Category: Camper Van Beethoven

aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser

#012– Camper Van Beethoven – ‚Take The Skinheads Bowling’ (Rough Trade Records, ’86)

Hello friends,

the first single from a band starting with a ‘C’ … and all the way to America we go, too!

Let’s be honest, not very many of us know a lot more songs by Camper Van Beethoven than ‘Take The Skinheads Bowling’ – their signature tune, I think it’s fair to say. When trying to find out more about the band, I learnt that their output was quite massive, and I made a note to myself to start a more profound search within their back catalogue soon.

Camper Van Beethoven hail from Santa Cruz, California, and if you – like me – ever wondered why it is that they called themselves Camper Van Beethoven and not something more easy, like, say ‘The Beatles’, here’s yer explanation:

“The band’s name was coined by McDaniel (on guitar ’83 – ’84): according to (David) Lowery (lead singer) “McDaniel was into this stuff that would sound like it made sense, but really it didn’t… He’d watch a lot of TV, accept all this mass-media stuff and spit it out all chopped up.”

And not only the band’s name is strange, the title of today’s tune is strange as well. But of course David Lowery has an explanation for that as well:

“We regarded ‘Take The Skinheads Bowling’ as just a weird non-sensical song. The lyrics were purposely structured so that it would be devoid of meaning. Each subsequent line would undermine any sort of meaning established by the last line. It was the early 80′s and all our peers were writing songs that were full of meaning. It was our way of rebelling. BTW this is the most important fact about this song. We wanted the words to lack any coherent meaning. There is no story or deeper insight that I can give you about this song.”

So there you are, two lifetime mysteries solved, as easy as that! I really don’t know how often I must have listened to this song since it came out in 1986. But each and every time I did, I thought to myself “next time you are late for work because you had a few too much to drink the evening before (and look appropriately hangoverish), just look your boss firmly in the eye and say to him: ‘Sorry for being late, boss, but last night there were skinheads on my lawn!’” … so far I never remembered to do it, but one of these days I will, for sure!

And finally, this is the first record of quite a few from the nice people of Optic Nerve Records in the UK, a label who re-releases old gems for rather fair prices. They stick to the original artwork, but include some extras, like little posters and/or postcards. This comes in shimmering orange vinyl, rather nice in fact:

mp3:  Camper Van Beethoven – Take The Skinheads Bowling

 See you soon, take care

Dirk

If the statement on the reverse of the sleeve is to be believed, then this was “recorded at Samurai Sound Labs in Davis, California, with mixing taking place at Samurai Sounds Labs & Chris Molla’s-enormous-piece-of-squid-in-the-fridge-studios while most everybody was naked or wearing massive fur boas & platform shoes.”

If only mobile phones and social media had been around back in 1984, then we would have an idea whether it is fact or fiction.  After all, who keeps giant squid in their fridge?

Camper Van Beethoven aren’t all that well known beyond this particular single, released here in the UK in early 1985 on Rough Trade.  It made it all the way to #8 in the Indie Charts and was voted in at #47 in the end of the year Peel Festive Fifty.  I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think it is one of the finest, funniest, freshest and most wonderful songs from that era, one which always got me off my seat every time it was aired at an indie-disco or night out.  My use of the past tense reflects how long since any such event has taken place, and the likelihood that, I edge towards turning 60 in twenty-one months time, my dancing days, if not completely over, will be restricted, and I’d only be able to shake my thang to Skinheads if it was aired after I’d been sitting down for at least ten minutes after my previous exertions.

mp3: Camper Van Beethoven – Take The Skinheads Bowling

I didn’t pick this up this back in the day.  In truth, it passed me by in 1986 and my recollection of being introduced to it was via listening to the Peel end-of-year rundown, which I was taping onto cassette each night.  Even then, I didn’t go out and seek it out, which would likely have been difficult as Rough Trade singles (with the exception of The Smiths), certainly in Scotland, were hard to track down once the shops had sold out their initial allocation.  But it is one I sought out, via Discogs, not long after starting the blog reignited fully the passion for vinyl.

I’d like to think you’re all smiling while listening to this today.  It really is that sort of song……

JC

I mentioned last Saturday how the b-side of the single by Zones reminded me so much of the late 70s era three-bar blues style of Status Quo who remained one of the most popular and biggest selling bands in the UK even as punk, new wave and electronica gained footings in the music world. I was of an age that only knew that particular version of the Quo and wasn’t aware till many years later, when I saw footage from a 1968 Top of the Pops show that was part of a music series the BBC were broadcasting that I learned the band had started out making what is has been described as psychedelic pop.

Pictures of Matchstick Men was their first Top 10 hit single and was a song heavily influenced by the popular sounds of its time such as later-era Beatles and Beach Boys and contemporary bands such as Pink Floyd. I’m not a huge lover of the psychedelic pop genre – this might come down to a lack of exposure to it from my mum and dad (see last Monday’s posting!!) although there one or two songs I can listen to now and again such as Itchykoo Park by Small Faces and Happy Together by The Turtles.

The Quo 45 was the subject of a cover version in 1989 by Camper Van Beethoven who, just four years earlier, had been responsible for one of the finest, most enduring and most fun singles of the mid 80s:-

mp3 : Camper Van Beethoven – Take The Skinheads Bowling

I’d never heard the cover version before I picked up a second-hand copy the other week and I was hoping for a quirky take on it given that this was the period when the band had a violinist in their line-up.

mp3 : Camper Van Beethoven – Pictures of Matchstick Men

I think it’s fair to say it was a major disappointment. This bore no resemblance to the sorts of music the band had been making just four years previously. It is depressingly bland and lacking any sort of rhythm or soul but when I looked up details on wiki I learned that it was their biggest selling single which I found rather depressing reading.

The b-side isn’t any better as they put to music the tale of the man who shot the man who assassinated the President:-

mp3 : Camper Van Beethoven – Jack Ruby

It’s always disappointing when a band, in an effort to record and release music with a broader appeal than their earlier material, lose the very bit of magic that made them stand out in the first place.

File under…played once and put away in the back of the cupboard.

Released here in the UK on Rough Trade Records in 1986, I was very surprised to learn that it was only ever an album track in their native USofA:-

mp3 : Camper Van Beethoven – Take The Skinheads Bowling

This is an utterly joyous two and a bit minutes, and it’s opening few bars are guaranteed to cheer me up and make me smile no matter how foul a mood I’m in. One of the greatest and catchiest sing-a-long songs of all time, and yet its success caught the composer, David Lowery, by surprise:-

“I never thought that Take the Skinheads Bowling would become a Hit. If someone had traveled from the future and told me we would have a hit on our first album I would not have picked this song as being the hit. Not in a million years. I would have more likely picked Where the Hell is Bill.

Why? We regarded Take The Skinheads Bowling as just a weird non-sensical song. The lyrics were purposely structured so that it would be devoid of meaning. Each subsequent line would undermine any sort of meaning established by the last line. It was the early 80′s and all our peers were writing songs that were full of meaning. It was our way of rebelling. BTW this is the most important fact about this song. We wanted the words to lack any coherent meaning. There is no story or deeper insight that I can give you about this song.”

Here’s the other bits of music  made available on the 12″ single:-

mp3 : Camper Van Beethoven – Cowboys From Hollywood
mp3 : Camper Van Beethoven – Aktuda
mp3 : Camper Van Beethoven – Colonel Enrique Adolfo Bermudez

In case you are wondering who the subject matter of the last song is, (he is described on the back on the sleeve as ‘a real bastard’)…..he was one of the founders of the armed contra army which was formed to oppose  the Sandinista government of Nicaragua and which had very controversial links with American military intelligence throuighout the 80s.

Click here for a brief bio.