Camper Van Beethoven is Dead.  Long Live Camper Van Beethoven.
At the time of their 1985 debut, Camper Van Beethoven's merging of punk, folk, ska and  world musics was truly a revelation. Self-described as "surrealist absurdist folk," the band formed in Santa Cruz, CA after singer-songwriter David Lowery of Redlands, CA, with  his dry humor and valley-boy voice (sometimes confused for a faux English accent), and  boyhood friends Chris Molla and Chris Pedersen disbanded Box of Laffs. Victor Krummenacher  was added on bass and soon they were joined by Greg Lisher (guitar) and Jonathan Segel  (violins, keyboards, mandolin). It was Segel's violin that would prove to be the band's  hallmark at a time when alternative rock had yet to be invented, and indie-rock was still  shy of roots music or traditional instruments. The 1985 re-release of their debut  Telephone Free Landslide Victory made the Top Ten in the 1986 Village Voice annual  Pazz and Jop Poll, as did their second album, II & III, and Camper Van Beethoven, both  released in 1986. On II & III, they went for a purer indie-rock sound with touches of  country, as evidenced in their "Sad Lovers Waltz" and their cover of Sonic Youth's "I  Love Her All The Time." The band deftly switched modes from punk to ska to rock on  alternate takes, but by this time Molla had left the fold. The third album, confusingly  titled Camper Van Beethoven, continued the thread, but the outstanding tracks, like  "Joe Stalin's Cadillac," were all in the more straight-ahead indie-rock vein. However,  the band would consistently blow people's minds by tossing around things like a reverent  version of Pink Floyd's "Interstellar Overdrive." For their Virgin Records debut,  subsequent with the label's U.S. re-launch in 1988, the band took a more serious tack  for Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart, and the band who had once been confined to  low budgets and small studio facilities stretched out perhaps a little too aggressively.  For Key Lime Pie, the band's final release in 1989, they took it as far as it could go.Band Members: David Lowery; Jonathan Segel; Victor Krummenacher; Greg Lisher; Chris Molla; Morgan Fichter; David Immergluck.