Camper Van Beethoven - Tusk

Curry and I spent the morning exploring the golden age of recording studio excess - that gilded time when hugely successful bands spent undgodly sums at places like Electric Ladyland and indulged themselves with the search for sonic perfection (and a lot of coke).

The last dinosaur of that time was Fleetwood Mac's Tusk, which cost upwards of $1,000,000 to produce, and that is 1979 money, folks. Excessive in the extreme, but giddily and charmingly insane when viewed through a nostalgiac lens. In retrospect, this record from the biggest selling act of the time is quite subversive as it slowly and not too subtly destroys the pop that brought about its own creation. Much like Henning, I happen to like Tusk a lot.

Camper Van Beethoven, a band about whom I have always been rather ambivalent, set out in '86 to make their third album. During their holing up period their drummer broke his hand and on a whim they decided to cover Tusk in its entirety. Halfway thru the process some members had second thoughts but were overruled. Once completed the joke was apparently over and the tapes disappeared for a decade and a half. They finally resurfaced in 2000 (in the home of the belated Mark Linkous, interestingly enough) and the recording was released 2 years later.

The result is uneven, occassionally hints at sarcasm, and feels a little lazy at times, but mostly treats the material quite respectfully. There are some real gems in this. What Makes You Think You're The One, Sara, the wickedly fun Sisters of the Moon, the title track (which has less in common with the original than it does with The Doors', The End), and the exquisite Beautiful Child are beautifully rendered in their new forms.

It's worth the listen.

Hear

addendum: Wikipedia says that the album was not in fact recorded in '86 at all. That it was instead recorded in 2001 as an experiment to see if a reunion would work. All other sources claim it was recorded in '86.