January 2013, 40 Watt, Athens, Ga.
There are certain bands that stand the test of time because they are timeless — and this is easily achieved if you don’t fall into the fold of the sound which defined your era. I’ve always kind of liked Berlin, but it will always and forever be locked into the early and mid 1980s because that’s what the mid 1980s sounded like.
Camper Van Beethoven is another band from the mid 1980s, but it certainly has never sounded like the mid 1980s. Sure there were elements of punk, albeit with a countrified tinge (cover of Black Flag’s “Wasted”), and college radio loves “Take the Skinheads Bowling,” but there were not many bands in the ’80s carting out fiddles, Eastern European polkas and Middle Eastern meets psychedelia tunes. Some of the best items on Camper’s Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart are instrumentals — it was simply not an album for the time. This, of course, is why it lasts to this day.
In early 2013 I saw Camper, with Athenian resident David Lowery (and UGA professor, I might add) leading a tight and workmanlike set at the 40 Watt to a smallish but appreciative crowd. The fivesome — including bassist Victor Krummenacher, multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Segel, guitarist Greg Lisher and drummer Frank Funaro — ripped through songs spanning the band’s entire career, adding several new songs from its most recent album La Costa Perdida, including a tune recorded in Athens with the Futurebirds called “Northern California Girls”. There was a sharpness to the set, showcasing a band which knows its material through and through.
I’ll admit, Revolutionary Sweetheart is one of my all-time favorites, so hearing “Tania,” “Waka,” “One of These Days” and “Eye of Fatima” and “Eye of Fatima 2” was all I needed, but there was a subtle strength to the new material as well. Was it great to hear “Take The Skinheads Bowling”? Sure it was, who doesn’t want to hear that one live? But Camper persists because it constantly makes great music.
