There’s No Shutting Them Down
Camper Van Beethoven Celebrates 25th Anniversary
originally published July 2, 2008
Camper Van Beethoven
Camper Van Beethoven made its mark mocking California punk purists with "Take the Skinheads Bowling," befuddled its audiences with a meld of ethnic melodies and punk or ska, and then went on to create experimental pop classics while cresting the top of the college radio charts. In 1988, the band scored a major-label contract with Virgin. In 1990, during the midst of a European tour, the band broke up, and its members splintered off to form projects like Cracker and Monks of Doom. “No one ever expected (Camper) to get together again,” says manager Velena Vego.
In 2001, the unthinkable occurred when the bandmembers put aside their differences and reformed, releasing the critically acclaimed concept album New Roman Times in 2004. To celebrate their hard-won 25th anniversary in 2008, Camper has put together a striking retrospective, Popular Songs of Great Strength and Enduring Beauty.
The 18-song disc includes hits like "Skinheads," "Pictures of Matchstick Men" and "Good Guys and Bad Guys." It has lesser known greats like "Shut Us Down," "Opie Rides Again/ Club Med Sucks" and "Seven Languages," and it has a slew of amazing rock instrumentals like "Eye of Fatima Part 1 and 2," "Border Ska" and "Skinhead Stomp."
Violinist Jonathon Segel describes the criteria the band used to select the tracks on the record. “When we got back together in 2001,” he says, “certain songs were good to play live in concert and other songs were songs that people really liked. Those are the ones that are on this album.”
There were some complications putting the retrospective together, in that Virgin retained exclusive rights to any Camper recording in its catalog. Therefore, a number of tunes ("Pictures of Matchstick Men," "Eye of Fatima Parts 1 & 2," "When I Win the Lottery," "All Her Favorite Fruit" and "One of These Days") had to be re-recorded note by note. “We only had time to re-record five songs,” says Segel, “and those were the ones that made the cut. I really would have liked to include 'Sweethearts' and 'Turquoise Jewelry,' but we only had so much time.”
Camper didn’t include any songs from New Roman Times because “they were all too new. We didn’t know which ones were enduring yet.”
When listening to this stellar synopsis, I couldn’t help but recognize that the hallmarks of many modern indie bands (i.e., unorthodox instrumentation, absurdist lyrics, quick tempo changes with random, almost organic pauses, the incorporation of a wide variety of musical genres, etc.) were pioneered by Camper 20 years ago. Is Camper surprised at its relevance to modern indie rock?
“We weren’t trying to be different when we first started playing,” says Segel. “We grew up listening to and emulating the rock bands of the '60s and '70s - The Kinks, The Beatles, The Stones - and those guys just took everything around them, from the sitar to the kitchen sink, and played rock music. I think all that stuff has just been hanging around and has been incorporated into the language of rock.”
Did members of Camper think that people would still be listening to and inspired by their songs 25 years later?
“I don’t think so,” Segel says. “At the time we were living so in the moment. We never had any idea of what the future would bring. What was really amazing about when we got back together eight years ago, and began playing many of our old songs, was how many of the songs were strangely coherent in regard to the political situation. There’s not much difference in what was going on politically in the '80s when you compare it to what is happening now. You take a song like 'Sweethearts,' and, except for a few words, if you took out Ronald Reagan, the same song could be written about George W. Bush... Not that we ever made our political stuff very overt,” he continues. “It was all very tongue in cheek.”
Over the next few weeks, Camper plans to continue touring in support of Popular Songs… In September the band will host its fourth annual Camp-Out in Pioneertown, CA with Built to Spill and Quasi (past bills have included Neko Case, X’s John Doe, Magnolia Electric Company, and Athens’ Dark Meat). In January, Camper's label Pitch-a-Tent, headed by Athens’ 40 Watt talent broker Velena Vego, will release frontman David Lowery’s solo album, with a new Cracker album to follow later that spring. Camper is also currently writing material for an album to be recorded next year. These projects will keep Vego very busy, but fulfilled.
“Camper is my favorite band of all time,” she says, “and working with them has been a dream come true for me, especially since they’ve gotten back together. They were never supposed to get back together. No one expected them to keep making music.”
Vice Meets Vice
Just as Entertaining Offstage as On
originally published July 2, 2008
King Khan and the Shrines
King Khan is one bad, brown dude and a hard one to track down at that. I failed for a full-fledged week in corralling the Berlin-based soulscreecher, and when I finally caught him, he was in some seriously dire straits: limping around rush-hour New York in the rickety Vice Records company car with some bad lunch percolating in his gut. He was amid some schematic scramblings to which I can fully relate: gone to Jersey City to pick up appropriately vintage tuck-and-roll Kustom amps for his upcoming tour, then doing a headachy automotive crabwalk through the boroughs to gather his band of soulful, scruffy internationals: a French organist, a horn section from Hamburg, an ancient American expat who hand-drummed for Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield and other assorted musicians all stand among the roster of his apocalyptically wiggly R&B revue, The Shrines. Herding them through Gotham was all on Khan’s now-stooped shoulders, so we made a date to chat the next day’s noon.
He was chipper when he answered, and I was surprised; having just returned from a tour with my own huge and horny band that ended in The Apple, I know the mindset endemic to the context: it doesn’t make for a shining familiarity with that brutal crack-of-noon. Nevertheless, we talked about all sorts of enlightening stuff, among other things, The Melted Men, his great grandfather, “The Johnny Thunders of Sitar,” his dead idols and the effect that the beautiful, hypnotic music indigenous to his parents’ native India had on the amniotic fluid that fostered his development as a prenatal maniac!
Comb the following conversation for Khan’s handle on how to burn a house down: his deep-set love for the Great Maniacs of History, his appreciation for esoteric noise of all sorts, and his great enthusiasm in extolling anecdotal mayhem should tell you what kind of show he and his Shrines are gonna throw. It’ll be one rowdy wingding.
- Flagpole
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Khan, tell me how you hooked up with Curtis Mayfield’s percussionist.
- King Khan
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It was really late, and I was really drunk, and I’d never been to this bar. I walk in, and there’s Ron playing percussion with this Latin DJ. His setup was so amazing - all these spoons and maracas and bongos - and he was really great. He had one of those big, red trucker hats, and he just looked really funny. I was drunk, you know, and I wasn’t sure if he spoke English or what - if he was African or German or whatever; this was in Kassel, the small town I lived in before I moved to Berlin. So, I went up to him and I started talking to him like this: “HELL-O! I-PLAY-RITH-THIM-AND-BLUES-MUSE-SIC!” and he’s looking at me like I’m a total idiot and he goes (gruffly): “Shit, I gotta go to the bathroom.” And he’s in there for like 15 minutes, and I’m drunk so I’m totally impatient. So, I wrote my number on this napkin, and I walk in the bathroom and go,“HELL-O! ARE-YOU-STILL HEE-UR?” and I hear him go, “Got-damn it!” and I say, “HERE- IS-MY-PHONE-NUMBER! PLEASE-DON’T-WIPE-YOUR-ASS-WITH-IT!” and I put my hand under the stall, and he starts laughing. I asked him if he spoke English, and through the stall, he goes, “Motherfucker, I grew up in San Francisco! I play rhythm and blues!” It was like, "God gave me this person!"
- Flagpole
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I know you’re a huge Bo Diddley fan - y'all cover “Crackin’ Up.” Any memoriums planned?
- King Khan
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Oh, man, you know what? On the day Bo Diddley died, my sister had a baby. And her husband, we used to play in a band together called The Spaceshits, and he’s the one who got me super-into Bo Diddley, so it’s really beautiful that his son was born on the day Bo Diddley died. I think Bo Diddley is the true king of rock and roll. Little Richard and Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry. Jesus! They changed the world.
- Flagpole
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Yeah, those were the Great Maniacs. Those early rock and roll dudes…
- King Khan
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Check this out! I met Dickie Peterson of Blue Cheer in Cologne, and I ended up hanging with him a lot. He became a friend of mine, which was amazing. He told me some of the funniest stories I’ve ever heard. Anyway, he told me this story about Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. It was in L.A. in 1968, and they were going to do a festival together, right? So they meet him at the airport, and they’re walking together, and Screaming Jay’s got this white suit on - looking real dashing - and there was this big group of elderly tourists waiting to fly somewhere. Screamin’ Jay walks right up into the middle of the group and goes: "UUGGGGGH! UGGG-UNNNGGGHHH!” and fakes a heart attack, and falls on the floor like he’s dying! And everybody starts flipping out and all the old ladies are going "AAAAIIIIHHHHH!" He lays there dead for a few seconds, and then he opens his eyes, pops up and takes this flashpaper money out of his pocket - they look just like American dollar bills - and he lights them and they burst into flames, and he throws them in the air and strolls away, chuckling to himself!
- Flagpole
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Amazing! Hey, tell me about your great-grandpop, the sitar player.
- King Khan
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He lived in Mogasudai, which I’ve heard some people call the “Anus of India.” There’s a saying in India that goes, “it takes 10 men to be one man from Mogasudai,” because there was really tough people there - it was right next to an old train junction that was hundreds of years old. It was really rough. He was this deadbeat guy who played sitar all day and was addicted to opium, which is a pretty vicious combination! So, I have a heavy psychedelic connection to Indian music. My father collected Indian classical music; when he was a kid, he would travel the trains for free because his father was a conductor, and he collected all this amazing music from around the country. Anyway, when I was in my mom’s belly, they would put headphones on the womb and blast Indian classical sitar in there! I always thought that had a heavy effect on my brain. I’ve got special folds; I’ve got paisleys in my brain!
- Flagpole
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I know the new record on Vice is a comp of older material going back 10 years. How much of that stuff do you still play live?
- King Khan
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Hmm. Most of the album we play. Well, [lead track] “Torture” we stopped playing years ago because we used to play it all the time. Certain songs have run their course.
- Flagpole
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Vice reissued our first record, and for some of those songs it’s been two years since we’ve played them at all. So we were touring on the reissue, and people wanted to hear some of those old, obsolete songs. We felt bad, but we just weren’t feeling it. We couldn’t do some particular songs from back then…
- King Khan
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I know! It feels impossible at times to rehash those feelings. You feel like you’re cheating. It just doesn’t work.
- Flagpole
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It’s play-acting.
- King Khan
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But that’s what I love about that music. It has completely everything to do with your guts. It doesn’t matter what the programmers say, or whoever. Like, last night I saw Silver Apples, and man, it was like watching prayer. Whatever he was saying, it felt like it would go right into your body and come out in a holy light. And you know, just being in New York, at the Knitting Factory, like 40 years later, and this guy is up there, alone, and this smile on his face. And the crowd was so funny, so different, so weird: the psychedelic children of New York. It was amazing! That’s what I love about this music! Music to me is immortality, and it's my religion and my career, you know? If I want to pray, I put on Alice Coltrane, and there it is, there’s that feeling! It’s there! It’s just so incredible: the power of music.
WHO: The Jacuzzi Boys, King Khan and the Shrines
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
WHEN: Thursday, July 3
HOW MUCH: $10
Bonnaroo
More Than Just a Chance to Get Really High
originally published July 2, 2008
When Michelle Gilzenrat, music editor extraordinaire at Flagpole, asked me if I’d be interested in covering Bonnaroo, I immediately jumped at the offer. Who wouldn’t want to spend four days baking in the hot sun, sleeping in ankle-high grass, interacting with people who they normally wouldn’t sit next to at a restaurant and paying upwards of $2 for a bottle for water? But something about the notion of enduring this abject misery for those bands, those lovely, lovely bands made me excited to go and willing to put up with all of that discomfort.
Before going, a few of my more conservative friends began scouring the Internet for apocryphal horror stories about festivals past, inundating me with stories of riots, rapes and Limp Bizkit. It was a daunting idea at first, braving the outside world and letting go of the reigns for a few days, but upon arriving I knew I was in good hands.
Bonnaroo felt (and still feels all these weeks later) like a giant theme park, right down to the Ferris wheel as you walk through the gates of the festival. Even in the camping area there was someone there to help you at all times. It was enough to make even the most skittish of attendees (that would be me) feel right at home - if home were a 700-acre farm in central Tennessee populated by frisbee throwing jocks, women who walked around in a bathing suits constantly, and was headlined by Metallica.
Even though the infrastructure was fascinating, the real stars of the weekend (as I mentioned earlier) were the bands. Day after day and night after night, I experienced music that shattered my preconceived notions about bands and opened my eyes to new artists. Vampire Weekend proved that they were more than just a sharp dressed group of musicians with hipster cred by dazzling fans on Thursday, the festival’s opening night, while Lez Zeppelin (an all-female Led Zeppelin cover band) rocked too hard to just be considered a cover band. Metallica played a greatest hits-laden set that enthralled my inner 13-year-old metal head in a way that has never really happened, and Pearl Jam instantly brought back the following summer, when I traded in my black t-shirts for a sensible flannel shirt. It was 1993 all over again, and I was in heaven.
But as good as the headliners were, the daytime performers were even better. Days at Bonnaroo were spent taking in bands, and hearing artists that I’d always wanted to see but couldn’t justify the travel or the cost of the ticket. Les Claypool’s brand of hyperactive funk rattled my brain, while Stephen Marley turned me from a passive reggae fan to the most awkwardly white Rastafarian you’d ever see for two hours. Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings wowed the audience by channeling James Brown, and Athens’ own Drive-By Truckers showcased their versatile sound and tugged on heartstrings with an emotional, set closing version of “18 Wheels of Love.” Dweezil Zappa brought his tribute act to Frank Zappa’s music and wowed the crowd with air tight musicianship and a smart-assed delivery that was a welcome break from some of Bonnaroo’s more serious acts.
The breakout performance of the weekend was My Morning Jacket’s three-hour show that served as a rallying cry to those people who had any doubt that it is one of the best bands around. The band effortlessly shifted from Neil Young inspired guitar heroics to hypersexual funk reminiscent of Prince. As the torrential rains poured down upon the audience and the mud below started to gather, My Morning Jacket and the crowd dug in. It was going to be a long night, and they were going to provide the soundtrack.
The true revelation of Bonnaroo was the audience. Despite my initial trepidation about the makeup of the crowd, the festival was populated for the most part by people seeking a good time, killer weed and all points in between. There were moments, such as the celebratory glow stick battle during My Morning Jacket’s set where the audience and the performer combined into a single entity. This was Bonnaroo, where the audience is as much part of the show as the artist.
Much press has been given to Kanye West’s main stage antics in Bonnaroo’s wake, and every bit of the criticism was well deserved. On a weekend where the feeling in the air was to sacrifice a little comfort for the greater good of the festival, West’s refusal to play early in the evening or while another artist was playing on another stage (Phil Lesh & Friends’ set on another stage was reportedly shortened to accommodate West’s demands) and his hour plus delay in taking the stage created a rift between the audience and the performer that quickly turned into a chasm. As the sun rose on Sunday morning, West’s “Glow in the Dark” performance reached a nearly Spinal Tap level of absurdity. In a festival devoted to all types of live music and performance, West was exposed for what he truly is: one egomaniac standing on stage alone rapping to prerecorded music.
Despite the one blemish, Bonnaroo proved itself to be a near perfect weekend of music. There was enough there to satisfy the hardcore hippie in all of us and the inner city slicker who demands to not be uncomfortable. It was four days of music, four days of laughter and in a way four days of the way things should be: people living together and doing mass quantities of drugs in order to gain sense of utopia.
And that’s not a bad thing, is it?
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