Goodness, what to say about the Camper show?

Well, it was fabulous of course. Oh, we're all used to that by now. But they sound so great, the band's really tight, and, you know, I love them.

Anyway I ran out of my guitar class early and hobbitgrrl and I went over to the Abbey Pub, where we were only the 2nd and 3rd people there, not first. We must be slipping. Doors were to be at 8 but they let us in a bit early, possibly because they were going by the clock mounted over the stage, which was about 10 minutes fast. So we stood around and waited, kicking the sandbags piled under the stage, destroying the carpet, checking out the merch table, smelling the french fries that were being served to people up in the balcony. That last part was the most agonizing.

But then the opening band, Trampled by Turtles, came out to distract me from my french-fry envy. I was rather curious what they would sound like, since we could see there were a banjo and an acoustic bass onstage for them (along with acoustic guitar and mandolin). Also, there were four chairs set up so we knew they were going to be a sit-down band. Now, the last time we saw a sit-down opening act (Cass McCombs for the Decemberists), it was way too mellow. That was not a problem tonight. This band came out and sat down with their acoustic instruments and started rocking so hard on these bluegrass tunes—they were fantastic. They had the crowd with them pretty quickly and it was an all-around excellent vibe. Jonathan came out to play violin on a couple songs with them (he smiled hello at me, aw) and that was pretty awesome too.

After a bit the singer checked the clock (according to posted signs they were supposed to vacate the stage at 9:45) and told his bandmates they'd do just one more song (although we could see several more written on the setlist). So I said (I was about three feet away from him), "That clock is fast!" (hoping to encourage them to play more than one more since they had time) but he said something like, "Well, that's the one we have to go by. But thank you for noticing." Oh well. I really enjoyed their set, short though it was.

They took away their stuff and the Camper guys came out to set up. hobbitgrrl and I passed much of this time admiring Jonathan's and David's laptops (15" and 12" PowerBooks, respectively) and being Mac dorks. Why, I remember three years ago when Jonathan had an ancient G3 Wall Street and was still running OS 9...anyway, they set all that up and a projector connected to David's computer for a video show that was going to run during their set.

They left the stage, then after a bit they started up the video show, which played Discothèque CVB and showed a woman dancing. Then it went on to a bunch of other weird, random stuff. I wasn't watching it too much since I was looking at the band most of the time, but for the most part the images were related to the song lyrics (pictures of flowers during Flowers, people bowling during Take the Skinheads Bowling, etc.). There were also lots of shots of Camper Van Beethoven's myspace page.

Anyway. The show was tight, high energy, not a lot of chat, although some guy kept yelling "Leaning Tower of [something]" which seemed to puzzle Victor and Jonathan to no end and caused a lot of discussion. Mostly it was just rocking. The setlist was nice and long (we were right near Jonathan's copy and could see that it was two columns long, which is exceptional in my experience). They did a couple of my favorites from Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart, including One of These Days (but not Waka, sadly). And there were a couple surprises: Guardian Angels (David said it was only like the second or third time they'd played it in 20 years), Seven Languages and the superb Interstellar Overdrive > Surprise Truck medley. Man, I could watch Greg play guitar all day.

After that they went off for their little break. We could see the encore written on Jonathan's setlist (which is also very unusual) so I didn't grab it yet, since the show wasn't over. But there were these two women behind us who'd been somewhat annoying all night (they'd been periodically physically molesting hobbitgrrl, which was unpleasant, and also kept yelling about how they had come all the way from San Diego as if that necessarily gave them special privileges—they'd used that line to push their way almost to the front of the crowd though they'd arrived pretty late). Anyway one of them reached out and snatched David's (or maybe it was Victor's) setlist and I was kinda surprised—I mean, I grab and I slap, but at least I wait until the band's finished using the setlist before I start in. On top of that, as hobbitgrrl told me later, apparently this woman had made a deal with the guy next to us that if he let her get in the front row she would give him the setlist later; but though he'd let her in she purloined the thing even before the show was done and then kept it for herself. But I guess it's something of a tacit rule that whoever has their hands on it just sort of owns it, so the guy didn't insist on fulfillment of their agreement.

At this point the band came back out and then the other annoying woman, unable to reach over me to get Jonathan's setlist, just yelled out and asked him for it. I was kind of surprised that she asked for it when they weren't even done with it yet, and then Jonathan looked at me and motioned for me to take it and give it to her. I picked it up and I was really, really tempted to keep it, but the woman kept whining, "Would you give it me?" and Jonathan pointed out, "She asked for it," so I—very reluctantly, I must admit—handed it over. Victor said something—I couldn't quite hear him—so I pointed hopefully at Greg's setlist which was at the back of the stage, and Victor started to go back there and get it, then stopped and shook his head, like, "Eh, fuck it." Ouch, rejected! I'm sure I started pouting at that point, because that's what I always do when I don't get what I want, and I think it had the desired effect (as it often does, which is probably why I keep doing it), because then Greg went back and picked up the last setlist and gave it to me. XXX OOO to Greg!

With that all settled, the encore finally got underway. On the setlist, the encore was written as 4 songs (actually not written on the copy I got, but it included Los Tigres Traficantes, Sweethearts and L'Aguardiente—I don't remember the other one), but now they no longer had any setlists, so they just played That Gum You Like and L'Aguardiente. Damn! I really wanted to hear Sweethearts. I blame those women who took the setlists too early. Nonetheless, it was a very satisfying and quite long show.

Jonathan smiled at me and hobbitgrrl as he left the stage and said it was nice to see us again. Oh, the feeling is definitely mutual. I hope it won't be another 15 months before the next time they come back to Chicago.

I have my 6 lonely photos, of which 83.3bar% are not too blurry. And we saw a guy with a huge microphone up in the balcony so I'm hoping a nice recording of this show will be making the rounds pretty soon.