Camper Van Beethoven - A Goliardic Revolution

Every member of Camper Van Beethoven is a thoughtful songwriter, a master of his instrument, with a totally unique vision, and together they have a balanced chemistry, free of ego, and a dynamic that has created many of our favorite songs
(R.E.M.)

 

In the soundtrack of my life. A unique American band, with wonderful songs. I'm always so happy when they put out a new album
(Curt Wood, Meat Puppets)

California Republic

Redlands, California. A small town of nearly 60,000 inhabitants about fifty miles west of Palm Springs. We're in San Bernardino County, in an area originally occupied by the Cahuilla Native American tribe. At least until the arrival of the Spanish crown and the consequent Catholic influence in the last thirty years of the 1700s. Over a century later came the Southern Pacific railroad line connecting Southern California with San Francisco. Among the world's most important orange-producing and distribution areas, Redlands enjoys a mild Mediterranean climate and welcomes young college students eager to take on the world. It's early 1983, and the underground scene of little Redlands is teeming with aspiring bands holed up in classic American garages amid rivers of beer and blown-out amplifiers. One of them has a decidedly unusual name, The Estonian Gauchos, formed and led by a 23-year-old singer and guitarist named David Lowery.
David Charles Lowery was actually born in San Antonio, Texas, in early September 1960. His father pursued a brilliant career in the Air Force, while his mother would later be described as "an English working-class woman." His early youth in Texas didn't last long, as David moved with his whole family to Redlands to begin high school. Once he came of age, Lowery developed a passion for punk music, picked up the bass, and decided his future lay in music. He even formed two bands, The Estonian Gauchos and Sitting Duck, blending punk and acid-rock with what David himself would call fake russian-sound music. Alongside Lowery, Sitting Duck featured multi-instrumentalist Chris Molla, drummer Bill McDonald, and later Victor Krummenacher, who played bass and thus allowed David to move over to rhythm guitar.
While rehearsing his first songs in Redlands, Lowery still had his college studies to finish at the University of California Santa Cruz, where he'd chosen to pursue another great passion of his, mathematics. In his free time in Santa Cruz, he played in a third band called Box O' Laffs, together with local friends Richie West, Anthony Guess and Chris Pedersen. When the summer break arrived in 1983, David returned to sunny San Bernardino County to unify all his creative efforts into a single project with a fittingly explosive name: Camper Van Beethoven and the Border Patrol. Lowery himself would later explain the band's genesis: "McDaniel was fixated on this stuff, things that only seemed to have meaning. He watched a ton of TV, soaking up everything the mass media produced. Until he spat this out. Everything that characterizes my sense of the absurd I owe to him." The first incarnation of the new band featured Lowery (guitar and vocals), Molla (multi-instrumentalist), Krummenacher (bass) and McDonald (drums), joined by Mike Zorn on harmonica and Daniel Blume on violin. Because the name wasn't the only strange thing about Camper Van Beethoven.

Lassie on the Moon

The first incarnation of the band lasted just three months, long enough to see out the summer of 1983 in song. Lowery went back to finish his degree at Santa Cruz, reuniting with his old bandmates in Box O' Laffs. During one of many nights out, he met Jonathan Segel, a multi-instrumentalist born in Marseille, France, and raised between Davis and Tucson. Segel was also enrolled at UC Santa Cruz, where he studied music composition under electronic composer Gordon Mumma. Highly skilled on violin, guitar and keyboards, Jonathan had that blend of eccentric and brilliant personality Lowery needed to give Camper Van Beethoven and the Border Patrol its driving force, and the band effectively reformed right there in Santa Cruz, with drummer Anthony Guess replacing the sharp-witted McDonald. In 1985, having completed his math degree, David was ready to get serious. He decided to "shorten" the band's name to Camper Van Beethoven and record a debut album, having gathered plenty of material after about two years of rehearsing in California garages.

In just two months, January and February, Lowery and co. recorded a full 17 tracks at Samurai Sound Studios in Davis, California, with no producer at the helm. The label chosen for the debut album was Independent Project Records, founded five years earlier in Los Angeles with the aim of launching the careers of emerging bands. The album Telephone Free Landslide Victory came out in June on the American market, opening with the brief, disorienting instrumental "Border Ska," barely 3 minutes long. The lopsided psychedelic ballad "The Day That Lassie Went To the Moon" is the true manifesto of Lowery and co.'s intentions, mocking the American status quo by sending into orbit the dog who most embodies star-spangled values. From the shrill violin on the martial "Wasted," a cover barely two minutes long of Black Flag, to the sinuous reggae-meets-tex-mex melodies of "Yanqui Go Home," Camper Van Beethoven's debut album couldn't be more disorienting and eccentric, like a patchwork of underground/alternative rock.
The new band immediately shows total mastery of different instruments and genres, ranging from the sixties beat of "Oh No!," pounding away on the keyboards, to the noise-tinged instrumental drift of "9 Of Disks." "Payed Vacation: Greece" feels like gliding over Balkan territory, before immediately returning to the States on the whirling country & western "Where The Hell Is Bill?," where Lowery pokes fun at the punk movement. If on one hand the band leans into world music - the Cossack sound of "Vladivostok" and "Balalaika Gap" - the other recurring thread is a paradoxical, nonsensical humor. This almost Zappa-like taste comes through both instrumentally - as in "Mao Reminisces About His Days In Southern China," which fuses ska rhythm, oriental dance and Morricone-style arrangements - and lyrically, culminating in the masterpiece "Take The Skinheads Bowling," which unfolds over a Velvet Underground-style raga groove, making the jingle-jangle guitars literally explode.
If Telephone Free Landslide Victory ends up on many critics' lists of the year's ten best albums, it's by no means just a matter of personal taste among critics and insiders. It's a record where everything works wonderfully, like a machine racing along to the beat rhythm of "I Don't See You" through a rollercoaster of emotions between amateurish pogo-noise ("Opi Rides Again – Club Med Sucks") and model-student folk ballads ("Ambiguity Song").

Very shortly after the debut album's release, Camper Van Beethoven welcomed a new guitarist from San Francisco, Gregory Allen Lisher. Leaving the band, however, was drummer Anthony Guess, which forced Lowery and Molla to temporarily trade off on drums for a new round of recording sessions. While new drummer Chris Pedersen wouldn't join the band until later in 1986, the sessions certainly couldn't stop at such a crucial moment, since label Pitch-a-Tent was eagerly awaiting the follow-up to Telephone Free Landslide Victory.
II & III came out in early 1986 and marks a different step on the band's path, first of all partly abandoning the amateurish, lo-fi spirit of the debut in favor of greater care for the instrumental parts and, overall, a more pronounced professionalism in the recording studio. Starting with the whirling raga of "Abundance," the new sound is decidedly more atmospheric, even as the pursuit of the absurd continues. The punk spirit is thus absorbed into typically American sounds (the adrenaline-fueled "Cowboys From Hollywood"), while the band keeps pushing its patchwork of styles, from the waltz of "Sad Lovers Waltz" to the supersonic ragtime of "Goleta." Compared to the debut, II & III veers more toward what could be called Americana, as in the hilarious country & western "Turtlehead" or the wild bluegrass-flavored cover of "I Love Her All The Time," from the Sonic Youth catalog. A total of 19 tracks ranging across the roots-rock spectrum, starting with Celtic jigs ("No Flies On Us"), swinging through garage-beat ("Down And Out"), and landing once again on Cossack soil with the ska violin of "No Krugerrands For David" and "4 Year Plan."
The shift between the A and B side is drastic to say the least, as Jonathan Segel takes over the mic and launches into a buckshot blues, "(We're A) Bad Trip." Seemingly making no sense at all, the listener is then immediately catapulted into the captivating Indian raga "Circles," complete with sitar and acid-rock intensity worthy of the Grateful Dead. In reality, Camper Van Beethoven pull off the rather difficult feat of transforming punk attitude into something more intellectual and postmodern, proving themselves to be phenomenal musicians (the cosmic "Dustpan" and "Cattle") while still being great jokers, as on the mockery of classic rhythm & blues progressions torn apart by the endless violin of the surreal "ZZ Top Goes To Egypt."
Despite lacking a hit on the level of "Take The Skinheads Bowling," Camper Van Beethoven seem ready to start getting serious, as suggested by the acid final jam "No More Bullshit." The debut's explosiveness may be missing, sure, but II & III is a record that marks a passage into adulthood for these California garage-punk rockers.

Joe Stalin's Cadillac

Right after the release of II & III, the band returns to the studio alongside guitarist and banjo player Eugene Chadbourne, a New York native who grew up in Boulder, Colorado. Chadbourne started playing as a teenager, when he idolized the Beatles and tried to pick up girls his own age with music. A music journalism and criticism enthusiast, Eugene is convinced by Anthony Braxton to put down the pen for good and pick up an instrument, moving away from the all-too-conventional boundaries of pop-rock. To dodge the draft for the Vietnam War, he flees to Canada, before returning to New York and falling in with John Zorn's crowd. A friend and bandmate of drummer Jimmy Carl Black – who works with Frank Zappa – Chadbourne explores the widest possible musical spectrum after his initial crush on the Beatles, from country & western to avant-garde jazz. A profile like his could hardly avoid working with one of the most absurd bands of the 1980s.

In the summer of 1986, the third album, Camper Van Beethoven, is released, again on Pitch-a-Tent, with no credited producer. From the cover art alone, a veiled nod to the Beatles' masterpiece “Sgt. Pepper's” seems almost obvious, and when the satirical, neo-psychedelic “Good Guys And Bad Guys” kicks in, the new American alternative's "lonely hearts" are at the peak of their creativity. The song's breezy accordion is clearly yet another jab at a hippie culture that no longer exists, pushing psychedelia toward new frontiers, just like Lassie the dog. When, on the following track – “Joe Stalin's Cadillac” – Chadbourne's banjo launches into a kind of deranged hillbilly runaway, it becomes clear that Camper Van Beethoven (the album) actually positions itself as the “Sgt. Pepper's” of the 80s, deconstructing things in a Dadaist manner only Lowery and co. could pull off.
From the folk litany “Five Sticks” to the Doors-indebted beat of “LuLu Land”, the album stacks up a 16-track Babel of eccentricity and absurdity, mixing medieval jigs (“Une Fois”) with college-rock anthem riffs (“We Saw Jerry's Daughter”). It's like snapping your fingers and jumping from Celtic music to Grateful Dead-style acid-rock or riff-heavy Jefferson Airplane-esque blues (“Surprise Truck”). Compared to the first two albums, Camper Van Beethoven is much more centered on Lowery's voice, less instrumental but no less inventive for it. The band has fun deconstructing Led Zeppelin's “Stairway To Heaven” in a mystical vein, before diving headlong into their beloved American roots territory with the little epic “The History Of Utah”.
On the sonic avant-garde of “Still Wishing to Course”, the album unfolds like an Oriental fan, reaching atmospheres probably never attained before, from the frontier blues of “We Love You” to the drunken bluegrass of “Hoe Yourself Down”. The band's instrumental exploration remains central throughout, this time pushing toward a satirically reinvented take on 60s psychedelia, as in the perfect marriage of minimal keyboards and lysergic spoken-word on “Peace & Love”, or on the over-seven-minute ride of “Interstellar Overdrive”, a wonderfully acid cover of Pink Floyd. Then, to close things out, the signature “Shut Us Down”, a shimmering, harmonic garage-punk number reminding the listener that, after all, it's just rock'n'roll. Or maybe not.

Intermission I: the arrival of the Monks of Doom

After the release of the third album Camper Van Beethoven, acclaimed by critics and well-received by American listeners, several band members decide to embark on a new musical venture. Lisher (guitar), Krummenacher (bass and vocals) and Pedersen (drums) temporarily leave Lowery to form the side project Monks of Doom, aiming to explore personal interests and tastes they couldn't express within Camper. David A. Immerglück quickly joins the trio; he cut his teeth in the Bay Area starting out on guitar – alongside future Counting Crows frontman Adam Duritz, in a band called Mod-L Society – and later experimenting with less mainstream instruments like the mandolin and the electric sitar. Nicknamed Immy or Immer, Immerglück joins the Monks of Doom in 1986 to embrace a sonic philosophy aiming to blend post-punk with a progressive and folk aesthetic. As bassist Krummenacher explains, "we were interested in making music that went slightly further out, with harder, more progressive tendencies. The project was an expansion outward, a chance to go wherever our imagination took us."

The Monks of Doom debut with a fictitious soundtrack titled Soundtrack To The Film Breakfast On The Beach Of Deception, which, undeniable instrumental chops aside, feels more like an improvised studio-recording exercise amid an instrumental free-for-all spanning funk (“In Anticipation Of The Pope” and “Facts About Spiders”), alternative-blues (“Blues On Sunday”) and acid-rock (“Ukranian Technological Faith Dance”). It's a disjointed record that hits few real peaks, chief among them the jam “Jim Gore And The Ghost Of Missouri”, the Who-style riff of “Save Me From Myself” and the progressive-folk of “Visions From The Acid Couch”.

Their true debut comes on Pitch-a-Tent in 1989, titled The Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company, with vocal duties split between Krummenacher and Immer. The album is noticeably more structured and purposeful, starting with the hard-progressive march of opener “Vaporize Your Crystals”. The atmospheres are indeed light years away from Camper's absurdity, absorbed instead into an instrumental seriousness geared toward extreme experimentation (“The Vivian Girls”).
The Monks of Doom have clearly worn out their Pink Floyd records (“All In Good Time”), willing to sacrifice any commercial ambition in the name of the instrument. It's a zero-sum game: on one hand, the fierce experimentation hits the mark (the sinister, martial “Trapped”), while on the other it ends up aping the cornerstones of the 1970s, from Pink Floyd's psychedelia to Alice Cooper's Grand Guignol (“Voodoo Vengeance”).

The Eye of Fatima

After the American tour for the third album Camper Van Beethoven, Chris Molla leaves the band, which finds itself back in the studio as a quintet. Lisher's role as lead guitarist becomes more solidified, evident on the following EP Vampire Can Mating Oven, released at the end of 1987 with producers Wally Sound and Harry Parker. A total of six tracks spanning just over 20 minutes of new music, from the breezy ska rhythm of “Heart” to the pop-flavored cover of Ringo Starr's “Photograph”. The mini-album is modest and leans toward a more mainstream sound, not adding much to the band's aesthetic of the absurd, caught between the beat cadence of “Never Go Back” and the electronic keyboards of “Ice Cream Everyday”. But Camper are no ordinary band: they still land a knockout with “Seven Languages”, a superb blend of psych, new wave and kraut-rock, followed by the beguiling instrumental loop “Processional”.

At the start of 1987, Camper Van Beethoven decide to accept a lucrative offer from Virgin Records, effectively giving in to the golden lure of a major label. Between the summer and fall of that year, they return to the studio, this time with an outside producer, Dennis Herring, who had recently kicked off his career with American Girls' debut album. With Molla gone, the band is pushed toward a cleaner sound, trimming the instrumental passages and adding far more sung, less (obviously) psychedelic tracks to meet the commercial expectations "suggested" by Virgin. The fourth album, Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart – released in May 1988 – is certainly a far cry from the wild experimentation of their early days, but the new mainstream approach is tempered by the band's ever-brilliant ideas, who never fully abandon their sonic patchanka.
Split into two parts, “Eye Of Fatima” is the new masterpiece, moving between folk-rock sweeps and a memorable electric, raga-flavored coda courtesy of the ever-theatrical Greg Lisher. Segel's inescapable violin drives the martial rendition of the Appalachian classic “O Death”, before letting loose on the following metaphysical pop of “She Divines Water”. Even though the band's new approach is lighter and cleaner in sound, the Middle Eastern cadence of “Devil Song” is like a seed that will bloom in a tidier garden than before. The mixology remains impeccable, as the ballad “One Of These Days” melds ska rhythm, Celtic violin and soulful singing. Lowery himself seems to be distancing himself from the aesthetic of the absurd, normalizing his style, as on the punk fanfare “Turquoise Jewelry” or the energetic rocker “My Path Belated”.
The album's second side opens with “Waka”, which indulges in a hard rock riff with an eye toward widening the fanbase, while the following country lilt of “Change Your Mind” returns to the American spirit already explored on II & III. The finale goes out with a bang, with the whirling polka “Tania” and “Life Is Grand”, which packs some of Camper's defining traits – from the ska beat to the guitar flourishes carried by Lowery's ramshackle singing – into just over three minutes.
Faced with the major-label test, the band doesn't stumble, continuing its march toward immortality within American alternative rock.

Praised by critics – Rolling Stone magazine would describe the band's new sound as "a house party at the United Nations" – the album is played live on a long American tour in the summer of 1988. The band has no intention of stopping, backed by Virgin and producer Dennis Herring. At the start of 1989, a new studio session is scheduled for the fifth LP, but the clashing personalities of Lowery and Segel have already become irreconcilable. Artistic and personal rifts lead the two leaders into open conflict, prompting the violinist to say goodbye to everyone and settle in San Francisco, where he founds an experimental music band, Hieronymus Firebrain, later reformed under the name Jack & Jill. Naturally, Lowery can't do without a violin in his sound, so he hires Don Lax as a session-only musician, joined by Morgan Fichter, who actually becomes a full band member.
For the sessions that would produce Key Lime Pie – released in September – several supporting players who would go on to tour live with Camper are brought in, from organist Garth Hudson to harmonica player Hammer Smith. Essentially, by the time the fifth album comes out, Camper Van Beethoven has become a project shepherded solely by Lowery and Lisher (who carves out an even bigger role), with Dennis Herring back in the producer's chair.
Opened by the Eastern European danse macabre of “Opening Theme”, the new record is the bleakest in Camper's entire discography, as if trying to musically mirror an impending dissolution. Even the most humorous numbers, like the superb jingle-jangle of “Jack Ruby”, seem steeped in a leaden atmosphere, shaped by Lowery's flat, monotone delivery. Overall, the album takes a decisive turn toward country-flavored songwriting (the honeyed “Sweethearts”), further defining the boundaries of a quest toward American roots-rock. This new, darker compositional approach reaches a dazzling climax on the aching “When I Win The Lottery”, which fuses their beloved surreal humor with a hypnotic rhythm built on raga, Balkan textures and endless alternative-folk horizons. In barely three and a half minutes lies the simple explanation of why no major label could ever rein in the band's creative drive, perhaps too brilliant to be understood by a mass audience.
From the furious garage guitars of “(I Was Born In A) Laundromat” to the frontier ska of “Borderline”, the new record glides smoothly through fifty minutes of listening, enriched by new instruments and backing vocals, all the way to an almost orchestral sound on the waltz “The Light From A Cake” or the ballad “June”, which starts as a power-pop number and ends in a dissonant crescendo somewhere between the elegiac and the martial. “All Her Favorite Fruit”, inspired by Pynchon's novel "Gravity's Rainbow", is a country sweetness in the style of Neil Young; “Flowers” is a psychedelic reminiscence with a chorus like a rainbow after a torrential downpour. Then, to close, the heavy hitter that catapults the band to the top of the American charts for the first time: drawn from the Status Quo repertoire of Francis Rossi, the metaphysical violin combined with the hard rock guitar of “Pictures Of Matchstick Men” recalls the legend of "Who's Next", giving back (in part), on a commercial level, what Lowery and co. had given to the world of alternative music in just under five years of brilliant music.

Intermission II: Cracker

Paradoxically, the story of Camper Van Beethoven ends right here, after yet another excellent album and a chart-smashing single released on a respectable major label. In September 1989, David Immerglück – already a member of Monks of Doom alongside Lisher and Pedersen – is invited by Lowery to join the band for their new US and European tour. The final scheduled date is in the Swedish town of Örebro, the last act in the spring of 1990. It's Lowery who makes the call, following the departures of Molla and Segel, to start over from scratch and return to his love of the demo tape, garage rehearsals and experimenting with new music. He moves to Virginia, where he reconnects with an old childhood friend, guitarist Johnny Hickman, with whom he starts rehearsing new material. The band's name will be Cracker, and it quickly welcomes bassist Davey Faragher, one of the most sought-after players on the California scene.

Of course, the story of Camper doesn't vanish overnight, which allows Lowery to reach out to Virgin once again to produce a debut album in the summer of 1991. Produced by Don Smith at Hollywood Sounds studios, with contributions from drummers Rick Jaeger and Jim Keltner, the self-titled album Cracker comes out in March 1992, rewarding the feverish anticipation of die-hard fans left bereft of Camper Van Beethoven. But the trio's sound is decidedly different from the surreal postmodernism fans were used to, as Lowery abruptly drops the sonic patchanka to return to a muscular rock'n'roll, much closer to Guns N' Roses than to Frank Zappa. The new anthem is the sturdy “Teen Angst (What The World Needs Now)”, which indeed shoots straight to number one on the US Modern Rock chart.
Cracker would go on to sell over 200,000 copies by spring 1994, driven by the funky “This Is Cracker Soul”, which plays like a new artistic manifesto for Lowery and co. While on one hand a path is traced toward seventies-style Southern hard rock – “I See The Light”, pure Black Crowes with a killer chorus; “St. Cajetan”, a southern-blues ballad; “Satisfy You”, in the vein of John Mellencamp or Tom Petty – on the other, the sharp irony of the old Camper days still shines through, with Lowery poking fun at the whole world (himself included). It opens with the Dylan-esque power-folk of “Happy Birthday To Me”, flows on through irreverent alternative-country (“Mr. Wrong”), and comes full circle with another dazed homage to the most electric Dylan on “Can I Take My Gun To Heaven?”. Closing things out, the aching ballad “Another Song About The Rain” – complete with a vaguely Zevon-esque chorus – the power-pop of “Don't Fuck Me Up (With Peace And Love)” and above all the waltz “Dr. Bernice”, a nod to a certain taste for the freakish. Given such a clear-cut intention to break away from Camper, Lowery manages, in a very short time, to put together a brand-new band that delivers a sturdy, fun and well-played record.

A few months after the release of their self-titled debut, Cracker find themselves back in the studio with an ambitious goal: to make a new record live, captured in one take. That requires calm, and Los Angeles isn't the place for it. They consider a house in Palm Springs that once belonged to Frank Sinatra, then settle on a crumbling soundstage in the Pioneertown area, previously used for shooting TV serials and low-budget westerns. The location is in a state of complete disrepair, but big enough to fit an imposing mobile recording unit, allowing them to hole up there for nearly two months. The sessions begin in the depths of winter, between late February and late March, so much so that Hickman brings in old mattresses to try to insulate the building from the yard outside. Michael Urbano, a Sacramento native and former member of the band Bourgeois Tagg, sits in on drums. The payoff for all that logistical effort rewards the band: in the summer of 1993 Kerosene Hat is released, shooting to the top of the Billboard chart and going on to sell nearly half a million copies.
On a purely commercial level, the singles that put the band in front of half of America are a perfect fusion of grunge guitars and Dylan-esque phrasing (“Low”) and the wild rock'n'roll of “Get Off This”. Starting with the blazing riff of “Movie Star”, Kerosene Hat is the album that seals – and in some ways celebrates – Lowery's farewell to the old Camper days in favor of a full-throttle return to rawer, more fun rock'n'roll. It's a sprawling, over-70-minute record, flawlessly recorded between spectral country-blues ballads (“Kerosene Hat”), pure The Band-style American elegies (“Take Me Down To The Infirmary” and “I Want Everything”) and sweeping guitar workouts worthy of the best Tom Petty (“Nostalgia”).
The record is heartfelt, honest to the point of obsession, the product of a once-intellectual approach now turned into a search for American roots for a modern audience, almost a proto-grunge effort. The guitar and bass work stands out – the playful “Sweet Potato”, which sounds like it's straight out of the Little Feat songbook – guided by Lowery's unmistakable nasal drawl, telling of an American sound that no longer exists, or rather, one that can be revived and chart again in the mid-90s. While the drunken-saloon shuffle of “Lonesome Johnny Blues” might fairly be called anachronistic, the supersonic boogie of “Let's Go For A Ride” is pure adrenaline for going wild in the pit.
In the end, two strokes of genius: the hypnotic cover of Grateful Dead's “Loser”, and the dazed, over-eight-minute masterpiece “Eurotrash Girl”, recounting the endless humiliations of a young man traveling around Europe. The track gets rejected by Virgin, already worried about the album's excessive length, so the band slips it in as track 69 among a handful of hidden tracks alongside the wild punk-rock of “I Ride My Bike” and a brief acoustic version of the title track. With “Eurotrash Girl”, Lowery lands his new sonic gem, proof that beneath the more mainstream new look there's still plenty of substance.

As mentioned, Kerosene Hat turns out to be a resounding success, drawing thousands of new fans to the shows of the following tour, the last with Faragher, who unexpectedly leaves along with the album's drummer, Urbano. Lowery and Hickman recruit Bob Rupe (The Silos), adding Charlie Quintana (previously with Bob Dylan) on drums. After a cameo on the Led Zeppelin tribute album Encomium, contributing a fairly faithful version of “Good Times Bad Times” after their take on “When The Levee Breaks” was deemed "too weird", Cracker go quiet for three long years. They return to the scene only in the spring of 1996, when The Golden Age is released, with longtime producer Dennis Herring back at the helm.
Long-awaited, the new album fails to win over critics, who call it "self-indulgent, arrogant and uninspired". The first single is “I Hate My Generation”, which, despite a genuinely strong riff, fails to match the subversive punch of “Teen Angst” or the Dylan-esque fusion of “Low”. The frenzied, guitar-heavy pace of “I'm A Little Rocket Ship” and “Nothing To Believe In” shows how the band has been affected by three years off the road, while the fast-moving 1990s had changed guitar-sound forever.
Even the ballad format (“Big Dipper”) becomes an end in itself, and the much-loved return to American country (“The Golden Age”) this time feels more like a carbon copy than an intuitive reworking. While some tracks are completely out of focus – the distorted “100 Flower Power Maximum”, the endless jazzy drone of “Dixie Babylon” or the intimate folk of “I Can't Forget You” – others are far more inspired, from the Creedence-style blues of “Sweet Thistle Pie” to “Useless Stuff”, perhaps the only moment on the record where Lowery truly returns to the glory days of alternative-rock.

The Golden Age is a commercial flop, light years away from the huge success of Kerosene Hat. Cracker hire a new drummer, Frank Funaro, and get back in the saddle in the summer of 1998 with Gentleman’s Blues, launched by the single "The Good Life", which dusts off the Camper catalogue with a sturdy mix of power-pop and alt-country. After the flop of the previous record, Lowery prefers to play it safe, returning to stars-and-stripes roots-rock between catchy blues numbers ("Seven Days"), hypnotic frontier atmospheres ("James River") and new double-time anthems ("The World Is Mine").
Obviously well played, Gentleman's Blues is the new work of a Lowery who's less and less inspired, practically forced to flip on autopilot and go back to American roots in order to avoid any embarrassment. So we're talking about an honest record – the gospel of "Lullabye", the country & western of "Trials & Tribulations", the sleepy blues of the title track – but one without peaks, without songs that can comfortably sit alongside those of the first two albums. Only the circus waltz of "I Want Out Of The Circus" could fit on a Camper Van Beethoven shelf, but that's decidedly too little for a band that promised so much and is delivering so little, five years on from their breakthrough.

Interlude III: chaos isn't dead

While Lowery leaves Camper Van Beethoven to form Cracker, the rest of the band has already launched the Monks of Doom project precisely to experiment with music of their own. Just two years after Cosmodemonic, Lisher and co. release the follow-up Meridian on the Baited Breath label, which continues the search for a new sound, starting from an obscure progressive streak ("Cherry Blossom Baptism") before veering heavily into funk territory with "Riverbed" and "Door To Success". Unlike Lowery, the Monks of Doom have no intention of achieving commercial success, as they remain anchored to an experimental blend of genres that doesn't always sound neat or polished. So Meridian moves from dark, Roger Waters-like atmospheres ("The Traveler") to latin-ska excursions ("Argentine Dilemma") that could even matter if they were played with more conviction. Instead, the Monks of Doom just want to have fun playing and experimenting to the extreme, from the instrumental Celtic jig "Follow The Queen" to the long closing march "Circassian Beauty".

1992 is a particularly busy year for the band. First comes the EP The Insect God, a suite inspired by the illustrated book of the same name by American writer Edward St. John Gorey, famous for his macabre drawings. Made up of just five tracks, the record is paradoxically their most accomplished, precisely because it's completely untethered from the song format, steeped in Zappa-style progressive atmospheres and musically perfectly attuned to the story of the insect god told by Gorey. Next comes Forgery, produced by Dan Fredman on IRS and preceded by the video-single "Flint Jack", a sort of slow-motion pop-beat much closer to Camper's own work than to the band's wild experiments up to that point.
The Monks don't give up on stripped-down funk ("Flow"), venturing into an instrumental tribute to Astor Piazzolla ("Tanguedia"), which is as interesting as it is completely detached from the rest of the record. Stepping on the gas is the hefty "Dust", which mixes hard-and-heavy rhythms with a thunderous progressive bassline. Judged by some critics as too cerebral – a "modern psychedelia for the smart drug generation" – Forgery is indeed a self-referential album, deliberately built to appear complex, as in the mini-suites "Cigarette Man" and "Chaos Is Not Dead".
Once work on Forgery is finished, Immerglück leaves the band to focus on other projects, lending his guitar to songwriter John Hiatt before finally settling into the Counting Crows family. With David gone, Lisher and the others decide to stop and turn their attention elsewhere, while Pedersen even moves to Australia.

Children of the new golden West

1999. A decade on from their last album, Key Lime Pie, Camper Van Beethoven decide to get back in the saddle, to the delight of many die-hard fans. The bond between Lowery and Segel is rekindled, and the two get back to work together making new original music. The first experiments are embryonic, collected in the rarities box set Camper Van Beethoven Is Dead. Long Live Camper Van Beethoven, released in 2000 by Pitch-A-Tent, the band's historic early label. The compilation mixes remixed old live performances, previously unreleased demos and new material.
From the wild tex-mex rhythm of "L'Aguardiente" to an orchestral version of "All Her Favourite Fruite", the album is more a treat for connoisseurs than a proper comeback record. Worth noting is the schizoid, Zappa-esque psychedelia of "Who Are The Brain Police?" and the funeral march "Klondike", in a collection that fits nicely within the band's discography, if perhaps at a peculiar moment, seeing as it's the first release right after Lowery and co.'s reunion.

At the start of the new millennium, Segel, Krummenacher and Lisher join Cracker for a handful of live dates, where fans get to hear early Camper songs played live for the first time since the split. The real reunion tour begins in 2002, with the addition of Immerglück, Frank Funaro and – at some California dates – even Pedersen, back from Australia. The same year sees the release of the jarring double album Tusk, a track-by-track remake of the Fleetwood Mac album of the same name from 1979. Accounts of the record's genesis differ: some Camper members claim it's an old studio work predating their move to Virgin in 1988. Krummenacher – who will later trash the album – says it was actually born during the reunion tour as an experiment, to see whether the band could still play together and produce genuinely original material. Whatever the when and why, Tusk is a sprawling double album running through ska versions, country & western and avant-garde manipulations. Almost an hour and a half spent (tediously) reworking an album released over twenty years earlier by a completely different band.

Following the release of Tusk, Camper tour the States again and put out another compilation, the massive box-set Cigarettes & Carrot Juice: The Santa Cruz Years, which includes the first three pre-Virgin albums plus a fourth live album dating from the last year before the split. It would seem, then, that the band had reunited more for fun than anything else, until 2004's New Roman Times arrives, a full fifteen years after Key Lime Pie, marking Camper Van Beethoven's true return to the recording scene.
Released in October, with the unexpected comeback on a few tracks of former bandmate Chris Molla, New Roman Times is a concept album conceived by Lowery set in an alternate universe where the United States has split into two hostile nations. Catholic, right-wing Texas against the left-wing utopia of California. The main character is a young Texan who enlists after an event very similar to the World Trade Center attacks, ready to lose a leg for his country. Returning home disabled, the record's protagonist falls under the spell of the Californian rebels, portrayed as a mix of hippies and surfers, eco-guerrillas allied with Mexico and with a federation of aliens from deep space. "'New Roman Times' was meant as a kind of commentary on the fake stars-and-stripes narrative," Lowery would comment some years later, "that emerged from the media before the Iraq War. The crazy conspiratorial elements were thrown in because it was a Camper Van Beethoven record. The fact that our unreal description of 2003 matches the reality of 2018 should bother all of us."
Musically speaking, New Roman Times is a record whose style is heavily shaped by the Cracker and Monks of Doom experiences – it's no coincidence that Hickman and Immerglück are also enlisted – as if Camper Van Beethoven had by now become a sort of abstract entity, a vessel for different musicians and ideas. The hard-progressive drive of "Sons Of The Golden West" is closer to Monks of Doom's work, where the only distinctly Camper touch comes from Segel's apocalyptic violin. The heavy-pop riff of "White Fluffy Clouds", on the other hand, is closer to Cracker's first two albums, just like the country ballad "That Gum You Like Is Back In Style".
But Camper fans have absolutely nothing to despair about. The return to absurdist roots-rock is marked by the symphonic gem "51/7", while "Might Makes Right" lights up with frontier ska, "Militia Song" lets loose with a hillbilly rhythm and the breakneck "R'n'R Uzbekistan" travels off toward Eastern Europe. A burst of madness at the heart of a record that turns serious again on the progressive-rock of "The Poppies Of Balmorhea" and "I Am Talking To This Flower". Then, suddenly, the demented lalala over a Neil Young-style electric gallop on "The Long Plastic Hallway", followed by the sonic manipulations of "Come Out" and the tex-mex blare of "Los Tigres Traficantes".
It's a disorienting record, New Roman Times, probably too sprawling to work as a concept album, but tremendously fun to listen to in one sitting, from the pop psychedelia of "Hippy Chix" to the disco-music parody "Discotheque CVB".

Firmly back on the road, Lowery and company play across the United States, with the Seattle date recorded live for the album In The Mouth Of The Crocodile – Live In Seattle, followed the next year by the EP Discotheque CVB: Live In Chicago. The warm live reception, fuelled by Cracker fans, leads Camper to go down the super-compilation route to celebrate past glories.
2008 indeed brings Popular Songs Of Great Enduring Strength And Beauty, opened by the surreal tale of Lassie the dog setting off for the Moon. The greatest hits collects the band's classics and has, as usual, a quirk: because of their terrible relationship with Virgin, Camper decide to re-record a few key tracks so they can include them on the album without going through their old major label. So the hard rock of "Pictures Of A Matchstick Men", the raga gallop of "Eye Of Fatima" combined into a single track, and the infinite-folk of "When I Win The Lottery" are literally brought back to life.

In 2011, a short tour begins in which Camper play Key Lime Pie live in full alongside Immerglück, announcing their intention to record a new album almost ten years after New Roman Times.
La Costa Perdida comes out in early 2013, produced on the 429 Records label and preceded by the single "Northern California Girls", which immediately reveals the new sonic direction, a nod to the Beach Boys of the Holland era. The album offers gentle, atmospheric folk-pop ("Come Down The Coast"), taking smooth turns toward California soul ("Too High For The Love-In") and indulging once more in mellower psychedelia on "Someday Our Love Will Sell Us Out".
Compared to the previous concept album, La Costa Perdida shows no real creative sparks, even losing its way on its more offbeat numbers, like the Appalachian punk of "Peaches In The Summertime" or the country & western ditty "La Costa Perdida". Almost ten years on from New Roman Times, one might reasonably have expected more from a band that's always been larger than life, but here they're bogged down in a search for Californian roots that never manages to rise above the mawkish folk-pop of the closer "A Love For All Time".

Having recorded more songs than they ended up including on the album, Lowery and co. decide to release, not long after, a sort of second part, this time devoted to the more intriguing sounds of Southern California. El Camino Real comes out in 2014, and right from the sturdy drive of "It Was Like That When We Got Here" it delivers better things. The sound is slightly more abrasive – the progressive-punk of "Classy Dames And Able Gents" or the martial pop of "The Ultimate Solution" – and includes Cracker-like atmospheric touches ("Camp Pendleton") and a handful of new country-style ballads, from "Sugartown" to "Goldbase". The record flows along pleasantly enough, but it's obviously light years away from Camper's golden days. Tracks like "I Live in L.A." carry the bittersweet flavour of late-'80s alternative melancholy, without creative peaks or the band's much-loved surreal flair. Lowery seems content to enjoy a well-earned artistic retirement – though he still tries to roar on the sinuous elegance of "Out Like A Lion" – and to surf slowly on the Californian waves of the crystalline melody "Grasshopper".

Finale I: dawn over the land of milk and honey

Camper Van Beethoven's 1999 reunion doesn't stop Cracker's activity, as the following year they release their first greatest hits, Garage d'Or. The album includes a few new items, such as the power-pop "Shake Some Action" (from the "Clueless" soundtrack), a live cover of Dylan's classic "You Ain't Going Nowhere" (with Adam Duritz) and the previously unreleased blues ballad "Hollywood Cemetery". After bringing in new bassist Brandy Wood, Cracker work on their next album, Forever, produced by Lowery himself and released in early 2002.
Opened by the melancholy ballad "Brides Of Neptune", the record is a commercial flop, splitting critics between those calling it a great comeback and those who see a sound that's become too mainstream by now. The rock-pop of "Shine" is perhaps one of the songs that best captures this divide in opinion. While tracks like "Guarded By Monkeys" bring back memories of the old, explosive Cracker – on Hickman's almost hardcore guitar – songs like "Miss Santa Cruz County" and "Ain't That Strange" are merely an echo of the old American sound in the style of The Band.
Lowery's new stated goal is to make "intelligent music, for adults", for instance on the country-soul of "Sweet Magdalena Of My Misfortune". It's a by now radical transformation for the Californian songwriter, who seems to be aiming squarely at the Tom Petty songbook, while still allowing himself a few alternative detours (the Eastern-tinged drum'n'bass of "Superfan" and even the hip-hop of "What You're Missing").

Decidedly more intriguing – bordering on brilliant oddity – is the follow-up O' Cracker Where Art Thou?, released in 2003 featuring Leftover Salmon, a jam band from Boulder, Colorado specialising in bluegrass, country and cajun arrangements. Lowery and Hickman are the only two musicians from Cracker involved, and they have fun reworking their hits in a bluegrass key. From "Euro-Trash Girl" to "Low", the band's classics take on new life with the old sound of rural America, an operation particularly well received by critics because it's pure, unpretentious fun. And the record is worth hearing just for the presence of Leftover Salmon, a stars-and-stripes institution since 1989 among lovers of traditional music, including a wild hillbilly version of their early hit "Teen Angst".

The recovery of American music's country roots continues that same year with the new studio album, Countrysides. Released on BMG after the split with Virgin, the record is actually a collection of covers, from Bruce Springsteen's melancholy "Sinaloa Cowboys" to versions of "The Bottle Let Me Down" and "Reasons To Quit" from the Merle Haggard songbook. The eight tracks are certainly well played, but they suffer from monotony and repetitiveness, since they're all arranged the same way, a country & western approach that feels anachronistic in the new millennium by now. At the close, the only original track is "Ain't Gonna Suck Itself", a fresh pop-beat number that's completely disconnected from the rest of the record.

Already tied to two bands, in 2005 Lowery decides to set up a recurring three-day live event, the Campout, at Pappy and Harriet's Pioneertown Palace in California. Both Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven perform, at a big party alongside a rotating cast of other bands such as Built to Spill and The Bellrays. With the bassist swapped out once again – Krummenacher steps in for Wood – Cracker head back into the studio to record what this time is a genuine album of original material. The chosen title is Greenland, a not-quite-explained tribute to the cold lands of the North Atlantic that in truth is another sonic journey from Lowery, harking back to the Camper's old patchanka.
Preceded by the sturdy country-rock stomp "Something You Ain't Got," the album is easily the band's most inspired since Kerosene Hat, as they brilliantly return to their roots-rock quest. "Where Have Those Days Gone," for instance, is an atmospheric road-song, wind-in-your-hair on the highway; while the acoustic "Fluffy Lucy" has that distinctly alternative, lo-fi flavor that could have come off a Sparklehorse record. Welcome too is the return to more exotic textures, on the tabla-and-sitar pairing of the short nursery-rhyme "I'm So Glad She Ain't Never Coming Back" and above all on the gem "Sidi Ifni," halfway between psychedelic blues and raga sounds.
The record is decidedly surprising given Cracker's recent output, as on "Better Times Are Coming Our Way," with its syncopated dub-reggae that sounds straight out of late-period Joe Strummer. Even the more hard rock numbers, in line with the band's signature sound, are sharp and well-executed, from the dark riff of "Minotaur" to "Gimme One More Chance," embellished by one of the most interesting guitar flourishes Hickman has ever laid down. Then a grand finale with "Everybody Gets One for Free," which recalls the Rolling Stones, with organ played in the style of Billy Preston. After several experiments of questionable value, a great return in a vital, passionate album.

The release of Greenland precedes a long tour, which wraps up in 2007 when Cracker's lineup sees the departure of Krummenacher and Margolis, with ex-Roxy Music man Sal Maida stepping in on bass. In 2009, 429 Records releases the new album Sunrise In The Land Of Milk And Honey, which cracks the Billboard 200 with over three thousand copies sold in a single week, thanks to the single "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out With Me," a nostalgic college-rock ballad featured on the soundtrack of the TV series "Californication." After Greenland, Cracker rise again like a phoenix with this new studio effort, which relaunches the band both commercially and critically.
After the return to roots-rock on the previous record, the sound here is decidedly more scorching, starting with the blend of hard rock and punk-rock on "We All Shine A Light," featuring vocals from X co-founder John Doe. The whole record is played with engines running hot, from the scant two minutes of L.A. punk fury in "Hand Me My Inhaler" to the equally brief "Time Machine," which sounds like it was lifted straight from the Black Flag discography. The martial rhythm of the opener "Yalla Yalla (Let's Go)" is gripping from first listen, while "Darling One" slows things down into the more country/pop/lo-fi style of Counting Crows (Adam Duritz's presence on backing vocals is no coincidence). An explosive finale follows with another killer Hickman riff (the title track), closing out an excellent record, perhaps less daring than Greenland but certainly satisfying.

At the start of 2011, David Lowery goes solo for the first time, producing the solo album The Palace Guards with 429 Records. As one might expect, the album mixes songs that sound like Cracker with others that sound like Camper, from the country & western hand-clapper "Raise 'Em Up All Honey" to the distinctly nineties flavor of the title track, like a postcard souvenir of times past. Lowery crafts the record as a true one-man band, at odds with streaming platforms – Spotify above all – which he accuses of plundering entire catalogs without properly compensating artists. In the intimate space of his own home, initially armed with just a PC and later with the backing of an actual label, David unspools his psychedelic atmospheres ("Deep Oblivion"), digging into Cracker-style guitars ("Baby, All Those Girls Meant Nothing To Me") before slowing down for the atmospheric waltz "I Sold The Arabs The Moon," an unfortunately watered-down version of the brilliant surrealism of his most important, innovative project.

In the spring of 2011, Campout East is announced, to be held in Virginia as an eastern counterpart to the three-day festival simply known as Campout. Cracker keep touring far and wide, though from 2014 onward without drummer Frank Funaro, who injured his arm. That same summer, a reunion tour is organized in China for a full live performance of Kerosene Hat, bringing back longtime bassist Davey Faragher and drummer Michael Urbano.
The four of them have so much fun together on stage that they decide to head back into the studio as well, resulting in the double album Berkeley To Bakersfield, released in December on 429 Records. With over 70 minutes of music, the record is striking from the very first listen, as the original line-up throws itself headlong into the sinuous swell of the California coast. From the pounding martial rhythm of "March Of The Billionaires" to the supersonic pop-punk of "Beautiful," which open the first disc, "Berkeley," devoted entirely to the band's garage and rock and roll soul. Lowery and co. recapture a chemistry that seemed lost for good, despite the fine run of albums since Greenland. But the return of Faragher and Urbano brings an extra spicy, fresh flavor, served up on frontier rock ("El Comandante" and "El Cerrito") and Bay Area rock'n'roll, from "Reaction" to the bluesy "You Got Yourself Into This." If the latest Camper records haven't fully satisfied critics and fans, Lowery seems to be pouring all his compositional energy into the latest Cracker material, as on the Stones-ish glam-boogie of "Life In The Big City," which would get even the most skeptical listener tapping their foot.
The album, as mentioned, is split in two, picking back up under the title "Bakersfield" with the Nashville sound of "California Country Boy." Cracker's second soul reaches back to their American sonic roots, propelled by the banjo of "Almond Grove" and the most classic of country guitars on "King Of Bakersfield." The record is essentially flipped on its head, from electric fury to the atmospheric sweetness of "Tonight I Cross The Border." Unlike some past work, the new songs are decidedly polished, now choral and harmonic ("Get On Down The Road"), now unleashed on a hillbilly rhythm ("The San Bernardino Boy"). A record of explosive honesty, capturing the full essence of the California band.

Finale II: The Last Leviathan

It's 2003. After the departures of Immerglück and Pedersen, Monks of Doom suddenly return to the American scene with a series of concerts. Three years later they release the covers album What's Left For Kicks?, opened by the dark post-punk of "The 15th" (Wire). From the prog version of "Light In The Sky" (Steve Hillage) to the intimate folk of "Forever" (Roy Harper), the album is a divertissement for fans of the band and of experimental music in general, flowing amiably through long instrumental excursions ("New Saigon" by Portland's Pell Mell), intense gospel prayers ("The Calvary Cross" from Richard and Linda Thompson's masterpiece "I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight") and hard-blues riffoni ("Oh Well, Part 1" by Fleetwood Mac).
Whether thanks to the unusual choice of songs – "La Dolce Vita Suite" moves from the blues of Rahsaan Roland Kirk to composer Nino Rota – or the band's superb command of their own instruments, the album feels fresh and original, almost like a record of brand new material. With some unmissable gems, the Kinks' "King Kong," the avant-rock of "Hurricane Fighter Plane" (Red Krayola) and the psychedelic "Calvary" (Quicksilver Messenger Service).

After taking part in the Campout organized by Lowery with Camper and Cracker, the band returns to the stage in New York in 2009 and then shuts itself away in the recording studio a full eight years later, in 2017, to work on their first album of new material since Forgery. The result is The Brontë Pin, introduced by the instrumental blend of progressive, psychedelia and hard-blues in the two-part mini-suite "The Brontë Pin, Part 1 & 2." A return to the band's darker, more experimental atmospheres – the Pink Floyd-esque "The Bastards Never Show Themselves" or the obsessive tribalism of "Up From The Cane" – with some welcome new elements, chiefly the psychedelic desert-rock of "Duat! Duat!"
Immerglück is in fine form, whether going it alone on the skeletal folk of "Boar's Head" or steering the progressive-funk-jazz of "23rd Century Hard Bop" alongside Krummenacher's fine, sophisticated bass work. While some tracks on the record revisit old complexities (the melodic "John The Gun"), new ones like "The Last Leviathan (Interpolating Rabbit's Foot)," a ride through progressive and psychedelia, turn out to be among the best the band has ever produced.

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