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Camper Van Beethoven: Camper Van Beethoven (Rough Trade)

Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 6 January 1987

CAMPER VAN Beethoven's first LP, last year's Telephone Free Landslide Victory, contained ‘Take the Skinheads Bowling’, an absurdist manifesto and immediate college-radio hit whose popularity obscured the record's other assets. Its seven sinuous instrumentals, in particular the ambient facsimiles of ethnic music, sounded like amateurs faking ska, Tex-Mex, Eastern European folk tunes, Chinese melodies, and Western swing – at once.

Total word count of piece: 623

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