When I was a teenager, Camper Van Beethoven was all the rage. Take the skinheads bowling, take them bowling. Camper tended to be the domain of the artsy kids in our scene. Like, if you saw someone wearing a Camper Van Beethoven t-shirt, you could be relatively sure they worked with watercolors, or did set design. I was in my hardcore phase at the time and while the songs were good, I wasn’t going to make a day of it or anything,

Camper Van Beethoven eventually broke up and spawned the mighty Cracker.

Rock and roll.

Electric guitars.

These are the things that make things great.

Low was the big hit for them, and it’s a mighty fine song, but I always fancied Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now). I listened to that song a lot, but other than that Carpenters song they covered, I didn’t really dive too deeply into their catalog.

And then I heard Ain’t Gonna Suck Itself on Outlaw Country. It was love at first listen. Old punks don’t grow old, they just go country as I can personally attest. Ain’t Gonna Suck Itself is deliciously offensive, though not nearly as tawdry as the name suggests. Think of it as a spiritual cousin to Le Freak and Take This Job and Shove It. It is a protest song and it is mighty.

Cracker is going to show up here a lot.

Post Script: Listen to Berkeley to Bakersfield from cover to cover. There will be a test.