The “alternative indie” bands of the eighties were an oasis in a dry wasteland of dance pop, hair metal and whatever Phil Collins was working on at the time. While MTV and mainstream radio were selling a message of Reagan-era prosperity and capitalist hedonism, the pirate radio broadcasts of Camper Van Beethoven, The Pixies, Flaming Lips et al were reveling in the surreality of the current zeitgeist. (I’m keeping that sentence just to remind me why I don’t like writing band biographies—i.e., because I suck at them.)
Most rock bands wanted to be The Beatles or Velvet Underground. Camper Van Beethoven wanted to be a Ukranian folk band, or at least be the surf-punk equivalent of a Ukrainian folk band. Their first two albums, Telephone Free Landslide Victory and Camper Van Beethoven II & III, explored this desire with equal amounts of aplomb and abandon (aplandon) while tantalizing listeners with humorous songs (“The Day That Lassie Went To The Moon,” “Take The Skinheads Bowling”) mixed with moments of disarming sweetness (“Sad Lover’s Waltz”).
On their eponymous third album, the band seemed to figure out that Ukrainian folk music probably wasn’t their future and wisely shifted the balance of their energies to writing absurd rock songs with really catchy melodies (“Good Guys & Bad Guys,” “We Saw Jerry’s Daughters”). Their (sort of) breakthrough came with Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart and a video for the single, “Eye of Fatima (Part 1).” Even a little success seemed to spoil them. Signs of internal dissension or simple boredom could be seen in the disappearance of Jonathan Segel and the appearance of various offshoots (Camper Van Chadbourne, Monks of Doom).
Camper Van Beethoven re-emerged on a major label (Virgin) for one last album, Key Lime Pie, which featured a new violinist (Morgan Fichter) and a remake of Status Quo’s “Pictures of Matchstick Men.” When Pie failed to chart well, the Campers disbanded for good, with lead singer Lowery starting Cracker and the rest of the band setting up camp in the Monks. The band today enjoys an elevated status as elder statesmen of the alternative indie rock movement, which has fueled interest in several reunions. Interestingly, Lowery has also parlayed his experiences into a role as a university lecturer (on the subject of the business side of music) and digital media muckraker (see The Trichordist for more on that).
“I didn’t really know anything about Eastern European, klezmer, Balkan music, or any of that stuff. The idea of Camper Van Beethoven was like what the surf bands did, like ‘Oh, well this is our idea of what Ali Baba sounds like,’ where they played it on surf guitars. So this was like, ‘Well this is our idea of what Eastern European music sounds like, we’re gonna play, like, fake Eastern European music.’ The whole point was getting it wrong and creating something new.” — David Lowery, in a 
Kronomyth 2.0: COWBOYS FROM HOLLYWEIRD. The band’s second album features more smartalecky, lo-fi indie rock made by everyone’s favorite former latchkey kids from California. II & III reduces the quasi-Ukrainian folk music quotient down to one (“4 Year Plan”), which is a kindness, replacing it with swamp music (“Abundance”), psychedelic sketches (“Circles”), cowpunk instrumentals and a handful of winning songs, none of them better than the sentimental “Sad Lovers Waltz.” Yet Camper Van Beethoven is still a tease. “(We’re A) Bad Trip,” “Cowboys From Hollywood” (a fitting candidate for the band’s unofficial theme song) and “No More Bullshit” show the band’s strength is two-minute, twisted songs with David Lowery’s bored, nasally voice at the fore, but they’re pretty damn stingy with it. It’s almost as though, for every song they finish with words, the band needs to blow off steam with two minutes of instrumental muckery (un petit portmanteau, in case you’re wondering). The first album had better songs but was self-consciously absurd. The second album is less odd for odd’s sake and more likely to wear its affections on its sleeves, from VU (“Sometimes”) to Sonic Youth (“I Love Her All The Time”) to I’m pretty sure it’s the Buzzcocks (“Chain of Circumstance,” sung by Jonathan Segel). In the jetpackin’ 21st century, the original album was released with a handful of bonus tracks, including the awesome “Down And Out,” which namechecks Lou Reed. We’re not out of the woods yet; II & III doesn’t show a quantum leap in maturity or anything like that, but there are signs that the band is taking themselves (and their music) more seriously.
Kronomyth 3.0: WILL HE AMAZE? In 1986, after two years of tantalizing speed and power, Eric Davis of the Cincinnati Reds became only the second player in baseball history to record more than 20 home runs and 80 stolen bases in a season. Which may seem apropos of nothing, but I believe that baseball is a suitable analogy for everything. (It has to do with the statistical purity of baseball, which is a long discussion for another day.) Camper Van Beethoven’s eponymous third album is analogous to Eric Davis’ career: after two years of tantalizing but uneven albums, CVB finally delivered on their potential. The album includes some of their strongest songs so far: “Good Guys And Bad Guys,” “Still Wishing To Course,” “We Saw Jerry’s Daughter.” There’s still a lot of russian folk american country psychedelic punk “stuff” sandwiched in between, but it’s shaped into actual songs this time (okay, well, most of the time anyway) and imprinted with interesting narratives. “The History of Utah,” “We Love You” and “Peace & Love” would fall into the latter category, and I would submit that they’re just as interesting as the proper songs. I don’t know why CVB finally decided to make a “normal” alternative rock record, but maybe it has to do with that third-time-is-a-charm thing. CVB v3.o is certainly the most charming album they’ve made. The production on the album is also noticeably better, which could be a case of experience, a bigger budget or both. The connection between CVB and the previous generation of classic rockers also becomes clearer, with titular references to Led Zeppelin, a musical nod or two to VU and a swell cover of Pink Floyd’s “Interstellar Overdrive.” For me, this marks the beginning of the band’s best music because, I suppose, I am a melody-loving milquetoast and a middling marxist at best.
“Not a day at the beach, but work” I recall thinking when I first bought this. Listening to it again, years later, Breakfast on the Beach of Deception caught my ear as a mix between King Crimson’s discipline and Butthole Surfers’ childish indiscipline. (And, no, we won’t be mixing names today.) The record gets off to a great start: “In Anticipation of the Pope” is the kind of monster you expect from prog choppers like Mike Keneally, then a track with Victor Krummenacher’s creepy vocals, followed by some quasi-Jamaican space spelunkering on “Facts About Spiders.” Beach reminds me of those starter kit rock collections you could buy in toy stores: there’d be some shiny ones, dull ones, spiky ones and smooth ones, laid out like candy you couldn’t eat. You wouldn’t want to make a meal out of this record, couldn’t even if you wanted to, because its purpose is to get the poison out: release all the weird ideas and demons into the wild magnetic beyond. It doesn’t sound like the Monks arrived at Beach with heldover ideas or songs that couldn’t fit in Camper. They just didn’t arrive with a vocalist or a violinist, which allowed them to unleash their instruments and pursue nontraditional structures that would ordinarily be hard to sing around (e.g., “Visions from the Acid Couch”). The component I can never get my arms around in describing this music is a kind of Armenian/Greek folk element that appears in the guitars sometimes (it appeared in Camper too as a sort of gypsy spirit). I have no idea if it’s really Armenian or Greek, I’m only saying that because it sounds Greek and because I don’t work Armenia into my reviews often enough (The Who notwithstanding). While Beach is a good first record, it’s still an experimental, instrumental pet project. The real attraction in the zoo (the lion in the room) remained 
Kronomyth 4.0: CAMPING TRIP. Steeped in my suburban ways, I couldn’t pretend to tell you what “Eye of Fatima” really means. The mind on drugs makes interesting connections, and suddenly Egyptology and conspiracy theories get swirled together into a rock & roll road song that clangs noisily into the gears of our mediocracy like a perfectly placed wrench. Even MTV played an unwitting part in the conspiracy, featuring a music video for Fatima in which the members of CVB, choreographed in what can only be described as a collective lurching, threaten to tumble off screen as the very musical firmament cracks and splits beneath us. The Campers signing to a major label should have heralded a flying-pig apocalypse. Instead, “Eye of Fatima” gave us a mere glimpse into the end of days. The rest of the record is a refinement of their last, with producer Dennis Herring presumably helping the band reign in their eclectic tastes and shaping their strangeness into solid song structures. The references to classic rock are largely absent this time, but their sweetness and charm continue to rise to the surface in wonderful songs such as “She Divines Water” and “Life is Grand.” From a musical standpoint, two things always jump out at me when I listen to Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart: that Jonathan Segel’s violin has largely supplanted the traditional role of the lead guitar (mabye it always did) and that it has a lot more horns and harmonicas than any other CVB album. Despite the challenges of working with an international record label that people had actually heard of, OBRS stays true to the band’s guiding principles. You’ll still find Ukrainian swamp country stomps (“Eye of Fatima, Part 2”), sympathetic socialist stories (“Tania”) and goofy country songs (“Never Go Back,” which first appeared on 1987’s Vampire Can Mating Oven EP). If I stop short of calling OBRS their best album, it’s because the last three records are largely of a piece. “My Path Belated” and “Wishing To Course” spring from the same source of inspiration, “One of These Days” and “Borderline” too. The album production progressively smoothed out the rough edges with each album (insert image here of angry alt-rockers shaking their tiny fists at promotional posters of 
This made a Camper out of me. “Sweethearts,” “(I Was Born In A) Laundromat,” “June,” “Flowers,” “The Humid Press of Days,” “Pictures of Matchstick Men,” great stuff all of it. David Lowery’s clogged vocals suit the kitchen sink arrangements: violins, organ, ringing guitars, prickly percussion and lead guitars that lean over everything like a bent, black rainbow. You’d have to look to the Pixies to find a another band that could render oddball observations with such musical joy. Jack Ruby in portraiture, Ronald Reagan in dementia, a leftist lottery winner in America, the band’s eye doesn’t rest for a minute. Like The Pixies, the band gives every song their all. Sure, the riffs behind “(I Was Born In A) Laundromat” and “Pictures of Matchstick Men” have Winner written all over them, but these are fourteen favored children with no filler among them. (“Interlude” is a tiny connector, but it sets up “Flowers” so perfectly I can’t imagine Key Lime Pie without it.) New violinist Morgan Fichter fits in just fine too, in case you were wondering where Jonathan Segel flew off to. Though I tend to pick up Pie at “June” and devour the second half in one sitting, you can eat the whole Pie at once (crust and everything). “Borderline” and “Come on Darkness” don’t resonate with my daily mood so much, but they go down easy enough. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you where Key Lime Pie belongs next to their other works, since I don’t own them yet. (Chance, my enemy, conspires to keep Camper at a distance.) However, comparing it to The Pixies isn’t going to kill anyone, so let’s say it’s like Bossanova. (Okay, everyone: It’s like Bossanova.) Playful, pointed, inspired and unpredictable, Key Lime Pie is a keeper, even if it’s the only Camper company I currently keep.
The Monks are back with a (voodoo) vengeance. The Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company is nothing short of sweet, beautiful mutiny. Morgan Fichter had left camp, and now the rest of 
This is the part of the story where our hero, taking a hiatus from highbrow jazz reviews, rediscovers his inner Cracker and with it the disturbing revelation that he could listen to David Lowery sing the words “titty ring” on an endless loop all day. “Low” and “Get Off This” are currently in heavy rotation in my mind. Sometimes I decide that the secretly stashed “Euro-Trash Girl” (track 69) is worth an extra sixty clicks, and rarely begrudge “I Ride My Bike” another twenty. At its best, Kerosene Hat invites comparison to those absurdist and absurdly catchy 
Kronomyth 7.0: CAMPER VAN BOXED EVENTUALLY. The faithful, feasting on the crumbs of Cracker and Krummenacher, were finally treated to a Camper Van Beethoven boxed set. Only it was 80 poor scent straight repackages of their first three albums, the catch-all Camper Vantiques and an unreleased live disc from mostly 1990. If you own the a-four mentioned fourmal releases, Greatest Hits Played Faster isn’t much of a carrot for fourty bucks. However, if (like me) you picked up the Campers after “Eye of Fatima” (and, really, how could you resist that song?), then Cigarettes & Carrot Juice fills in the cracks nicely. Honestly, the first two discs didn’t do a whole lot for me; too many instrumentals and not enough pop. “Where The Hell Is Bill?,” “Opie Rides Again/Club Med Sucks,” “(We’re A) Bad Trip,” “No More Bullshit” and “Down And Out” stand out. The third disc is much better, beginning with the classic “Good Guys & Bad Guys” and careening into “Jo Stalin’s Cadillac,” “We Saw Jerry’s Daughter,” “Still Wishing To Course” and the bizarre “Peace & Love.” Camper Vantiques (the fourth disc) follows in the same vein, including a great cover of “Photograph” and a couple of instrumentals that for the life of me sound like Penguin Café Orchestra. The live disc sticks pretty close to the originals, focusing mostly on Revolutionary Sweetheart and Key Lime Pie. The Santa Cruz Years underscores the band’s debt to such psychedelic pioneers as Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd and The Doors. If they’d simply swapped out the last two discs for the remaining studio albums, you’d have a nifty collector’s set on your hands. Instead, Cigarettes & Carrot Juice leaves the two most accessible Camper albums out in the cold, just to be cranky I suppose. Personally, I’d tell you to save your money for their last three albums, then weigh the options of owning their third twice.
I have always loved a story, especially a tragic one. The Cock Crows At Sunrise is a beautiful tragedy about a man arrested for murder and the woman he leaves behind. Unlike the boobytrapped music of Camper and Monks, this disc is straight swamp blues and Memphis soul. (I know, those words don’t mean a thing to me either. It sounds like Dylan’s Nashville Skyline a lot of the time, if that helps.) At first, I wasn’t sure how much interest I had in a “normal” album from an abnormal artist like Victor Krummenacher. But the quality of the songs and the storytelling quickly won me over. Krummenacher is not a very good singer or an exceptional guitarist. He is an excellent songwriter and storyteller, a throwback to the Bob Dylan/Lou Reed days when musicianship and vocals took a back seat to big ideas. With its mixture of light and dark songs, The Cock Crows At Sunrise could be seen as a Berlin Skyline (that’s a combination of Lou Reed’s Berlin and Dylan’s Nashville Skyline in case you’re wondering). “I Have Always Loved A Party” is pure heartache (compare it to Reed’s “The Bed”), “If I Could Ride That Train” is a gilded treat (compare it to “Lay Lady Lay”). The story is divided in two parts by an instrumental “Interlude” (see earlier comment re: not an exceptional guitarist); the first part follows the accused man, the second his fiancee. The emotional peak of the story occurs at the end of side one, “In Queen City The Girls Are Weeping,” where the hero (or anti-hero) is on the run for murder, with the implication that he’ll “get mine in time.” Choosing to follow the rest of the story from his fiancee’s perspective is brilliant. Abandoned, she sinks into morphine (“My Baby’s Brown Hair”) and greets her fate with a sad, philosophical resolve (“Infinitely Empty,” “When It All Comes Around”). As an ending it’s something of a cheat, but musical stories are a difficult challenge that Krummenacher meets in every other aspect (linear timelines, connecting threads, great music that stands on its own irregardless). Approaching this from the perspective of Monks, only the dark “In Queen City…” will be expected. Yet what’s more surprising is how little Victor Krummenacher needs the crutch of strangeness to sell his songwriting. As a songteller, he scripts the essential scenes, chooses the right lighting and delivers a serious work that succeeds where many have failed.
Kronomyth 4.0: OBLIVION AS THEY ROSE SHRANK LIKE A THING REPROVED. Forgery finds the Monks’ swamp music telegraphed into the early nineties alternative rock scene. It’s another dark and serious album; you wonder if David Lowery didn’t leave camp with the band’s sense of humor in his backpack. The Monks have plenty of good ideas (nicking XTC’s “Making Plans For Nigel” on “Flow” isn’t one of them), play their instruments with a sense of adventure (including an unexpected electric guitar tango) and Victor Krummenacher’s dour vocals do grow on you over time. In a move of unwarranted optimism, the songs “Flint Jack” and “Virtual Lover” even seem to have been floated as potential singles by IRS, the label (or someone) going so far as to make a music video for “Flint Jack.” This turned out to be the end of the road, however, with the Monks going into retirement for a while. Yes, it’s a shame that the band never garnered more attention, although their music was always stern and standoffish. Young people didn’t buy records to be lectured on them, and you get the sense on Forgery that Victor Krummenacher is delivering a series of short sermons on the evils and dangers of the world (the reference to the “Reverend Victor Krummenacher” seems to concede the point). As with all of the original Monks album, this is worth owning. I’ve listened to it dozens of times over the years and still find myself humming “Virtual Lover” on occasional, idle moments. For the future, I think the band would well served by a compilation as a way to ease