Camper Van Beethoven compiled
Camper Van Beethoven
Popular Songs Of Great Enduring Strength And Beauty
(Cooking Vinyl)
Camper Van Beethoven don’t loom. Despite being as important to American alternative rock’s adolescence as Black Flag, Hüsker Dü, The Replacements, Sonic Youth, and others, “legendary” has rarely been credibly applied to them. Music goons were even able to pull Mission Of Burma from obscurity and bronze them, yet CVB remain a curiosity.
Popular Songs Of Great Enduring Strength And Beauty likely won’t change things. It’s no slight to the compilation, which, due to its randomness, stands up well against the band’s short-attention-span regular albums. Camper’s rambling personality defined them, undercutting identity and disorienting people who needed a firm handle. (Call them a more coherent Minutemen, whose speed was the only thing conjoining them to West Coast punks; otherwise they were a bunch of eclectic geeks who would indulge every whim.)
That said, it’s hard to imagine an audience other than early-’80s college rockers who would embrace this skittering mash of jangle pop, folk, ska, and gypsy for five albums. “The Day That Lassie Went To The Moon” and “ZZ Top Goes To Egypt” should scarcely be including on a Time Life box set, much less a retrospective of a single band. At least the band can claim to have scored a signature track. “Take The Skinheads Bowling,” however, says about as much about CVB as “More Than Words” does for Extreme — Dead Milkmen hold more claim to it.
Indirectly dragging Popular Songs down is Virgin Records. The label refused to sell the masters for 1988’s Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart and 1989’s Key Lime Pie for use on this disc, so David Lowery and co. re-recorded them in fuller tones that fail to escape the magnetic pull of Cracker, the singer’s later, more successful band.
— Steve Forstneger
