November 20, 2002

It's hard to overstate how unlikely it is that Camper Van Beethoven – a band whose very existence undercut the conservative jihad of the 1980s – have released a box set complete with five albums; eye-popping, colorful art; and a brilliant, thoughtful memoir written by Richard von Busack. It's not just that Camper Van Beethoven could be as unpredictable as a five-tab nightcap and as contrary as a fully armed Felton hippie. And certainly their music – rock laced with modal-sounding flourishes from Jonathan Segal's violin and lyrics that manage to drip sarcasm and float dreamlike at the same time – stands the test of time. But box sets were fashion accessories for rock stars, like coke spoons, limos, and platinum albums. Camper Van Beethoven were from another planet, and as aliens, were ineligible for stardom.

They were as much products of the Reagan years as they were prisoners, and it made them crazy. They gave new meaning to the word quirky. They were born into a just-say-no world, and they said yes, again and again. Street-smart Gen Xers kept it real on Wall Street, not Haight. Camper Van Beethoven – this is all you really need to know – were from Santa Cruz, where aging hippies joined forces with UCSC students and displaced twentysomething malcontents to create a reality-free zone. People in Santa Cruz often blurred the boundaries between the alternative and the absurd. They stood up for animals, vegetables, and people; a lot of them were outlaws who fought the law like it was no big deal. On a good day the citizens of Santa Cruz formed a large, 420-loving, iconoclastic coalition that flourished outside the reach of popular culture, which explains the city's activist history, the popularity of reggae, and white kids with dreadlocks.