With great respect for scientific methodology I submit this poll to fans of the band Cracker without judgement on their decision to get vaccinated or not. This poll is totally anonymous. I will immediately delete all non aggregated data that might possibly identify any individual. This poll will be used to help venues at which we are performing safely plan future events.
The Band Cracker fan totally anonymous vaccination poll
Posted in Uncategorized on August 4, 2021 by Dr. David C Lowery#84 Sugartown: San Pedro, SugarBeets and Portuguese Fishermen
Posted in Uncategorized on June 9, 2014 by Dr. David C Lowery
Buy El Camino Real at your local record shop. Click here for locations
The Song Sugartown is the 6th track on the Camper Van Beethoven album El Camino Real (2014). This album is part of a two album series on California. The first album La Costa Perdida(2013) focused on Northern California while El Camino Real focuses on Southern California. In particular El Camino Real celebrates the polyglot poly-cultural history of Southern California
The fictional Sugartown is a combination of the working class neighborhood of San Pedro and the early 20th century sugar beet plantations of Seal Beach and Los Alamitos. San Pedro is situated at the mouth of the Los Angeles River and faces the massive Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach. Seal Beach and Los Alamitos are on the mouth of the San Gabriel river to the southeast on the other side of the two ports.
Both cities are (or were) home to large and diverse immigrant communities. San Pedro is now known for it’s Italian neighborhoods, but was also once home to large populations of Croatians -actually Dalmatians, Greeks, Portuguese and Irish. The Dalmatians are perhaps the most interesting group as they settled here when California was still part of Spain. I wanted to use the Dalmatians as the fishermen in the story but lines like “We Came from Portugal to fish the sea” didn’t sound as good with Croatia, Dalmatia Brač, Hvar, Vis or Korčula substituted. So the Portuguese got the focus.
Los Alamitos and the adjacent Seal Beach were the center of Southern California’s briefly thriving sugar beet industry. The sugar beet farming and processing industry attracted a lot of immigrant labor. When the sugar beet farming collapsed in the 1920’s one of the big owners John Bixby started leasing out land to immigrant farmers including many Japanese families (many later ended up in Manzanar) further diversifying the population.
Finally Sugartown also makes reference to Crocket or as the locals in the North San Francisco bay call it “Sugar City.” Crocket is most clearly distinguished by the big C&H (California and Hawaii) sugar processing plant that faces the Carquinez strait. Interstate 80 is carried over the city by a massive flyover bridge hence the line in the song “Stay up upon the bridge at sugar town mind your business don’t come down.”
So essentially the story is this: Portuguese fisherman come to California to fish the sea. The fishing dies out and the lucky ones get jobs at the sugar processing plants. Of course the sugar beets are not even grown locally anymore. So they process sugar cane shipped from hawaii. The unlucky resort to smuggling drugs “sugar cane” (probably heroin) using the local port and what’s left of their fishing fleet.
The sea is empty now
It’s all we had
So we sell sugar cane
God is our judge
This little area is so rich in history, I feel like I could have done a whole album just on this area. The Portuguese began exploring this as far back as the 1540’s. The Spanish used this as a regular port shortly after. The Tongva-Gabrieleño had villages here for at least 8,000 years. They were expert seafarers and traders. They had ocean going canoes something of a rarity among the native populations.
The whole sugar beet boom involves various railroad and banking tycoons and some genuine 19th century robber barons. The aforementioned John Bixby deserves his own treatment. Finally their is the fate of the Japanese americans who were forcibly relocated to Manzanar during WWII. Most of them lost everything.
Sugartown
We come from Sugartown
At the river’s mouth
Nestled in soft green hills
A factory town
it comes from cross the sea
raw sugarcane
it comes in railroad cars
we make it pure
Dont you show your face in Sugartown
we dont need your kind around
if you think you’re better than we are
you can leave at anytime
Stay up upon the bridge at Sugartown
Mind your business dont come down
If you show your face in sugar town
You know what happen last time round
We cam to Sugartown from the old country
We came from Portugal to fish the sea
The sea is empty now, its all we have
So we sell sugar cane, God is our judge
Dont you show your face in Sugartown
we dont need your kind around
if you think you’re better than we are
you can leave at anytime
Stay up upon the bridge at Sugartown
Mind your business dont come down
If you show your face in sugar town
You know what happen last time round
#83 Dockweiler Beach & Someday Our Love Will Sell Us Out-Surfing Under the Runway at LAX
Posted in Camper Van Beethoven on June 8, 2014 by Dr. David C Lowery
Support your local indie record store. Buy new album local. Click here to find store.
Flying out of LAX you almost always takeoff out over the Pacific Ocean. Even if you’re not going west. The aircraft climbs to a few thousand feet and then banks north east or south. I’ve often looked down and noticed the beach below us as you climb into the air. Although it doesn’t seem like there are ever many people on the beach, it clearly has it’s devotees. Most surprising is that there are a series of state park RV campgrounds along this stretch of beach.
When Camper Van Beethoven was filming the video to Someday Our Love Will Sell Us Out (from last years La Costa Perdida). We ran out of time to film in Northern Californian and had to finish up in Southern California. We were staying at the lovely (?) Hacienda Hotel in El Segundo. This happens to be across the street from our Tour Manager and Video Director’s apartment. So he know this funky little stretch of the south LA coast pretty well and suggested that we go down to this beach and film some of the video there. The idea was that the aircraft taking off would make a nice backdrop to the song.
When we got down to this beach we also discovered that there are these two natural gas fired power plants on the beach. These power plants made impressive and contrasting backdrops for the video for Someday Our Love Will Sell Us Out.
I assume the power plants are here because there is this enormous petrochemical processing complex in El Segundo that runs from Sepulveda all the way down to the pacific ocean. (The plants must burn the natural gas byproducts?) The petrochemical plant is impressive in it’s own right. Especially when you’re sitting on the patio of one of the down-home restaurant/cantinas in tiny downtown El Segundo and Chevron designed to burn “flare” off some excess flammable gasses. The night sky turns this eerie orange color. It frightened me the first time I saw it. I thought we were in for a toxic airborne event. The locals didn’t even bat an eye. Continued their small talk and ordered more drinks.
There is also a huge cluster of defense and aerospace companies between El Sepulveda and Aviation. Northrop Grumman, Rayethon, Boeing, SAIC and numerous smaller companies. Direct TV is also in with this lot. So if you think you are in your typical Southern California beach community you are wrong. This is a serious redoubt of the military petrochemical industrial defense complex. This is a serious component of our nations imperial might.
That said there are also three pleasant old school surfer hangouts right next door. Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach and Redondo Beach. So here you have the makings of a camper van beethoven song. The bucolic surfer lifestyle literally in the shadows of some of the most toxic elements of our national imperial might: petrochemicals, armaments and the deafening and relentless global air traffic at LAX. This became the inspiration for the lyrics to Dockweiler Beach-which is the name of the state park under the runway.
So the character in song has lost his wife or girlfriend to a “rogue wave” which sucked her into an undertow. He’s descended into madness and is basically living in a trailer in the Dockweiler Beach RV camp weighting for her body to reappear.
++++++++++++++++++
Someday Our Love Will Sell Us Out.
In June 2011 Camper Van Beethoven was supposed to play a show at the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur. The performance is not in the library but always outside on the grounds. It rained and they postponed our show for a week. So instead of flying home to Virginia we decided that I should stay in Northern California and Camper Van Beethoven should use the time to write a new album. That week of songwriting produced 17 songs that make up the bulk of both La Costa Perdida and El Camino Real.
Someday Our Love Will Sell Us Out is a track off the Camper Van Beethoven Album La Costa Perdida. This song is about an illicit love affair between two military intelligence officers who meet at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey California just up Highway 1 from Big Sur. Even after they are deployed to Afghanistan they continue their affair. This song tells their story.
There is also this super cool Acoustic Demo of the song. It’s simply us sitting around in jonathan’s living room in oakland when we made up the music. That’s why you can hear us giving each other instructions. Later I overdubbed the vocals onto this.
Dockweiler Beach
I am waiting in the water
I am waiting at El Segundo
I am waiting for that rogue wave
bring your body back
I saw you go into the water
I saw Neptune’s Trident Shine
Took you by the hand my darlin
Took you in the Undertow
I will wait ten thousand years
I will wait ten thousand years
Eternity
Ten thousand years
Montgomery Atoll
I am living in a trailer
Dockweiler Beach at LAX
Planes take off for Tokyo
They are never coming back
Oceans filled with submariners
Dark secrets and chemicals
Night time lit by gas flares
bring my baby’s body back
I will wait ten thousand years
I will wait ten thousand years
Eternity
ten thousand years
Montgomery Atoll
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Someday Our Love Will Sell Us Out
Someday our love will sell us out
Someday they’ll come stone us to death
Someday the sun will burn our flesh
The crows will come they’ll eat what’s left
Someday our love will sell us out
Someday my love forever now
Eternity is you my love
Someday our love will sell us out
The drone is perched high up above
Black winged bird don’t give us up
Just one more night I can’t explain
Just one more night I can’t explain
Someday our love will sell us out
Someday my love forever now
Eternity is you my love
Someday our love will sell us out
Someday our love will sell us out
Someday my love forever now
Eternity is you my love
Someday our love will sell us out
Lyrics for La Costa Perdida by Camper Van Beethoven
Copyright 2012 Camper Van Beethoven Music.
Published by Camper Van Beethoven Music Company BMI
#82 Camp Pendelton – Echos of New Roman Times.
Posted in Uncategorized on June 4, 2014 by Dr. David C LoweryCamp Pendelton- Camper Van Beethoven.
Last year Camper Van Beethoven released La Costa Perdida (loosely “the lost coast”) which is a set of songs about Northern California (see Northern California Girls or Come Down the Coast as examples). This year Camper Van Beethoven releases the companion piece to this album “El CaminoReal.” This time the album thematically focuses on Southern California and Baja California.
Whereas La Costa Perdida was a look back at the “back to the country” hippy period of northern California with references to Jack Kerouac, Richard Brautigan, The Grateful Dead and even The Beach Boy’s “Big Sur” period this one is firmly planted in the present and further down the coast in Southern California.
The best way to look at the new album is to draw a contrast between the two. On La Costa Perdida the ocean is calm, benevolent and feminine; on El Camino Real the sea is “filled with darkness, secrets and chemicals.”
Camp Pendelton is the 4th track on the new Camper Van Beethoven album El Camino Real. The song tells the story of a marine in either Iraq or Afghanistan (most likely Afghanistan). He is manning a remote outpost somewhere and in his head he is speaking to his wife:
“Keep the children safe
dress them the same
cause I have changed
I’ve changed forever”
The idea is that he is fully aware that he is suffering from the effects of his long deployment. Maybe PTSD although it’s not really clear to me and I wrote the song. You might compare him to the character in The Hurt Locker. Although the similarity is purely coincidental because this is the one song that we didn’t write FOR this album. This song has been kicking around since 2003 in the form of of a half finished demo. This was when Camper Van Beethoven was working on their alternate history sic-fi rock opera New Roman Times. In fact it was intended to be a track for that album. It would have loosely fit in somewhere between White Fluffy Clouds and Might Makes Right. We didn’t include it because it seemed like we didn’t need this “in between” stage of his character development. I sort of forgot about the song.
Skip forward 8 years and I was looking for B-sides for La Costa Perdida and I came across the demo for this song. What a surprise! How could we leave this unreleased?
Fortunately it’s set in Southern California and considering that Camp Pendelton and Twenty Nine Palms take up 85% of the landmass of Southern California (joking folks) it seemed like it was perfect for the album.
Buy the album at your local record store
Camp Pendleton
I have dreamed immortal suns
I gazed upon the fiery surfaces
and I have fought down burning roads
The highways littered with our humanity
I see your face safely at home
Baby keep the home fires burning
Keep the children safe
and dress them the same
Because I have changed I’ve changed forever
Pump up the violence bring the lights on down
Pump up the violence bring the lights on down
Pump up the violence bring the ordnance on down
Pump up the violence bring the lights on down
Pump up the violence bring the lights on down
Pump up the violence bring the ordnance on down
Pump up the violence bring the lights on down
Pump up the violence bring the lights on down
Pump up the violence bring the ordnance on down
I have dreamed immortal sun
I gazed upon the fiery surfaces
always fear but never falter
onward forward Christian Soldiers
Pump up the violence bring the lights on down
Pump up the violence bring the lights on down
Pump up the violence bring the ordnance on down
Pump up the violence bring the lights on down
Pump up the violence bring the lights on down
Pump up the violence bring the ordnance on down
Pump up the violence bring the lights on down
Pump up the violence bring the lights on down
Pump up the violence bring the ordnance on down
Pump up the violence bring the lights on down
Pump up the violence bring the lights on down
Pump up the violence bring the ordnance on down
©2014 Camper Van Beethoven
#81 Classy Dames and Able Gents – Southern California’s Military-Academic-Industrial-Electronic-Espionage-Complex
Posted in Uncategorized on June 3, 2014 by Dr. David C LoweryThe Oceanview Club on Kwajalein Atoll which will be the site of Camper Van Beethoven’s 2027 Reunion show.
In number #60 I’m So Glad She Ain’t Never Coming Back I posed a little riddle about where I found the titles for three unfinished demos I exhibited in the blog. These titles were
“Infidel Sorcerers Of The Air”
“Peppermint Mind”
“Classy Dames and Able Gents”
Only a couple of people figured it out. It was a reference to a website that appeared to be the semi-secret homepage for the Forsythe Associates. This audiovisual services company was the “cover” company that operated the secret underground bunker beneath the Greenbriar Resort in West Virginia designed to house the US government in the event of a nuclear war.
This is not a joke. This actually happened. This is not some wacko conspiracy theory thing like the Denver International Airport Conspiracy.
So after reading about the Greenbriar bunker I decided to try and track down information on the Forsythe Asscoiates. Eventually I came across a webpage that seemed to have no obvious purpose. The website had 4 screens that were supposed to be live camera feeds but all 4 only showed static. Each of them had a cryptic title. That’s the three titles above. My first thought was “What fantastic band names!”
Think about it? Especially the first two “Infidel Sorcerers of the Air” and “Peppermint Mind.” Classy Dames and Able Gents is more like a wedding or corporate gig band. However it does make a good song title. So I used it.
+++++++++++++++++++++
So what in God’s holy name are you blathering about in this song? I’ll tell you what I’m blathering on about. I’m blathering on about elements of the military-academic-industrial-electronic-espionage-complex that covers much of the Southern California coast from Vandenberg AFB to the Mexican border. The whole southern half of the state is bristling with sensors, antennae and mysterious military installations. Most people who visit Southern California don’t really notice this or if they do give it much thought. But California is pretty much a garrison state. It’s pretty well chronicled in this book Fortress California. This song riffs on this theme and throws in references to other important military and electronic warfare installations in the Pacific. The main character who is some sort of government contractor has just returned from being stationed at the military installation on the the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Instead of speaking literally and directly I had him speak in a style of cryptic prose that I borrowed from the aforementioned Forsythe Associates website. It’s perfectly logical in a Camper Van Beethoven sort of way. As some of our readers have already noted it seems to have confused the starched shirts over at American Songwriter.
Buy at your local record store
Classy Dames and Able Gents
I Augustine, the fishes widow
I knew the crawfish, I lived on shellfish
Under a sail
Lived on atoll
I had a foreclosed motorhome
At Kwajalein tracking station
I’ve got friends not on vacation
They got big ears they got big eyes
Classy Dames and Able Gents
Classy Dames and Able Gents
We’re here to serve our government
Classy Dames and Able Gents
There was a fire under water
Bring me my space suit!
I always wear it
I feel like Elvis
A million bucks
I lived in Baltimore
I work greenbriar
I worked for Foresythe associates
A Kwajalein tracking station
I’ve got friends i can be trusted
i got black bags i got black hands
Classy Dames and Able Gents
Classy Dames and Able Gents
We’re here to serve our government
Classy Dames and Able Gents
Classy Dames and Able Gents
We’re here to serve our government
Classy Dames and Able Gents
©2014 Camper Van Beethoven.
#80 It Was Like That When We Got Here & I Live In LA – Northeast Los Angeles Party at the End of the World.
Posted in Uncategorized on June 2, 2014 by Dr. David C LoweryThese two tracks are from the new Camper Van Beethoven album El Camino Real. Release date June 3rd 2014.
I was recently in Highland Park a neighborhood of what might be loosely referred to as Northeast Los Angeles. I was there to record an episode of Marc Maron’s immensely enjoyable podcast WTF. I realized I was not too far from the apartment where the “Playing on a flying saucer over Los Angeles” story took place as chronicled in #68 The Long Plastic Hallway-Playing on a Flying Saucer with the Talking Heads. Funny. Regrettably I failed to tell Marc Maron this story in our interview.
It seemed like all throughout the 1980s every couple of years I would end up at some strange party in this area of Los Angeles. Some weird mix of rich people, hipsters and low lifes. Socio-economically strange as well. On the east side you have the extremely wealthy enclaves of South Pasadena and San Marino. I mean really rich. Like Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos corrupt ex-dictator rich. Indeed this is where the former filipino president and his wife lived after being overthrown. Various relatives of the Shah and other members of foreign oligarchs seemed to settle in this area. And of course the wayward scions of New England establishment fortunes. I assume dwindling fortunes cause they always lived in some decaying mansion. Think grey gardens.
But back to geography. To the north you have Glendale and Pasadena. To the south high-rises of Downtown. To the west Los Feliz and Hollywood. All relatively affluent places, home to power brokers of various kinds: banking, entertainment, military-industrial academic (Cal Tech/JPL) and political. But in the middle of this are a series of neighborhoods like Highland Park, Eagle Rock, Atwater Village, Montecito Heights, Mt Washington and others without name. Within these neighborhoods you have poor areas, usually in the flatlands, and up on the hillsides are nicer houses and generally wealthier people. Not Imelda Marcos 15,000 pairs of shoes rich, but not as poor as the folks in the flatlands.
It was in a relatively new and nice compound near the top of one of these hills that I occasionally attended parties with a few of the the punk rockers from the Inland Empire. I don’t know who in my IE group of friends got the original introduction but somehow we were on the guest list from time to time. The hostess was a woman reportedly from spain, but I always wondered about that because most of the cars were tagged with Mexican “La Frontera” licenses plates. The rumor was she was variously the daughter, mistress or wife of some gangster. This was the early 1980’s and the Mexican and Colombian drug cartels hadn’t really made any headlines, so we always assumed that our host was connected to the Sicilian Mafia. Which somehow made it seem safer.
Regardless these were pretty typical LA parties, mostly booze and a little bit of drugs in the back room somewhere. Some impossibly arty musical ensemble. Inevitably someone was keeping time on an oil drum or some other large piece of metal. Guitars, Synthesizers and a often more than one bass player. At least one of the band members was always from the UK.
One night we all went outside because there was an enormous brush fire in the Angeles National forest that had worked it’s way down into the foothills of Pasadena. It may have even been the La Tuna fire that burned parts of Verdugo Mountain between Burbank and Glendale. It looked like the end of the world. But this only seemed to enliven the guests.
Their are two songs on the record inspired by these parties and their mysterious hostess. It Was Like That When We Got Here is largely about the party on the night of the fire. I Live in LA is about the hostess.
Buy album at your local indie record store
Or
It was Like That When I Got Here
It was broken on the floor
It was like that when we got here
A piece was stuck in to the door
It was like that when we got here
There was this girl I kind of know
It was like that when we got here
In an Army Uniform
It was like that when we got here
I’m a mess baby and you’re a mess baby
So why can’t we be more than friends
You and I were meant to be together
I’m a mess baby and you’re a mess baby
So why can’t we be more than friends
You and I were meant to be together
An Endless pool of summer light
It was like that when we got here
Pasadena burning bright
It was like that when we got here
A phoenix rising from the smoke
It was like that when we got here
The mountains rising up in flames
I’m a mess baby and you’re a mess baby
So why cant we be more than friends
You and I were meant to be together
I’m a mess baby and you’re a mess baby
So why cant we be more than friends
You and I were meant to be together
It was like that when we got here
It was like that when we got here
It was like that when we got here
It was like that when we got here
I Live in LA
She comes in like a star
Wearing jewelry and fur
with her own entourage
hanger-oners in clogs
From some small town in spain
Its never explained
Sufficiently
Or the security
I live in LA
Come and see me someday
You can stay at my house
I’ve got plenty of space
I live in LA
Come see me someday boy
If you wanna have a good time
A good time with me
Black SUVs in the drive
tinted windows and guards
Cowboy boots and shaved heads
Italian suits tattood necks
the party rages inside
but its never explained
Sufficiently
Oh boy I hope its not too late
I live in LA
Come and see me someday
You can stay at my house
I’ve got plenty of space
I live in LA
Come see me someday boy
If you wanna have a good time
A good time with me
Done ever ask where i’ve been
Dont ever ask where the money comes from
Dont ever ask who I am cause it cant be explaind
Sufficiently
Or the Security
I live in LA
Come and see me someday
You can stay at my house
I’ve got plenty of space
I live in LA
Come see me someday boy
If you wanna have a good time
A good time with me
I live in LA
Come and see me someday
You can stay at my house
I’ve got plenty of space
I live in LA
Come see me someday boy
If you wanna have a good time
A good time with me
© 2014 Camper Van Beethoven
#79 The Ultimate Solution- The Polyglot Polyculture City-State that is Los Angeles
Posted in Uncategorized on June 1, 2014 by Dr. David C LoweryThe Ultimate Solution- Camper Van Beethoven.
The polyglot poly-cultural city state that is Los Angeles.
Last year Camper Van Beethoven released La Costa Perdida (loosely “the lost coast”) which is a set of songs about Northern California (see Northern California Girls or Come Down the Coast as examples). This year Camper Van Beethoven releases the companion piece to this album “El CaminoReal.” This time the album thematically focuses on Southern California and Baja California.
Whereas La Costa Perdida was a look back at the “back to the country” hippy period of northern California with references to Jack Kerouac, Richard Brautigan, The Grateful Dead and even The Beach Boy’s “Big Sur” period this one is firmly planted in the present and further down the coast in Southern California.
The best way to look at the new album is to draw a contrast between the two. On La Costa Perdida the ocean is calm, benevolent and feminine; on El Camino Real the sea is “filled with darkness, secrets and chemicals.” The choice of the masculine title subject El Camino Real as opposed to the feminineLa Costa Perdida was an intentional contrast. On La Costa Perdida the bucolic rural past is the focus; on El Camino Real it’s the urban polyglot multi-cultural landscape of Southern California that is celebrated. La Costa Perdida is laid back where El Camino Real is fast paced and frenetic.
Generally when journalists have written about Camper Van Beethoven they have inevitably associated the band with Northern California because of the band’s long residency in Santa Cruz CA. But it’s often overlooked that the band originally formed in the gritty and rural “Inland Empire” region of Southern California. This album is a gentle reminder of the band’s roots.
The album starts with the track The Ultimate Solution. Essentially an ode to the City of Los Angeles. Frommer’s has described Los Angeles as “Less of a melting pot and more of a tossed salad of overlapping cultures.” This song essentially sums up this view of Los Angeles as the ultimate polycultural American megapolis .
If there were a video to this song it would be a high speed stop action video that took you down vermont from the Hollywood hills through downtown Los Angeles. There would be stops along the way for snacks like “Armenian lamb kabobs served in Mayan pickled cabbage tacos” or “Filipino style curry udon.”
Alternately you could take a larger east to west cross section of the megapolis and travel from the celebrity suburbs of the far west sunset drive, through downtown Los Angeles all the way out to the far end of the San Gabriel Valley. On this drive you would encounter large communities, of Russians, Mexican-Americans, Persians, Samoans, Koreans, El Salvadoreans, Filipinos, Hasidim, Indians, Japanese, Armenians, Arabs, Greeks, Chinese, Turkish and Afghanis.
I once took a city bus from the Fairfax district all the way down pico and into Boyle Heights with a native Angeleno specifically to experience this aspect of the city. Oh and to sample the food at various restaurants along the way.
Finally I reference the LAPD “Rampart Division” scandal. Los Angeles as a true city-state has often operated it’s police department as an almost militarized internal security force. Sometimes acting more like a La Guardia Civil than a traditional city police force. The most bizarre chapter in the LAPD history concerns an anti-gang operation out of the Rampart substation that rumored to have acted as it’s own gang, with it’s own tattoos and spray paint tags.
The Ultimate Solution
I was living happily
waiting for the world to end
eating pickled cabbage in a taqueria
I was waiting patiently
For the geminids to show
I was staring happily in to the sun
And every day is just like a dive
into the ultimate solution
violins and violence
Samoa town Los Angeles
In Tagalog Korean girls
say Oyster Pearls
are like the Ultimate
Ultimate Solution
Ultimate Solution
I was on a new game show
Dancing with the Rampart squad
everyone had gang tattoos
and designer luggage
Waiting on the El Al Bus
Security was tight that day
Pico and Sepulveda
all the way to Baghdad
And every day’s just like a dive
into the ultimate solution
violins and violence
Somoa town Los Angeles
In Tagalog Korean girls
say Oyster Pearls
are like the Ultimate
Ultimate Solution
Ultimate Solution
© 2014 camper van beethoven music
Trichordist
Posted in Uncategorized on April 8, 2012 by Dr. David C LoweryHello everybody.
I’m making some changes to the this blog. So for the time being I have unpublished all these posts. I’ll put them back on line as we go through them. thanks.
You can also visit me at http://www.trichordist.com
#78 No more bullshit. The top 10 lamest excuses for stealing artists music
Posted in Uncategorized on January 21, 2012 by Dr. David C LoweryI am on the fucking warpath this week.
Lamest arguments in favor of illegal file sharing from the past week. I’m not making this shit up. These are real arguments people presented. And argued vehemently.
1. “Marijuana is illegal. File sharing is illegal. Therefore it’s okay.”
Response try filesharing your pot dealer’s stash with 5,000 strangers online and let’s see how long you live.
2. “The RIAA is secretly behind filesharing. They make more money suing people than by selling albums. There are Youtube videos explaining all this therefore it’s true. Therefore it’s okay to steal from cracker and camper van beethoven”
Response: The RIAA was also behind 9-11, Global Warming Hoax and the Kennedy assassinations. Usher is behind Justin Bieber. And Camper Van Beethoven tests cosmetics on lab animals.
3. I heard that the record companies ripped off Willy Dixon in the 1950’s Therefore it’s okay to steal from Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven.
Response: Very clever. You figured out that Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven have a time machine. We all went back in time to the 1950’s (before we were born) and took $20 dollars from the man’s wallet while he was sleeping. Curses Foiled again.
4. Louis CK. Is successful and his stuff is on Youtube. Therefore it’s okay to steal Cracker’s songs.
Response ask Louis CK if he would prefer his income stream or his idol George Carlin’s Income stream from album sales, video sales, book sales in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Louis CK is making a lot of money. But nothing like George Carlin. And in the process he is helping Google/Youtube add to the piles of gold bullion that Google keeps in secret spaceship deep inside the mantle of the earth below their mountain view “campus”.
5. Music should be free it belongs to the universe.
Response: Okay then come to my house and do YOUR job for free. My car needs it’s oil changed and someone needs to pick up the dogshit in the backyard. There is a signup list on our website. Last i checked my car and the dogshit also “belonged to the universe”.
6. In the middle ages there were no music sales. It was all based on live performance.
Response: Yes and doctors bled you or covered your torso with leaches when you were sick. Also it was permissible to beat your wife with a stick as long as the stick was not larger in diameter than your thumb .
7. “Music sucks today. I’m gonna steal music I like. You bad. No No.”
Response: There is no official response. We have been advised by our legal counsel that the above referenced statement exhibits such a degree of logical incoherence that the statement:
A) was made by a mentally disabled individual
B) are lyrics to a Red Hot Chili Peppers song
C) A zen koan created by a zen master operating on a higher level of consciousness
D) or any two of the above three.
8. “You’re not the boss of me. You can’t tell me what to do”
Response: Actually I personally am the boss of you. Check with your attorney. Unless you are in international waters. Now get out in the backyard and clean up the dog shit.
9. “The Record labels and Musicians failed to adapt to the new hi tech reality. So it’s okay to steal music by Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven”.
Response: So it’s okay to steal handmade boots, organically grown farm produce from family farms, and custom motorcycles? You’re right I’ve been stealing custom choppers for years. How stupid of me. You win.
10. “It’s okay to steal from musicians cause they are all rich”
Response: Although I am dictating this into my solid gold jewel encrusted dictaphone from horseback I’m not rich. Now Steve Jobs he was rich. You know he was buried in a 300 yard long platinum coffin along with 50,000 of his favorite servants? A funeral procession 66 miles long stretched from Vacaville California to Mountain View. Thousand of Buddhist monks burned themselves alive. I’m not rich.
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A lot of you may be shocked by this response. But should you really be surprised? I mean i’ve spent 29 years making music for people who think the world is full of a lot of unadulterated bullshit and can see the humor in it. Have a sense of humor people.
#77 Exile in Beach Flats–Lulu Land, Wasted and Surf City 1985
Posted in Camper Van Beethoven, Cracker on August 1, 2011 by Dr. David C LoweryTed Kaczynski’s Santa Cruz vacation shack.
In 1982 I lived in the tiniest house imaginable. It was at most 400 square feet yet it boasted a kitchen, bathroom, living room and two bedrooms. My bedroom was 6 x 10 feet. big enough for for a single mattress on a small platform. The small closet could hold about a ½ a dozen shirts, a couple of jackets and a sweater or two. I rolled up four or five pairs of jeans and stuffed them onto the shelf at the top of the closet. The rest of my clothes I kept in a suitcase that I slid out from under my bed when I needed it. This is where I also kept my guitars. I had two plastic beer crates. I stacked these on the floor one on top of each other. I kept a few books, a couple of writing journals and my supply of cassettes for my cassette recorder. The cassette recorder was on the top of the stack. In the corner I kept a small fender amp. A Fender super champ that somebody with excellent cabinetry skills had reworked into a separated “head” and speaker cabinet. This was my songwriting workstation.
I can’t remember if the living room had any furniture in it. I know we had my roommate’s stereo in there and one wall was filled with our vinyl collections. The other side of the living room had a couple of guitar amplifiers, my full size SVT and some miscellaneous drum kit parts. I can’t imagine there was any room for any furniture. Plus I can not recall ever once sitting in that room.
The house was part of a collection of a dozen beach cottages crammed into the parking lot of the Santa Cruz beach amusement park. These were originally meant to be summer rentals. But this was during Santa Cruz’s deep nadir in popularity. Air travel had rendered Santa Cruz’s oceanfront irrelevant to the Bay Area’s middle class. Yes there were tourists on the weekend but they were a decidedly working class and rowdy lot.
This area was called Beach Flats. It was really just a sand bar barely above sea level. It was protected from the San Lorenzo river by a 12 foot levee. Aside from a few students living here the area was populated by Spanish speaking immigrants. Most worked in the local restaurants. Everything about the place suggested impermanence and transience.
In the summer it was occupied land. A foreign army of daytrippers from San Jose, Milpitas, Watsonville and Fremont encamped upon these shores. Their River’s Edge Baja Bugs, Low Riders and tricked out pickup trucks were like the chariot armies of Carthaginians to our Roman sensibilities. Thus we avoided their beachhead.
But most of the time, especially in the winter, it was a lonely outpost from the rest of the city. The city bus neglected the area and it always required a lonely and dark walk along the top of the river levee. Alternately you could walk across a small pedestrian bridge attached to the railroad trestle that spanned the San Lorenzo just as it emptied into the ocean.
During heavy rains directly below the bridge there was a violent mixing of river current and storm driven waves. If you fell into this you would surely drown. I’d often encounter neighborhood youth smoking pot or drinking beer on this bridge late in the evening. They stared at me warily. Their alliances were uncertain. I never knew if we were friend or foe. On many occasion I imagined they might throw me off the bridge just for their own amusement. For this reason I often carried my all aluminum Ultraflex skateboard. I rarely rode it, but both tail and nose were worn down into a sharp edge. It was like a 30” Celtic sword with urethane wheels.
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Corry Arnold defines a music scene as a neighborhood or city that is a “net exporter of concerts”. In other words
Let A = the number of concerts performed by the bands in a scene outside their neighborhood or city X.
Let B = the number of concerts performed by outsiders within that neighborhood or city.
City or neighborhood X is a music scene If and only if A> B.
By this definition I’d say that Santa Cruz (barely) qualified as a music scene in 1982.
Arnold also notes music scenes rely on low property values in particular transitional neighborhoods. Neighborhoods that had once had another purpose but now had fallen out of primary use. Cheap space and a tolerance for noise are important commodities for bands.
You could argue that the old beach rentals along the lower end of Ocean street and the neighborhoods clustered around the old harbor qualified as in transition. Too seedy and rundown for beach rentals these houses were subsequently occupied by the more adventurous. Arty students, musicians and other slackers now occupied many of these cottages.
But our cottage was effectively cut off from these neighborhoods by the river levee. In retrospect I now see it was very Dungeons and Dragonsish of the locals to refer to the homeless population that slept in hideaways along the river as “trolls”. Indeed walking to my house at night I learned to steer clear of these trolls as many were quite aggressive or totally insane. You definitely felt penalized after unexpectedly making contact with these folks.
But the isolation was very good for a couple young mathematicians and songwriters. I was able to really dive into the most difficult proofs and songs in that cottage. Later when I moved to a better part of town I found that I had to go to the science library to get any deep thinking done.
My roommate was also a mathematician and songwriter. His name was Paul MacKinney. Recognize that name? We covered one of his songs on the 3rd Camper Van Beethoven Album. The song is LuLu Land. We also named our CVB fan club after him. The Paul MacKinney Fan Club. People were completely mystified as to why the Camper Van Beethoven fan club was named The Paul MacKinney Fan Club. Paul was also mystified. As always CVB was Inscrutable.
I’m not really sure what Paul had in mind when he wrote Lulu Land but in my mind I always associated it with that walk along the river levee. An unplanned conversation with one of the sad crazies was surely the root of this song! But who knows.
Also it should be noted that Paul, Joe Sloan (of Spot 1019) and I had a short lived band about this time called The Jaws of Life. It was actually during this time that I began performing the Black Flag song “wasted”. This was later carried over into Camper Van Beethoven’s repertoire.
Paul would often finish his math homework well before me. He’d come into my room and hover. Or he’d try to help me with whatever proof or problem I was working on. Once I was finished he’d celebrate by handing me a PBR (or joint). and dropping the needle on his well worn copy of Black Flag’s Nervous Breakdown EP. Wasted was one of the songs on the B side. We became fixated on the simple genius of the 40 second song. How could we not cover it?
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Beach Flats makes another small appearance in a Cracker song. Once I moved to the eastside of Santa Cruz I rarely went back to this neighborhood. Except to go bowling. Go figure.
Boardwalk Bowl (I remember it as Surf Bowl-anyone else?) was on the western edge of Beach Flats. Right where the land began to slope up and become Beach Hills. To be accurate it should be noted that the cheap beer was more of an attraction than the actual bowling. This and the two old dive bars The Asti Café and the Avenue were for a long time my usual hangouts in Santa Cruz.
But one day my girlfriend Jennifer (see fear and loathing in Las Vegas #….) ruined it for all of us. She had become fixated on the bowling shoes at the Surf Bowl. She wanted her own pair but the ones that were available commercially were nothing like surf bowls cool retro beauties. So one day she just walks out with a pair on.
When I discovered this I was quite mad. Because we were regulars and she was quite the beauty. There was no way the middle aged men who worked in the bowling alley would not remember us. No more Surf Bowl. All for a pair of shoes.
So in Surf City 85 I sing.
Then you stole some bowling shoes
What a pathetic criminal you.
What a pathetic criminal
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Lulu Land- (Paul MacKinney)
[Am] Pictures of [C] movie stars [D] fade and grow old
[Am] The hot dogs and [C] pretzels are [D] always served cold
[Am] Take nothing [C] with you when you [D] leave but your soul
In [E] Lulu Land
How can you lose when you choose what you feel?
The scab will fall off when the wound starts to heal
Luck’s on your side and it’s your turn to deal
In Lulu Land
In [F#m] Lulu land, the [G] walls are soft and [F#m] dark
In Lulu [G] land, the secret [F#m] heart
is in com-[G]-mand in Lulu [E] Land
How can you lose when you live in the past?
Nothing can happen that happens too fast
Live is a furnace and love is the blast
In Lulu Land
Where innocent promises turn into bad debts
Where things that you do you live to regret
Your life is a movie and the world is a set
In Lulu Land
In Lulu land, the wall are soft and dark
In Lulu land, the secret heart
is in command in Lulu Land
[C#dim]–[Cdim]–[C#dim]–[Cdim]–[B]–[A#m]–[Am]–[G]
[Am]–[C]–[D]
[Am]–[C]–[D]
[Am]–[C]–[D] [E]
[F#m]–[G]
[F#m]–[G]
[F#m]–[G]
[E]
Surf City 85
[INTRO x2 (also: chords for verses):]
[Am] [Dm] [F] [G] [Am]
Schoolgirls walking down the street
In schoolgirl uniforms
There’s a sadness at
The centre of the world
Well days they seem to drift away
I don’t know where they go
There’s a sadness at
The centre of the world
[CHORUS:]
So [G] come pick me up
At the tea cup
We’ll go [Am] down the seaside lanes [F]
We’ll watch the [C] girls
[F] We’ll bowl a few [C] games
Nothing to do
But there’s the red room
Then you stole some bowling shoes
What a pathetic criminal you
What a pathetic criminal
Blair and goldie on the sand
It’s raining in the surf
Well that’s nothing lost
And nothing gained today
They tried to go their separate ways
But all roads circle back
Well that’s nothing lost
And nothing gained today
[CHORUS:]
So come pick me up
At the tea cup
We’ll go down the Asti Café
We’ll watch the girls
Just like every Saturday
Nothing to do
Ride out to Bonnie Doon
We thought she had it made
But you crashed your bike on ice-cream grade
And then you were dead
[KEYBOARD SOLO then GUITAR SOLO (chords as INTRO)]
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