rock critic's FB thread last week; this thread is making me regret it, for a second.

I bought TFLV cause Michael Stipe said it was his fave thing that year in some year end review. Paths to new music were a bit different back then... Loved the vibe. Lots of worthy albums but gonna have to vote for the first.

Vampire Can Mating Oven!

― droit au butt (Euler), Thursday, October 8, 2015 12:43 PM (Yesterday)

This is likewise my favorite CVB release, but I guess since it's only an EP I can't vote for it here. Instead, I'll go with TFLS.

er, TFLV.

http://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/photo.goodreads.com/books/1393978395i/20900876._UY475_SS475_.jpg

I love all of them unabashedly save Tusk (which doesn't/shouldn't count). "Key Lime Pie" is perfect, "Sweetheart" a great transition, of the original sound/batch I'd say first or II/II. Third is my least fave, I suppose. Love Vantiquities as much as the albums. Could go "Vampire Can Mating Oven" for "Seven Languages" alone.

One of my fave old school Xgau takes:

Some believe "Take the Skinheads Bowling" makes these pranksters a one-joke band, but there are loads of jokes in that song alone, most of which they don't bother to tell--for instance, do you bowl with the skinheads or with the skinheads' heads? So count them a seventeen-joke band, one for each cut, including instrumentals.

David Lowery is on the record as a big fan of the Glands which makes him cool in my book.

went back and did a quick run through of the albums, and voted OBRS. I have a vague sense that KLP is better, but the sequencing on OBRS is so amazing that when I listen to it even a filler track like 'The Fool' doesn't sound out of place.

II & II, narrowly over debut

OBRS is one of the great '80s jumps to major label. CVB totally an underrated component of the '80s indie scene.

"KLP" also one of the best sounding albums of all time. Lowery told me once that credit goes to the engineer, Csaba Petocz, this Euro guy working in Nashville. Looks like from that era he'd worked with everyone from Metallica to Vince Gill.

what kind of indie ppl are you? oh

?

i just thought KLP onward was signif less adventurous, no big deal to disappointing, at the time

ie another cleaned up sellout

that's crazy

I mean maybe not about the onward part but KLP is a highwater mark

Well, they def. lose their shambling scuzz and goofiness, but they're really well put together records all the same. And I do think they're highwater marks, unlike "Warehouse" or "Tim" et al. More along the lines of a "Perfect from Now On" step up and over. Just a bit tighter and sharper, if less "fun"/subversive.

This doesn't have to be an either/or. I appreciate the ramshackle first 3 (released in 18 months basically), and when it worked it had an amazing lo-fi charm, but there are a lot more 'Turtlehead's than, uh, 'Skinhead's.
and I don't smoke pot anymore, so I tend to go back to the more polished later work.

hmmm i never smoked and preferred the scuzz

Don't/never smoked, but CVB sure as hell did! Love the scuzz and mystery of the first three and EPs and odds n ends, love the polished stuff equally. Even love the Monks of Doom. Chris Pederson - Crispy Dersen - is one of my favorite drummers.

Agree that II & III and CVB are head and shoulders above the rest. A group of true originals, though.

Crispy's work on OBRS, in particular, is crazy good. I've spent entire spins of that record just listening to the hi-hat. OBRS is one of the best-arranged albums in rock. Too bad the engineering stinks & it sounds all tinny. Still I think it's my pick.

p sure i saw their first nyc gig (Folk City, '85) and my reaction was "cute hippies"

Yeah OBRS is super punchy and condensed. Mesa Boogie

Xpost Want to say the remastered OBRS sounded better.

Yeah, the recent Omnivore reissue sounds good, esp on vinyl. But I still kinda wish it was a little less slicked-up. Still in my top 5 records of all time, probs (but that placement is floated by how great all the surrounding records are, too)

(not to discount the first 2 albums, cuz they're great alzo)

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Even love the Monks of Doom.

Yes!

I saw Victor Krummenacher play at the SF Eagle maybe a dozen years ago; he was a teen jailbait cutie in '85.

http://hys2d3ayt6x6b7ts22ypg68p.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/CVB-with-Morgan.jpg

II & III has "(Don't You Go To) Goleta" which was very important to a younger me

Also "(We're a) Bad Trip." And "Sometimes."

Key Lime Pie is by far my favorite. In my youth I was really pushing to name a band I was in after that album. The others didn't go for it.

Cracker Whiskey A Go Go (Dec. 30, 2016):

Loser (Jerry Garcia cover)
Almond Grove
One Fine Day
Gimme One More Chance
Where Have Those Days Gone
California Country Boy
Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now)
Redneck Mother (Ray Wylie Hubbard cover)
Wedding Day
Low
Euro-Trash Girl
Someday
Beautiful
Get Off This

Encore:
King of Bakersfield

i actually liked Cracker better. CVB seemed a bit more gimmicky and old, everyone had gray hair. Cracker came on and seemed to have some youth on more profession to their set, totally different guys outside the singer. i just liked the dad rock stuff better this night but my friend liked CVB better. so go figure.

plus Cracker opened with Loser and it lasted like 20 minutes and totally rocked, but most people left as it was really late.

sorry for bumping this thread instead of today but i already had CVB set list on this thread.

old, everyone had gray hair.

Join the club! These kids today, with their Cracker and youth ... bah.

Show was great, people were indeed old. We had the same setlist you posted, more or less. The medley at the end was half "Hava Nageela," with a bit of "Kashmir" and "Dazed and Confused," and the opening harmonics of "Roundabout" thrown in (which made some dude behind me yell "do it!!!"). Best was me listening in the back toward the beginning of the set, struggling to see the band and noting that Frank had put some extra effort into playing drums like the album. And then David introduced everyone, and ... it was Chris Pederson back on drums this tour! He lives in Australia and rarely plays with the group these days. He's one of my fave drummers of all time, so it was such a treat to listen to him, if not see him.

Whoah nice!

"She Divines Water" is a classic too; a spiraling song that I don't understand literally ("which was Zion")

Other times they sampled/repurposed their own work: on II and III, one of the songs (is it “Circles”?) is the another of their songs (is it “Ambiguity Song”?) backwards, with some overdubs. I think there’s a version of “Processional” or “The Fool” with lyrics, under a different title. I think there were a bunch more examples, but I haven’t listened to them seriously in probably 20 years & my auld memory is shot.

"Five Sticks" uses a different (drum-free) mix of "Ambiguity Song" played backwards with overdubbed (forwards) acoustic guitar and tambourine.
"Circles" uses the chorus of "Oh No!" ("Oh no, here it comes again, that funny feeling") played backwards.
"Border Ska" (instrumental) and "Heart" (which has vocals) are both ska songs with very similar guitar melodies, if that's what you're thinking of.
The beginning of "Stairway to Heavan" is a somber version of "Processional."

Ernest comes through! Another one that comes to mind is the they recycled some of the background vocals from “Peace and Love” into “Eye of Fatima Part II” (“Cowboys on acid”, “No-one ever conquered Wyoming”).

It’s actually pretty astonishing how productive they were during their few years together the first time. Five LPs, an EP, enough outtakes and B-sides to make a whole other LP, not to mention 2 Monks of Doom records and 3 albums of Camper Van Chadbourne stuff, was all written & recorded between ‘84 and ‘89.

"We're All Wasted and We're Wasting All Your Time" features backwards stuff from "Devil Song" and "Take the Skinheads Bowling."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-kguFNwwko

It's on that "Camper Van Beethoven Is Dead. Long Live Camper Van Beethoven" comp, which is itself pretty confusing, since some of it is old and some of it is new, but it's not always clear which is which. For example, this track features parts of "Devil Song" backwards, but "Devil Song" didn't show up until "Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart." But this "Wasted" mishmash also appears on the reissue of "Telephone Free Landslide Victory." So who knows.