Telephone Free Landslide Victory (1985)
8
Border Ska / The Day That Lassie Went to the Moon / Wasted /
Yanqui Go Home / Oh No! / 9 of Disks / Payed Vacation: Greece / Where the
Hell Is Bill? / Vladivostock / Skinhead Stomp / Tina / Take
the Skinheads Bowling / Mao Reminisces about His Days in Southern China
/ I Don’t See You / Balalaika Gap / Opi Rides Again –
Club Med Sucks / Ambiguity Song
OK,
there you go: goofy. It’s the single word I really didn’t
want to use, since it’s probably the most over-used adjective in CVB-reviews,
but … I quickly realized that I just wasn’t going to be able to
avoid it – blame it on my limited vocabulary. Well, it is true that
Lowery & Co. didn’t exactly opt for the easy gay jokes, nor do they
wallow in Zappa-esque socio-cultural smarminess or predictably self-satisfied
musical references. Basically, Camper is the ultimate college band,
hailing from University city Santa Cruz (also the hometown of serial killer
Ed Kemper, who cooked the flesh of his victims – all UCSC-students -
in a “macaroni casserole”), and leading a life frighteningly close
to poverty (at least that’s the hobo-like side of it I always read about),
Camper plays a highly literate and playful brand of music that combines seemingly
incompatible genres (such as punk (although they quickly toned that down),
ska, gypsy music, Eastern-European and Asian folk music and even doo-wop)
that only their fellow students and some hip critics seemed to care about.
Despite their limited exposure, their music can hardly be called cerebral
or uneventful. Quirky and adventurous? Yes. Inaccessible? No, unless you’ve
only heard the painfully dumb slices of over-produced turds that are sold
as “pop” these days.
Anyway, before I create an image of myself as a hateful individual bearing a grudge against all things commercial (I get my daily vitamins from watching all those similar American sitcoms, remember?), let me just declare Telephone Free Landslide Victory is one hell of an enjoyable album. Not revelatory or anything, but it might be a proper antidote for undesired seriousness and misplaced pretentiousness. The spirit the band celebrates is one of multi-cultural adventure, all packed in short slices of satire – only two out of 17 songs are longer than three minutes. Quite remarkably, half of the album are instrumentals, and while some of them (“9 of Disks,” “Payed Vacation: Greece”) are a bit repetitive, their brevity and uplifting nature makes sure that none of them could be labelled as misfires. On the contrary: several of these tracks are so smartly crafted they easily make up for the lack of vocals. “Vladivostock” and “Skinhead Stomp” apply ska to reach their goal, and while the former benefits most from the semi-melancholic violin playing of Jonathan Segel (who also handles keyboards, mandolin and other miscellaneous stuff), the second one sounds as if The Specials are teaching themselves the essentials of Bulgarian folk music. More glee comes in the way of the Asian-tinged “Mao Reminisces About His Days in Southern China” (contender for the best song title until Mojo Nixon came up with “Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant with My Two-Headed Love Child”?), album opener “Border Ska” that sounds more like tex-mex in a Commodore 64-version, and the bouncy “Balalaika Gap.” The non-instrumentals also betray the same light-hearted approach, whether it’s in the title (“Where the Hell Is Bill?”), the lyrics (the meaningless nonsense of “Tina”), or the vocal approach of Lowery, who alternates mumbled verses with a geeky chorus in “Oh No!,” slurs lazily and drunkenly the lyrics of Black Flag’s early punk song “Wasted” (with the performance actually living up to the title) and is joined by funny neo-doo-wop backing vocals during the baloney of “Lassie.”
Finally, there’s also the song that made this band cult-favorites in the first place: the conventional sounding jangle of “Take the Skinheads Bowling,” which not only boasts another classic title, but also more memorable one-liners (“I had a dream, I wanted to lick your knees) and droll Modern Lovers-styled backing vocals. I could also add some comments about “Ambiguity Song” (sharing the pace and a chord with “Skinheads”) and “Opi Rides Again – Club Med Sucks,” (which is half instrumental and contains the only truly punk-sounding chorus of the album), but the message should be clear by now: Telephone Free Landslide Victory might appeal to those who are in for a less serious sense of perspective and a refreshing amalgam of styles that somehow are combined with success. On the other hand: those who are looking for emotion-driven epics or sincere love ballads should stay away from it, because that’s not something these guys wasted their energy on. Finally: if this review should contain any hint of wit, insight or (the horror!) wisdom, it’s entirely dedicated to Jonathan Tyler Floman, born yesterday, June 27th 2003.
II & III (1986)
6
Abundance / Cowboys from Hollywood / Sad Lovers Waltz / Turtlehead
/ I Love Her All the Time / No Flies on Us / Down and Out / No Krugerrands
for David / (Don’t You Go to) Goleta / 4 Year Plan / (We’re
a) Bad Trip / Circles / Dust Pan / Sometimes / Chain of Circumstances
/ ZZ Top Goes to Egypt / Cattle (Reversed) / Form Another Stone / No More
Bullshit
Recorded
a mere half year after the debut album and a clear proof that the boys hadn’t
been sitting on their asses in the meantime, II & III came out
as a mishmash of styles, moods, references and other nonsense. It already
starts with the confusing title: it’s not a twofer, but a single album,
divided into a “side 2” (the first 10 songs) and a “side
B” (the last nine). On the other hand, to complicate matters even worse,
the two sides do seem to represent different sides of the band, with
the first one basically containing the parodying nonsense of the debut (albeit
with lesser results), while the second half sounds like the band’s take
on late ‘60’s psychedelic rock (with little success, I might add).
The band – same line-up, to which Greg Lisher (guitar), Anthony Guess
and Chris Pedersen (both drums) are added – still has that trademark
no-fi gypsy sound, although several songs have their ethnic playfulness replaced
by a more conventional rock bottom. The result is a slightly less original
package, but the mix of all the foreign ingredients ensures that you’ll
never get accustomed to one particular style or atmosphere. Or maybe that’s
because the album’s just not that successful. When I heard it for the
first time, I thought it was an immensely sprawling improvement over the debut,
but just like the average prog band, I’m wrong quite often.
Loads of ideas? Yes. Successful? Quite often. The brevity of the first half (seven out of ten songs stay under 2 minutes) and the similarity to Telephone Free makes it by far the most interesting part. The energetic drunk’s rant “Cowboys from Hollywood” and the amusing Sesame Street-styled “(Don’t You Go to) Goleta” are side-splitting fun, the mock-country of “Sad Lovers Waltz” with excellent lap steel playing by Chris Molla is surprisingly good, and the straightforward Stonesy rock of “Down and Out” already points forward to Lowery’s tenure with the mainstream-wooing Cracker. While the debut was crammed with charming instrumentals that were often highlights, they’re much less successful here. While all “No Flies on Us” basically needs is bagpipes, and while album opener “Abundance” offers a nice opportunity for violinist Segel to shine, only the melancholy of “No Krugerrands for David” is really captivating. The band also does a ska-version of Sonic Youth’s “I Love Her All the Time” (several years before the arties made it big), but the result is not particularly great. Like I said above, the second half is something different: gone are the mock-juvenile experiments with ethnic music and droll lyrics. Sounding like a parody of psychedelic/acid rock, these songs (which are considerably longer) hit bull’s eye (two times) or miss the mark.
“(We’re a) Bad Trip” starts off things pretty swell with a driving riff, while the shared vocals are infectious and fun. The ramshackle “Sometimes” is the other winner here: with a vocal melody that always reminds me of a Smiths song I can’t remember the title of, and music from a Mekons-meets-the-Violent Femmes album, it’s guaranteed to reduce the surrounding songs to a much lesser status. During “Circles” and “Form Another Stone” the boys try to pull a Byrds, with sitar and vocal manipulation (?), only ending up with tracks that would’ve fitted well in some Poltergeist-styled soundtrack. The wonderfully titled “ZZ Top Goes to Egypt” unfortunately can’t live up to its excellent title (although the muffled guitars have that typical swampy groove of the better ZZ Top-albums), the instrumental “Cattle” goes on for too long, “No More Bullshit” just isn’t that funny, and “Dust Pan’ sounds like a … uh, you know, normal instrumental (what the fuck?). Sadly, the band didn’t back up the promising start with enough top-shelf material. Sadly, recording a second album hot on the heels of a debut so often results in half-assed efforts. Sadly, having a lot of ideas don’t always make for lots of good ideas. But there’s no need to loose confidence just yet... People also survived Genesis.
Read album reviews of similar or related artists: Cracker - Sparklehorse