“Do not eat or drink anything past midnight prior to your appointment- NO FOOD, NO LIQUID”. Non-sensical, un-user friendly, at times half finished. Camper Van Beethoven’s second album II & III saw the folk-punk of the band’s debut LP morphing into an even wider melting pot of stylistic influences and (un)ironic contradictions, all rolled up into a coherently incoherent collection of some of the band’s most defining songs. Originally released in 1986, the follow up to Telephone Free Landslide Victory did much to develop an already iconoclastic Camper Van Beethoven idiom.
II & III ranges from alt-country ballads (“Sad Lovers’ Waltz”) to call-backs to the European folk instrumentals of the debut (“No Krugerrands For David”, “4 Year Plan”). Also featured is the band’s bluegrass-Americana take on Sonic Youth’s “I Love Her All the Time”, feeding their appetite for cover songs.
This deluxe double CD set brings together the original II & III album with a 17 track live album of material from Camper Van Beethoven shows supporting REM on their Life’s Rich Pageant tour. This audio was mostly recorded at the Lincoln, Nebraska show from October 10th, 1986, but is supplemented with audio from other shows of the tour.
1. Abundance
2. Cowboys From Hollywood
3. Sad Lovers' Waltz
4. Turtlehead
5. I Love Her All The Time
6. No Flies On Us
7. Down And Out
8. No Krugerrands For David
9. Goleta
10. 4 Year Plan
11. (We're A) Bad Trip
12. Circles
13. Dustpan
14. Sometimes
15. Chain Of Circumstances
16. Zz-top Goes To Egypt
17. Cattle (Reversed)
18. Form Another Stone
19. No More Bullshit
Disk 2
1. (A Very Weird DJ Intro)
2. Abundance
3. (I Was So) Wasted
4. Heart
5. Mao Reminisces About His Days In Southern China
6. We're A Bad Trip
7. Processional (Featuring Spoken Word From Our Roadie)
8. Sad Lovers' Waltz
9. (Madonna Conspiracy Theory Stage Banter)
10. Take The Skinheads Bowling
11. The Day Lassie Went To The Moon
12. (First Attempt To Calm The Audience)
13. Zz Top Goes To Egypt
14. Careful With That Axe Eugene/interstellar Overdrive
15. We Love You
16. (Michael Stipe Attempts To Calm The Audience)
17. I'm Not Like Everybody Else
