Camper Van Beethoven
June 28th at Fillmore Auditorium

Twenty-five years after its inception, Camper Van Beethoven is as quirky and irreverent as ever—and they sound just as sharp (if not sharper). To celebrate their silver anniversary, and the release of their greatest hits record, Popular Songs of Great Enduring Strength and Beauty, CVB rocked the Fillmore on June 28th with a set of their best stuff, culled largely from their 1983 debut Telephone Free Landslide Victory. Beforehand, frontman David Lowery sat down with Crawdaddy! to talk about humor, Henry Rollins, the cruel truth about “indie” rock, and the real meaning behind “Take the Skinheads Bowling.” – Andres Jauregui

Crawdaddy!: A lot of Camper Van Beethoven’s songs have an element of humor in them. What’s the role of humor in your songwriting?

David Lowery: Originally, it was a way of setting ourselves apart from a lot of the bands that came out in 1983, when we were first forming. There was a lot of post-punk and punk rock stuff that was really kind of serious… our voice had a lot of humor and irony and absurdity, and just sort of the unreliable narrator. We used a lot of different narrative styles.

Crawdaddy!: Does that play into why and how you covered Black Flag’s “Wasted” three songs into your debut album?

Lowery: That was part of it. Camper Van Beethoven was a side project to our more serious groups [at the time], and there was an element of performance art to what we were doing. We basically started out playing punk rock covers as if we were fake hippies, in front of punk fans… it was a really scary thing to do sometimes. I remember playing for a Dead Kennedys crowd in Chico thinking, “We are going to get killed after the show.” People wanted to kick our ass. But something about “Wasted”, the way we did it sort of laconic, hippie-style, surfer-style, really worked.

Crawdaddy!: Do you think Camper Van Beethoven ever turned anyone on to Black Flag?

Lowery: Yeah, to a certain extent. In a lot of ways, in the beginning, the fanbase was a lot the same. It was punk rockers that came to see us. It was later that hippie-ish kind of people and what later became known as indie rockers really gravitated to us. But our first shows were, like, opening for the Dead Kennedys, opening for the Butthole Surfers, or opening for the Minutemen. Some of those SST bands picked up on us really quick…

Crawdaddy!: Did you ever get any feedback from Black Flag?

Lowery: We never played with Black Flag itself, but I ran into Henry Rollins one time at a club in LA, and it was right around the time when [Telephone Free Landside Victory] was first popular. Someone introduced us, and he’s like [impersonating Henry Rollins], “Man, I really don’t get why you did that song that way! That sucks! That’s terrible! What are you guys doing?” And I was like, “What do you care? You didn’t even write the song, anyway!” I figured he would be kind of a dick, and he was, and I didn’t really think anything of it. Then, like five years later, we ended up playing a show together, and he came up to me and picked up right where he’d left off! He was like, “I didn’t mean to sound like a dick when I was telling you that! I just didn’t understand it!” As if there weren’t five years in between, and as if that’d been the only thing I’d been thinking about for five years. But yeah, that was pretty funny.

Crawdaddy!: Do you think it means anything for a band to call itself “indie” these days?

Lowery: Well, no. It doesn’t have any of the meaning [today] that went with what we [Camper and other indie bands] were doing at that time. We were completely independent of the mainstream record labels, and we did everything DIY, the way the punk rockers did, or the way that the Grateful Dead did, which are ultimately the same thing—same DIY ethic, same grassroots fanbase ethic. And that was the defining thing… there wasn’t an established framework that we were inserting ourselves into. We were building it. So you can’t really be “indie” rock these days. 

Crawdaddy!: Camper incorporates a lot of Balkan and Eastern European influences in its sound. What was the genesis of that sound?

Lowery: We liked surf bands because they would play the theme to some British movie… written by some English guy imagining what Arabic music sounded like, and then it was played by a surf band, who completely fucked it up. So it was kind of this fake world music… and early West Coast psychedelia: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, We the People, Kaleidoscope. They were the real crazy, weirdo hippies. They probably were the music at Spahn Ranch. We were playing with that sort of thing.

Crawdaddy!: Did you ever catch shit from skinheads for “Take the Skinheads Bowling”?

Lowery: No. They think it sends some kind of secret message to them, but they all love it. Somehow, the Eastern European ska thing we’d do would click with them, and they’d start skanking. They’d be like, “Oh, you’re one of us….” And of course we’re not going to tell them, “Well, no, we’re not. We’re making fun of you.”

Crawdaddy!: So, joke’s on them?

Lowery: Sort of. I mean, it doesn’t really mean anything.

Crawdaddy!: It’s a nonsense song.

Lowery: Right.

Crawdaddy!: Looking back on the past 25 years, is there anything of which you’re particularly proud? 

Lowery: That people care about the band after 25 years is a testament to either our songwriting, or just not fucking giving up. When we first came out, a lot of people viewed us as a novelty band. Twenty-five years later, people take us a little more seriously. We feel vindicated, okay? [laughs]

Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]

Plants and Animals
Wednesday June 25 at Rickshaw Stop

What a difference a few months and the luxury of a soundcheck can make. When I saw Montreal band Plants and Animals at SXSW this year, I was already really into their record, but they just didn’t do it for me live. They were kinda sloppy and the assorted tricks and meandering eclecticism found on the album wasn’t really delivered at all. They sounded like a totally different band. But their show at the Rickshaw was a vibrant, impressive affair. The three-piece played like their lives depended on it, and perhaps they do… they claimed to love San Francisco and want to move here (like many bands who come from various places across the country. There is indeed a special music community to be found here in the Bay.)

Plants and Animals rocked that stage like they were performing to a 5,000-person audience, sending their well-constructed songs well up into the balcony, melting three-layer harmonies together like seasoned pros, getting countrified on some of their dual guitar compositions, experimental on some others… above all this band was tight, totally in sync with one another and completely owning their songs. What was once a band I thought I could only really get into on record turns out to be one of the best live acts I’ve seen this summer. Enjoyable indeed. – Angela Zimmerman

Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]