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Camper Van Beethoven — 601

ALBUM: Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart (1988)

MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$$

This is an important album by an important band. Camper Van Beethoven have  something to say.

These California, early indie, alternative songmakers make you work to figure out what they were trying to say. But in the work therein lies the answer, or at least the point. And that point? Something about skewering and deconstructing suburbia, and making fun of popular culture and Patty Hearst. All legit rock angles, for sure.

Whether it was about the Eye of Fatima or figuring it all out, it was well played and it sounded about right.

One of these days
When you figure, figure it all out
Well be sure to let me know

David Lowery’s voice drips rock ‘n roll irony, as guitars get circled by a violin. This is a band whose first real ‘hit,’ if you can call it that, was: “Take the Skinheads Bowling.’

Every day, I get up and pray to Jah  And he increases the number of clocks by exactly one
Everybody’s comin’ home for lunch these days
Last night there were skinheads on my lawn
Take the skinheads bowling …

If you like this Camper Van Beethoven album, you might  also explore Key Lime Pie, a follow-up album which has that wonderful take on human optimism, ‘When I Win the Lottery.”

Also,  I highly recommend a spin-off band, Cracker, which I also have digitally only. Kind off like a more rocking Camper stripped of artsy flourishes (and violin).

Cracker was known for the song that had  the line: Cause what the world needs now is another folk singer like I need a hole in my head.

Good stuff. Cracker and Camper. David Lowery is the common key creative  force here. He looks at things a little differently.

For example thanking Patty Hearst, the Revolutionary Sweetheart, for making life more interesting.

Oh, my beloved revolutionary sweetheart
I can see your newsprint face turn yellow in the gutter
It makes me sad
How I long for the days when you came to liberate us from boredom
From driving around from the hours between five and seven in the evening

My Beloved Tania

Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.

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Johnny Cash, Karen Carpenter — 598, 597

ALBUMS: Original Gold Hits. Vol. 1  (Johnny Cash, 1969); Ticket to Ride (Carpenters, 1970)

MVC Rating: Carpenter 3.0/$$; Cash 4.5/ $$$

Iconic is a word way overused these days. I should know, I love the word so I overuse it.

Catherine Willis( Oliver) signed copy;.

But I’m tying Johnny Cash and Karen Carpenter together because their voices, wildly, widely different, are iconic voices in the USA and beyond.

Iconic as in widely known and distinguished by excellence. Thanks Merriam-Webster.

Now I’m doing the cliché of using a dictionary  definition as a lede (newspaper spelling for opening).

Focus. Stay focused.

Voices. “Hello I’m Johnny Cash.” You can hear it as you read it.

Not beautiful but craggy as a Tennessee ridge. Lifeworn and tinged with  emotion.

His voice elevated the sometimes banal words he sang. Oh, he had dozens of classics, but there were some duds in his decades of songwriting and singing. Ballad of a Teenage Queen? I could live without that one for, oh, the rest of my life.

Karen on the other hand had the voice of an angel. A relaxed contralto or alto, I don’t know much about these music types. But it was different from the high timbre styles popular today. It was soft, deep and  ever so slightly sultry. Like Mom putting you to sleep with a lullaby. It was butter. This Ticket to Ride album is their first and it was originally called ”Offering.’ It suffers from too much of brother Richard singingl and overdone arrangements. It was almost as if they didn’t know what they had with Karen’s voice.

The Johnny Cash record is a compilation of his early hits and they are iconic, or classic if  you will.

Folsom Prison Blues, a song he wrote, has the classic line: “I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.” Now he’s stuck in Folsom prison worrying about all the good food he is missing when the train comes presaged by its lonesome whistle.

A cold callous murdering line in a song that somehow resonated with mainstream audiences as part of the deep-throated storytelling of Johnny Cash. He had some tragedy in life, a couple of arrests for amphetamines but he never served hard time beyond a few short stints in jail. He did however  play live at  San Quentin, and his appearance helped turn around the life of an inmate. I wanna be a singer, convict Merle Haggard said after hearing Cash play.

Karen of course faced her own demons. What happened to her, starving herself to death, belied her persona, her songs, her voice. One can see the Man in Black crossing over once in awhile to the dark side. But few beyond Karen Carpenter’s inner circle, knew the pain inside Karen. From this experiment of a first album, she went on to produce standards of vocal pop, Closer to You, We’ve Only Just Begun. That’s what we’ll remember her for.

Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.

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Captain Beefheart, Captain Beyond — 600, 599

ALBUMS: Ice Cream for Crow (Captain Beefheart, 1982) Sufficiently Breathless (Captain Beyond, 1973)

MCV Rating: Beefheart 4.0/$$$; Beyond 3.5/$$$

Two Captains. Passing in the night.

Captain Beefheart, and Captain Beyond.

Here are two albums I’m going to review together because, well, it seems like a good idea as I type this.

There’s nothing that really ties them together other than they were out of the mainstream of rock. Captain Beyond was a hard rocking psychedelic band made up of members of several well -known hard rock bands: Deep Purple, Iron Butterfly, and Johnny Winter.

Captain Beefheart, on the other hand, is kind of a legendary California artist who put the avant in avant-garde. Surrealism is another word associated with him. He collaborated with Frank Zappa some. He was apparently considered a child  prodigy and sculpted at age 3. ‘Nuff said. The double LP Trout Mask Replica was considered his masterpiece.

The music of Captain Beyond starts promisingly enough with Sufficiently Breathless, which is the airy light and nicely played title track. But from here on, it’s hit and mostly miss including some spacey backward tracking loop leading to a sort of a Sourthern-fried jam band ditty called ‘Everything is a Circle.’ I agree. But am not too hot on the song which accelerates as it moves amid a glossy crunch of power chords, into nowhere, or maybe the beyond.

While Beyond take themselves seriously, Beefheart  aka Dan Van Vliet and crew clearly does not.  With songs like Hey Garland I Dig Your Tweed Coat, and Semi-multicolored Caucasian. The band flows in and out of  traditional song structures (usually out), using  accoustic guitar interludes,  with switched up thrash  as background to Van Vliet’s surrealistic raps.

For example: “Bumblebees, their wings arranged with pictures out of the past and the rainbow baboon gobbled fifteen fisheyes with each spoon’

That’s not surreal, that’s twisted Captain Kangaroo. Or just  bad sushi?

For examples of both Captains’ strange music listen below.

Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.