I had a dream/I wanted to sleep next to celluloid
Bandleader David Lowery is a temperamental and tenacious talent who has made a career out of his work as a singer, songwriter, and producer with his bands Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker.
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Bandleader David Lowery is a temperamental and tenacious talent who has made a career out of his work as a singer, songwriter, and producer with his bands Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker.
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Always out of their time, the Del-Lords made a scruffy early-1980s debut in the age of synthesized MTV flashes in the pan.
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It's pretty clear that after three decades of creativity, Camper Van Beethoven is far more than a David Lowery side project.
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On their annual co-tour with Camper Van Beethoven , Cracker usually gets the anchor spot.
Read MoreWhen Camper Van Beethoven oozed out of California's post-punk scene circa mid-1980s, they confronted witnesses with a set of confounding contradictions: a novelty band, ostensiblyTake the Skinheads Bowling" was the hit—counter-intuitively sporting a stunning breadth of musical range and ability; a fiercely DIY aggregation, yet explicitly cosmopolitan, conversant with everything from Balkan balladry to Jamaican ska; a hard-rock behemoth, yet leaning more on violin than electric guitar as lead instrument.
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Hearing the stories behind how the new Camper Van Beethoven album came together, we're not surprised to find out that God is a CVB fan.
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Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker frontman David Lowery caught a lot of flack last summer when he wrote an open letter to NPR intern Emily White, regarding her piece called " I Never Owned Any Music To Begin With." The young writer admitted to only having bought about 15 CDs in her lifetime, despite having over 11,000 songs in her iTunes library.
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Hey There, David, how are you today?
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Before David Lowery was known as a leading crusader for musicians' rights against the evils of thieving NPR interns , and/or the frontman of fairly popular 90s alt-rock band Cracker, he was the most famous member of semi-famous, 80s indie band Camper Van Beethoven.
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To a cynic, 2012 might have looked a lot like the Year Of The Bellyache.
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Camper Van Beethoven will join forces with sister band Cracker for a limited winter itinerary CVB prepares for its first new studio release in nine years.
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Camper Van Beethoven will release their first new album in nine years, La Costa Perdida , which will be out January 22 via 429 Records.
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"At least it's not humid," he said, harassing fans who have a penchant for justifying a move to the "dry heat" weather of Arizona.
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I interviewed David Lowery of Cracker and Camper van Beethovan about his viral blog post on The Trichordist discussing artist rights.
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"Why are we willing to pay for computers, iPods, smart phones, data plans, and high speed internet access but not the music itself?"
Read MoreOn June 16, a 20-year-old NPR intern named Emily White wrote a short blog post called " I Never Owned Any Music To Begin With." In it, she breaks down her history of her relationship with and procurement of music.
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On June 16, NPR published an article by a 20 year-old intern concerning her generation's aversion to paying for music in favor of a larger Spotify-esque system where all artists' music can be available for listening that will pay based on play counts.
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On Monday, June 16, NPR All Songs Considered intern Emily White published an essay in which she admitted that, while she boasted an iTunes library comprising some 11,000 songs, she had only purchased 15 CDs in her lifetime.
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Cracker / Camper Van Beethoven singer David Lowery wrote a lengthy and insightful reply yesterday to Emily White, a summer intern at National Public Radio's All Songs Considered, regarding illegal downloading and artists not being rightfully paid for their songs.
Read MoreWith the first bits of new music beginning to trickle out as we hit the start of another year, 'Sirens' by Sons of Bill is one of the early albums that has been spending a good amount of time in my CD player.
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For those who have followed Video Classics (and WNEW in general) for a while, you know when we say 'classic rock' we mean really classic rock.
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Alt-rock vets Camper Van Beethoven and frontman David Lowery's other band Cracker are going on tour together in December & January.
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In what proves to be one of the more compelling reasons not to skip class, Cracker frontman David Lowery married his longtime significant other -- not to mention, his band's manager -- Velena Vego during a music business class.
Read MoreCracker and Camper Van Beethoven have announced the 7th annual Campout Music Festival happening September 15th-17th in Pioneertown, California.
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Having recently seen Lowery perform with both Cracker and Camper on tour and hearing a party track like, " Baby, All Those Girls Meant Nothing To Me ," it's difficult for me to think of Lowery as a 50 year old.
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When Kevin Murphy wanted to move away from the punk scene of his high school years, he hopped to the opposite end of the musical spectrum and formed the Moondoggies .
Read More“Like an old testament prophet, or a Morman elder, or (all right, what do I know about it?) like that guy on Big Love, our favorite openly practicing musical polygamist David Lowery brought both of his bands to NYC for back to back performances at the Highline Ballroom on January 14. I’ve been reading the Keith Richards book, which has me all in a lather for rock and roll tell-all, so I couldn’t help but wonder what the dynamic on the bus is. One big happy family? Hmm. Maybe, but the mind is inevitably drawn to the sordid. Is it Cracker in the front, wearing their greater commercial success like a warm parka, loud and cheerful game of 20 questions, Camper Van Beethoven in the back, sullen and pissy, answering in monosyllables? Or is it CVB the first and truest love, despite Cracker’s headline position on the bill, serenely confident of favor, irritatingly aloof in the face of drunken, bitter Cracker histrionics? I guess we’ll have to wait for the Immergluck book to find out. In the meantime, I marvel at what an absolute delight this pair of shows proved to be. I liked so many things about them I hardly know where to begin. I should say that I was a fan back in the nineties but I’d completely lost touch with this music: all I knew is that I used to like it. As often as not, things you used to love come back to embarrass you (just give me a second to queue up this episode of Lost in Space on Hulu . . . OK, I’m back now), and so I was gratified and relieved to find that in this case my taste was vindicated by strong performances of a jaw droppingly rich musical smorgasbord. It’s a brilliant format, playing consecutively as CVB and Cracker, and it gives the concert goer some real insights into the different approaches taken by these two successful projects. I found myself about to use the word “evolution” back there, but that isn’t it: CVB didn’t evolve into Cracker anymore than the Beatles evolved into Wings. Two bands. Some similarities. Some differences. Both draw
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The film stars Sean Penn, decked out in full goth-king makeup.
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Saturday night's show with David Lowery , and the more-or-less original line-ups of Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker illuminated a few things for me.
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I've been a fan of David Lowery brand of irony since '92 with the release of Cracker's winning debut; Cracker Brand .
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Never mind the at-times juvenile humor ("Pearl Necklace" and "Tube Snake Boogie") and outright dumb 1980s synth-mix ZZ Top records, the band was a great blues-rock power trio up to 1979′s Deguello , arguably its finest hour (we'll entertain counterpoints involving Eliminator ).
Read MoreAin't it funny how I was reminiscing about my last man date with the Cleveland Bachelor earlier this morning (the last one that really mattered, anyway), and in the middle of the day, the man date schedulers (whoever those dudes are) sent me an email to let me know that our next scheduled man date has been confirmed.
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Back in the early '90s, when alt-rock still smelled like teen profits to trend-spotting record execs, Cracker and the Reverend Horton Heat were two of the many guitar bands to capitalize on the post- Nirvana gold rush and score major-label deals.
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