One afternoon, during the Summer of 1988, I was at a friend of a friend’s house. We stopped by while wandering around his neighborhood. I was 13 years old. I don’t remember what we were doing that afternoon, talking mostly.

Along the front wall of the living room was that most indispensable thing of the 1980s: a television tuned to MTV. And at some point, the following cut through the chatter and all of my attention, all of it, turned to center on the TV set:

It was “Eye of Fatima, (Part 1)” by Camper Van Beethoven. No doubt it was a MTV “Buzz Clip.” And it was the best thing I’d ever heard.

Backing Up

That same summer, I’d gone to my first punk show at Kustka’s Hall. This was an old Wisconsin banquet hall. The owner was a very down to earth man who may not have understood punk rock, but definitely understood young people, and that they needed a place to go. It was next to a place called “The Burger Barn” in Howard. These days Howard is known as a somewhat tony suburb, back then it was The Sticks. We saw All (basically The Descendents), the Doughboys, and Depo Provera (a local band fronted by legendary Green Bay punk, Rev. Norb). My friend’s older brother dropped us off a block a way so that no one could see us arrive together. The show was overwhelming, a little scary, and I loved it.

I didn’t just jump into the deep end. For a kid raised on jazz and classical music, finding my way to that hardcore punk show took a few years. And not having any older siblings, I had to find my own way. I was a musical bushwhacker.

This was something I did with a lot of intention. I set out on a very calculated journey of discovery… In the very beginning, I’d record Casey Kasem’s Top 40 show on a tape cassette and study the songs. Over time, I found that I preferred what was being called “alternative music.”

I had two fellow travelers on this journey, both of them sons of my parents’ friends. These lived in different cities, so when our parents brought us to each other’s homes we’d bring along our latest discoveries and a handful of blank tape cassettes, and we’d dub as much of each other’s music as we could. You couldn’t just buy a copy of The Whitey Album by Ciccone Youth in stores… not in Green Bay, Wisconsin any way. If you could dub a copy, you would. These were like rare butterflies.

Another source of interesting music was Ray, an economist colleague of my dad’s at the University, who would sometimes hire me to mow his lawn. He was 15 years younger than my parents, part of the generation that was in college during the late 70s and early 80s. He would pay me $5, a Coke, and a dubbed cassette.

He was good for post-punk and hardcore, so I gained Gang of Four’s Entertainment, Wire’s Pink Flag, Dead Kennedy’s Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, and most of The Clash’s discography this way. Also, Luaka Bop’s Tropicalismo comp.

That my parents had no idea what any of these were was part of the appeal. There were also frequent trips to The Exclusive Company, our downtown record store. My allowance at the time was exactly enough to buy one pre-recorded tape cassette. So, buying one meant wrestling with all of the ones I wouldn’t be buying.

Bands sometimes led to other bands. Discovering R.E.M., which I did just after Document came out, was especially great because they recorded so many covers. They led me to the Velvet Underground and Love Tractor, among others. These in turn introduced me to solo records by Lou Reed, John Cale, and Brian Eno.

Like minded bands also clustered on soundtracks, tribute, and fundraising albums. Take, for example, Born to Choose, a compilation put out by NARAL in 1993. I almost certainly bought it for the Michael Stipe and Natalie Merchant duet, “Photograph,” but it also had songs by The Mekons, Lucinda Williams, and Pavement. These would have been new to me at the time.

There were social stakes

There was a social dimension to this journey that was every bit as important. Music was tribal. We clung to our musical identities as tightly as American Legionnaires held on to their flag. Connecting to new music meant connecting to people, and sometimes even making enemies. Writing the names of my favorite bands on my notebooks, wearing the t-shirts, etc. All of those signifiers resorted my social life, introducing me to new people and experiences. The scary kid with the Misfits t-shirt and clove cigarettes became an acquaintance. She was nice. Maybe the social life of teens is still like this, I’m not sure. But I suspect it’s not music that delineates things, maybe it’s video games, or memes. I wouldn’t know.

“Eye of Fatima (Part 1)”

Anyway, by the afternoon that I stumbled upon Camper Van Beethoven, I’d covered a lot of ground. But this felt special, this was like someone with an enormous amount of insight had been assigned to rustle through my heart and mind, assess what they found, and devise a band just to please me and teach me valuable life lessons. And I understood this in my gut from the first beat.

John Cale aside, I didn’t know that you could play violin in a rock band; my mind was blown. Playing the violin was “my thing” as a teen, the way some kids are “horse kids” or “dance kids.” But it felt divorced from every other part of my life, like it was happening in a different dimension and far from the larger cultural currents of my life. The world of classical music was very much its own thing in the 1980s… full of Eastern European defectors who carried the weight of the Old World with them* and other turtlenecked adults. Back then, these men felt no need to pander to contemporary pop culture. For their generation, there was no concern about being ‘with it.’

But there, on the screen, was Jonathan Segel balancing his bow in his hand and showing me that violins could be bigger than this very small world that had been presented to me. Watching this now, as a 51-year old, it all feels a bit dorky, but the way he felt comfortable with his instrument was a revelation. Not only did they have a violinist, but the lyrics were bizarre, mysterious, open ended. They hinted at cultural currents I hadn’t yet encountered, things like CIA drug experiments, weird New Agers, etc. There was grist here to think about, even if it didn’t seem to mean anything.

Back then, you couldn’t just look things up online. So, it took me about a year to learn about the Fishman Transducer—a little device that you could slide into the bridge of a violin to hook it up to an amplifier. And my God, the sounds you could make! The range of an amplified violin goes from lavender scented zephyr to Defcon 1. I’d played bass in a band before, but now I could play violin. My worlds converged in a way that hadn’t thought possible. We had a band, I think we played a couple benefit shows—we were always organizing benefit shows back then. We’d raise a little money for Amnesty International, collect a few cans of soup for the unhoused. I wonder if high schoolers still do that? I believe that was senior year, and then I was off to college.

In college, I played in a few little, unserious duos and trios, mostly with my friend Lloyd. We had fun, but playing music was never a central preoccupation.

What I learned from Camper Van Beethoven

I didn’t actively choose CVB to be my favorite band, they just were. But I think I was lucky to have found them. Here are a few things I learned from them.

1. Eclecticism. To listen to CVB was to be presented with mazurkas, waltzes, and other musical artifacts of the territory roughly under the control of the Austrian, Russian, and Ottoman empires. They put me on a path that led to me exploring a lot of different ethnic folk music traditions.
2. Diversity of musical instrumentation. To be a violin playing CVB wannabe meant getting one’s hands on a mandolin as quickly as possible. Playing the mandolin led to exploring Irish and Scottish folk music, which, in turn, left to all kinds of life experiences.
3. The lead singer’s (David Lowery) copyright advocacy was an education.
4. Being a CVB fan in the 1980s meant learning how independent record companies work. This was my first introduction to a more underground musical experience, where records could only be obtained through mail order. If you even knew the records existed!

I did finally see CVB in Chicago in 2003, love to see them again!

* Was this the case in other communities in the 1980s? Or is it just a coincidence that my violin teacher (Janusz, a Pole) and the conductor of our youth orchestra (Miroslav, a Czech) had both escaped from behind the Iron Curtain? Let me know in the comments below.