So why is Camper Van Beethoven’s Telephone Free Landslide Victory on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
I have a weirdly specific memory related to “Take the Skinheads Bowling” and I have a weirdly specific memory related to “Take the Skinheads Bowling” and Camper Van Beethoven, which maybe is appropriate in a way when it comes to the weirdly wonderfully fantastic Telephone Landslide Victory, which we’ll get to in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.
It was my first semester at Binghamton University in upstate New York, as we downstate Long Islanders would call it. Looking back, I was kind of snobby when it came to music at that time, both because I was trying to seek out an identity of some sort, and because music was such a refuge for me during that time in my life (which of course is abundantly common).
Anyway, I thought I knew a thing or two about music, but it’s astonishing to me now how much that was in no way true back then. We’re talking fact check = fail whale territory here.
One day I was talking to a fellow freshman gal who lived in my dorm (Johnson Hall, which no longer exists!), and we got into talking about music. I’m pretty sure I said something as crass and overblown as “I have incredible taste in music,” or something to that effect.
She then busted out a mix tape, and on the cover were the names of a blizzard of indie and punk bands that I had never heard of before, and I have a visceral memory of my soul and ego getting crushed by just a tiny bit… but when you’re of such a young and tender age, it’s a lot.
It was humbling, shall we say.
I did recognize a few songs on that mix tape, and one of them was “Take the Skinheads Bowling,” which I had seen the music video of on MTV and liked quite a lot.
Fast forward a great many years, and Camper Van Beethoven hadn’t really found its way into my life, except as a vague notion that I should “check out more when I get a chance,” perhaps when I’d see it referenced in Rolling Stone or some music blog or another*.
* I do also recall the song being featured in the informative, disturbing, occasionally hilarious, and absolutely prescient Michael Moore documentary from 2002, Bowling for Columbine.
Then one day, I was messing around on Spotify, as is my wont, and I happened to throw on Telephone Free Landslide Victory, and it absolutely yet metaphorically knocked me on my ass.
It’s the best kind of feeling when music, art, or creative output of some kind does that to you. It’s a high that I’ll never get tired of chasing.
I’ll also state plainly that Telephone Free Landslide Victory won’t be for everyone. If you’re into the melodic oddball catchy driving rock of “Take the Skinheads Bowling,” it doesn’t mean you’re necessarily going to be into the rest of the album.
It’s a strange and eclectic trip, but one that contains abundant found treasures and delightful side quests if you’re up for such a musical adventure.
Ned Raggett from All Music frames CVB on TFLV as follows:
Eastern European folk, tropical grooves, post-punk atmospherics, country laid-back good times, psych/garage band aesthetics, lyrics about Mao, Greece, and more – a lot of stuff went into the Santa Cruz band’s brew, and most of it came up trumps on Telephone.
I’ll say too that I love the thought of Camper Van Beethoven creating this completely off the mainstream grid collection of songs in the liberal bastion of Santa Cruz, California smack dab in the middle of the Reagan administration in 1985.
In a way it’s soothing to know that art and creativity can and will persist, a nice thought at the dawn of a dark new Trump 2.0 era as I write these words in early 2025.
Telephone Free Landslide Victory kicks off with “The Day That Lassie Went to the Moon,” a slow-ish jangle pop-meets-punk number backed by keyboards.
Like “Take the Skinheads Bowling,” it’s another strange-o lyrical journey with this one.
The day, the day
That was the day that Lassie went to the moon
My little dog Lassie packed her bags and went out onto the porch
Her golden fur glistened in that sunny blue backdrop sky of Kansas
There are some tracks that are so weird as to be hilarious – and I totally get that it won’t necessarily strike everyone’s funny bone. A good litmus test for this is “Where the Hell Is Bill?”, a western-ish croon-y number that… seeks out the specific location of some dude named Bill.
Maybe he went off to see the Circle Jerks, you know?
Less funny but just adorably lovable somehow is “Wasting All Your Time,” which feels like it could have snuck into a Beck album circa Stereopathetic Soul Manure.
If you stare at Telephone Free Landslide Victory’s 24 tracks long enough, you maybe start to see some themes emerge: “Wasted” and “Wasting All Your Time,” for one, and then there are songs either about or relating to Soviet-era Russia (“Atkuda,” “Balalaika Gap,” and “Vladivostok,” which both take on the style of very foreign lands, and quite competently so at that), “Epigram #2,” not to be confused with “Epigram #5”). Then there are a bunch of travel-ish related tracks… it’s a whole thing.
You’ll get the thrashy punk track here and there, like “Club Med Sucks,” that you can imagine bands like The Bouncing Souls obsessing over as they were starting out.
If you’re thinking it’s a lot, it is. And for me that lot is a lot of great.
Some stats & info about Camper Van Beethoven – Telephone Free Landslide Victory
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Rock Music, Pop Music, Jangle Pop, Indie Rock, College Rock
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 4.5 out of 5 stars
- When was Telephone Free Landslide Victory released?
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #104 out of 1,000
Camper Van Beethoven’s Telephone Free Landslide Victory on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from Telephone Free Landslide Victory that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
Take the skinheads bowling, take them bowling.
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.