Customer Reviews

Telephone Free Landslide victory

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4 star:		(9)
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2 star:		(1)
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this is one of my favorite albums of all time, and the vibes are completely amazing. this is definitely one of the best alternative albums ever produced. rather than being a "Simple Plan" or "Staind" (pick your own sorry new band) Camper wasn't just after the money, but had a vision. don't mistake the fun and whimsy of this album for a lightweight record. it's ska/punk/alternative, and done in a better way than ANY of the bands that followed in their footsteps. along with winning, sarcastic lyrics (most notably on "Take the Skinheads Bowling"), this album has some of my favorite all-time ska instumentals, the best (to me anyway) being "Yanqui Go Home". though it seems barely held together, there is also a sense of cohesion to the whole thing. this edition of the album is the best one to buy because it puts back in some long lost instumentals, and two tracks that never appeared anywhere, (Wasting all your Time, and the "Bonus Track" after the fab Abiguity Song).

This is one of those albums that had me hooked before I even heard the whole thing. It is a beautifully crafted album that flows wonderfully from song to song. It starts off with, yes, a ska song. After that, the songs bounce from style to style, some loud, some soft, some fun, some laugh-out-loud funny like "Where the Hell is Bill?" It is a great album to chill to.

I recommend this to people who are tired of the head-banging of the eighties and the grunge of the nineties and want to hear something different. There is a lot of really good music that was made in that period that stayed under the radar and this is a perfect example. It neatly fills the gap between the Soft Boys and Pavement. I recommend it wholeheartedly and can't wait to check out the rest of the catalog.

Okay, OBRS is great, II and III is very good and Key Lime Pie is growing on me. But this, Camper's first effort, is still my favorite. It took a little time, though. Like a lot of people probably did, I bought it because I heard Take the Skinheads Bowling and expected to get more of the same. Well, there is no other Camper song like Take the Skinheads Bowling. In fact, there are really no two Camper songs that are alike (although the intro to Key Lime Pie sounds suspiciously like "Devil Song"). So, this one sat in the case for a while before I started giving it a whirl all the way through. Once I did that a few times, something strange started to happen: I found myself really enjoying these strange, folksy, Eastern instrumentals and oddball-yet-not-too-smart-alecky lyrics. Songs like "Wasted," "Club Med Sucks" and "Ambiguity Song" are too bizarre to ever be mainstream, but it doesn't feel forced, and there's always a little bit of commentary in there. It's not just goofball for goofball's sake.

Some people say it's amateurish and poorly produced. So what? Being polished and pristine is not what Camper was about. These are not radio songs, and I don't want them to be. It's just good, unique, fun music full of enough variety and enthusiasm to keep you interested after 1,000 plays. It's one of those albums where you have a new favorite song every month -- Border Ska, Tina, Skinhead Stomp, Payed Vacation: Greece, Where the Hell is Bill, Balalaika Gap, Club Med Sucks, Wasted, and of course Take the Skinheads Bowling, which is still good enough that I'd buy the album for that song all over again.

I WANTED TO LICK YOUR KNEES! Yes, rely on CVB for these ridiculous sorts of lyrics. It is not quite the polished Camper of the later Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart. No, in fact this is very unpolished... but all the more lovable for its fun and impromptu feel. The album solidifies CVB's place as "wasted", melodic darlings for me. Fun instrumentals, very inspiring... and despite the oddities of some of the lyrics ("Where the Hell is Bill?" "The Day Lassie Went to the Moon", "Oh, No!", "Wasted" ("I was so gnarly and I drove my dad's car..."), or "Take the Skinheads Bowling" this music is really accessible to everyone. In fact, my mother loves this CD and listens to it all the time when she is driving. She gets a lot of strange looks when she is sitting in a parking lot with the windows down, playing CVB loudly...

Formed in college at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Camper Van Beethoven became underground darlings with the release of this album. They are all over the map musically, and play like a group in love with experimentation. "Take the Skinheads Bowling," perhaps the most straight ahead song on the disc, became a minor college-radio hit; other songs dabbled in punk ("Opi Rides Again") or psuedo-political statements. All in all, a gleeful delight, though you have to be open-minded to enjoy this music.

Telephone free landslide victory, indeed. Victorious on all accounts, even without the use of telephones. If ever I've heard an album that "just plain ruled", this was it. In fact, it was so different from anything I've ever heard before that calling it "original" doesn't quite do the trick. Camper's music is like a kid that likes to screw around in class, and doesn't care about the bullcrap repercussions. The vocals convey at least a hint of depression, but rather than whine about the suck of life or grunt out doom lyrics, Camper fools around with an oddball sense of humor about it all (i.e. "Where the Hell is Bill?"). Background vocals are, at times, of n mocking, deflated-Motown essence (a "yeah, yeah", "doo-wop" sorta thing). Most significanlty accompanying the vocals is a half-hearted violinist who could possibly be a sixth grader. The lyrics are refreshingly free of pseudo-intellectualism, and while a bit kooky, Camper doesn't test your patience with the goofballcy. Camper is authentic. One more thing.. I think that the first time you listen to this album, it carves a little attic up in your brain and monkeys around in there from time to time. If you have this album, you can vouch. Camper is sweet action (minus the cliche').

Camper Van Beethoven is one of those bands that just doesn't have just one sound. Not only can they just accept one style of music, they do good at playing lots, showing it really noticably on this recording. Blending punk, folk, and lo-fi as their main sound, but they also explore such genres as ska, traditional Asian music, Greek-style music, Middle Eastern,and traditional Jewish inspired sound. But I think "Yanqui Go Home" has more reggae influenced sounds than ska. What really makes them unique, though, is their violin/mandolin player Jonathan Segel, who would later be replaced by Morgan Fichter I believe. And to top it all off is David Lowry's voice, which is probably my favorite in music at the moment.

There sure are those dry humored CVB songs in here too, such as "Opi Rides Again-Club Med Sucks" which pokes fun at punk that trys way too hard to be punk. Ha, "Club Med Sucks! Authority Sucks! I hate golf!" Amen brother. And then comes "Where the Hell is Bill?" Man I love that one, funny without being too immature. But what I really love is that wonderful folksy Black Flag cover of "Wasted" that you really have to here the original to fully appriciate. Then there's that insanely surreal "The Day That Lassie Went to the Moon," which is amazing with its interesting lyrics and plain catchiness.

In this album almost three eighth of the songs are instrumentals. They're all pretty amazing, using the sounds of those other genres I mentioned at the beginning. All are original though, with the traditional sound almost dead on. "Mao Reminisces About His Days In Southern China" and "Payed Vacation: Greece" are prime examples, with that mandolin plucking away.

This is an excellent CVB record to start out with. While the songs on "Key Lime Pie" (which is a more produced/evolved major label release), it's still not a great introduction to Camper. However, the earliest stuff, while I love it, isn't quite as popular. In conclusion, if you like indie rock, get "Key Lime Pie," (which is also great) and if you like semi-indie with semi-punk influences get "Telephone Free Landslide Victory."

Okay, so that title is an exaggeration. Some of the songs contain some great lyrical work: the odd "Take The Skinheads Bowling," the clever "Ambiguity Song," and the humorously ironic "Club Med Sucks," among others. Most of the songs on this album are instrumentals, though. These instrumentals range from ska to an Eastern European sound, and, while some of them can get a bit repetitive, tend to be quite catchy and attention-grabbing. While not Camper Van Beethoven's best work, there is something about this raw (yet well-played) early music that will keep you (if you're anything like me, anyway) coming back for more.

Although not as revolutionary or influential as other 80's alternative albums you could name, Telephone Free Landslide Victory has a unique flavor that justifies it's cult status. The laidback amateurishness and decidedly surrealist humor ear-mark it as the product of a group of bored college friends starting a band it is; however, I'm not sure about you, but I never had college musician friends who seemed to be as influenced by psychadelia, second wave ska, and russian folk-dance music as they were by early REM. Left-field hit "Take The Skinheads Bowling", "Where The Hell Is Bill?", the slacker-bluegrass rendition of Black Flag's "Wasted", and especially the hillarious satire of punk-angst "Club Med Sucks" are highlights, but the more I listen, the more I start thinking the instrumentals are just as good if not better.

As for the re-release itself, while it might seem a bit unneccesary considering the issue of the Cigarettes And Carrot Juice budget-box just 2 years ago, it's nice to have the cd in less flimsy packaging (in fact I mostly bought this because the old one hadn't fared too well in that little cardboard case for these past couple years, and the other discs aren't in great shape either). The bonus tracks are interesting but not really substantial enough to warrant purchase if you've already got a copy in good shape: "At Huda" is a fairly worthy russian folk-ska instrumental in the vein of "Skinhead Stomp" and "Balaika Gap", but "Wasting All Your Time" was already on Camper Van Beethoven Is Dead... under a longer title, and the other 3 tracks are just a bit of listenable but aimless studio experimentation. I also don't know if I like the extra material being stuck in the middle of side a: it actually doesn't disrupt the flow as much as you'd think, but it takes getting used to if you've had the original album for a while, and I have no idea whatsoever why "The Day Lassie Went To The Moon" is now the opener instead of "Border Ska". Be sure to stick around after the last track for a bizarre "experimental" version of "Heart".

Okay, so that title is an exaggeration. Some of the songs contain some great lyrical work: the odd "Take The Skinheads Bowling," the clever "Ambiguity Song," and the humorously ironic " among others. Most of the songs on this album are instrumentals, though. These instrumentals range from ska to an Eastern European sound, and, while some of them can get a bit repetitive, tend to be quite catchy and attention-grabbing. While not Camper Van Beethoven's best work, there is something about this raw (yet well-played) early music that will keep you (if you're anything like me, anyway) coming back for more.