For all its gaps in logic, for all the places where it hints at a story instead of actually telling one (forgivable in an ordinary album, but not in a concept album, where the story is the engine), New Roman Times is a heck of a piece. Though Camper frequently substitutes showmanship for intellectual rigor, that was probably inevitable; no one is going to look to Camper Van Beethoven for a serious exercise in geopolitical history, which explains why they can get away with their customary references to space aliens. Lowery says the band couldn’t help themselves. “I like the fact that in ‘Hippy Chicks’ we start singing about space aliens. In Camper, when we start singing about space aliens, we know we’re pretty close to being finished.”
LIFE IS GRAND
The material for New Roman Times was composed over a two-year period, and mostly recorded in a little less than a month. This probably isn’t because the band members are reluctant to be in a room with each other for longer than that, since both Segel and Lowery claim intra-band relations couldn’t be better. There’s no reason to doubt them: In one form or another, they play together almost constantly. Membership in the Cracker and Camper organizations is so fluid that bassist Krummenacher, guitarist Lisher and Segel have all done time in both (an experience detailed on the live Traveling Apothecary Show & Revue), and cross-pollination in any number of side projects is also common. Cracker and Camper even share bills together, which means it’s not unheard of for Lowery to open for himself.
Still, life in Camper Van Beethoven is more complicated than it used to be. The band members live on different coasts, which may be for the best, and several of them have had day jobs: Krummenacher is the art director for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and Segel used to teach music composition at Mills College.
Camper plans to tour behind New Roman Times. “We’re going to drive around the country in a van doing what we used to do,” says Lowery, although the band may go out for ten days at a time instead of the grueling stretches that were once typical.
Corporate gigs like the National Association of Record Manufacturers convention will also be on the itinerary. “The NARM people want us there,” he marvels. “God, we would have been begging to do that kind of stuff the first time around.” Lowery sees Camper’s reunion as a permanent one, and envisions alternating between Camper and Cracker projects for at least the next few years. He’s also tentatively planning to make a solo album in 2005.
Camper has received posthumous credit for helping to create any number of musical trends, from college radio (possibly) to alt-country (less likely) and alternative rock (true, although R.E.M. and the Pixies might have had something to do with it as well). Lowery sees Camper’s stamp on acts such as Wilco as well as on emo bands and present-day garage rock groups including the White Stripes.
While it’s possible for their admittedly profound influence to be slightly overstated, one thing is certain: Camper Van Beethoven has sold more records in the fourteen years since they initially broke up than in the seven years they were together, thanks in part to a new generation of listeners interested in excavating the roots of alternative rock. The band’s renewed popularity “does seem odd to me,” Lowery admits. “History and [musical trends] have conspired to make us more important today than we should be.”
In addition to a new generation who will likely be seeing Camper Van Beethoven play for the first time, the fact that a recent crop of 1980s alt-rock icons (The Cure, Mission Of Burma et al.) have launched successful reunions also gives Camper hope for their commercial future. Or not.
“We’re all about 40 years old,” Segel says. “We don’t have this stupid apprehension you have when you’re a 20-year-old band like, ‘Maybe they’ll play us on the radio!'” (Says Lowery, 43: “I could see us getting on the radio.”)
That Camper has made the most uncommercial album of their career at a time when they would otherwise be most likely to have an actual hit may be the ultimate in artistic perversity. Lowery agrees. “Ultimately, I think we’re OK. We couldn’t make a record with [sales] in mind, anyway. That would totally fuck it up.”
Either way, Segel figures, things have to be better than they were the first time around. “We’re a lot more mellow than we used to be,” he says. “We realize it’s not the end of the world if it falls apart again.”
ND contributing editor Allison Stewart no longer lives in New York City. She is threatening to work on a book.
