Cigarettes & Carrott Juice..

5 great CD's with great songs like "Crossing Over" or "Mao Reminices About his Days in Southern China". The songs on Greatest Hits Played Faster, the live CD, sound better than the recordings on Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart or Key Lime Pie. It is relatively cheap for a 5 CD set.

In my wallet I keep a "want list" of music and movies for all of those times I find myself in a store and can't remember that album or movie I wanted. One of the first entries is "Camper Van Beethoven--First three albums". Finally, this wonderful boxed set is available. The collection includes, as stated, all of the band's work from the Santa Cruz years. The CD cases are cardboard miniature reproductions of the original album jackets and the fourth and fifth discs are rarities and a live disc. If you remember the fun of their music and haven't heard it for a while, get this set. It brought back memories of a less responsible time and the music, it seems, hasn't been remastered leaving the vocals slightly buried which was always a part of their sound I liked. They could entertain you with light ska instrumentals or rock with catchy guitar riffs. The extensive liner notes are interesting too, except the part where the writer tries to defend the band's selling out as not selling out but simply wanting to sign to a bigger label to make their music more available. No problem here with selling out if you don't change your music to do it; and that's exactly what they did. I feel their major label stuff just isn't as fun as the early stuff..... and Cracker was horrible. If you remember why you liked Camper Van Beethoven in the first place, buy this set.

Last year a friend of mine invited me to see Camper Van Beethoven on their recent limited reunion tour, and although I only had Key Lime Pie, their last full album of new studio material, I agreed. While still a pretty good record, their set proved "Key Lime Pie" to just scratch the surface of their musical diversity. Basic guitar pop songs would rest beside russian can can ska instrumentals, straight country ballads, hardcore punk satire and power-book enhanced Fleetwood Mac covers. Needless to say, I was intrigued by their earlier releases, and the next time I had enough cash to blow, I found myself the proud owner of this box set. Although the first disk is the best in my opinion, all three of the original albums show a creative, clever, unique, and musically talented band at work. In addition, the rarities colection camper vantiquities, despite being a compilation of 3 years worth of material, doesn't feel any more or less cohesive than the rest of their albums, a credit to their freewheeling style, and is far less mixed than one would expect from such a compilation. Finally disc five is a live album mostly drawn from what was to be their final tour in europe, which focuses on material from their two major label albums. While a bit dissapointingly slow for something called "Greatest Hits Played Faster", it still captures some fine perofmances of the band, and is a nice extra, though probably not something you'd want to buy the whole box set for if you already own the rest of the albums. All in all, if you're curious about the band or just want to hear some challenging but catchy diverse rock music, this is a great place to start.