Anti-Anti-Rock Star: Talking with Cracker's David Lowery

David Lowery

The year 2000 was also eventful in that Boy Island, a "novel" by Vermont-based music writer Camden Joy (aka Tom Adelman) came out, using Adelman's experiences on the road interviewing Lowery and Cracker in 1991 to create a fictionalized tale about a band called Cracker that amounted to character assassination. In previous interviews, Lowery has referred to it as "stalker fiction." What follows are his candid e-mail responses on this issue and others.

Let's start with a scientific question. Which of the following would hit the ground first if dropped from the top of the Empire State Bldg.: a penny or Camden Joy?

That's an interesting question. As you may know, I have a relatively useless degree in math, pure math, not the design-some-kind-of-useful-technological-device-and-get-rich kind of math. So I like this question; it's sort of philosophical... It also involves random violence.

Well, assuming that Camden Joy and the penny are dropped, that is, there was no acceleration applied to either object by the person doing the dropping, and we discount the effect of wind resistance, both the penny and Camden would hit the ground at the same time. However, in the real world this scenario is highly unlikely as Camden would most likely be hurled off the building toward the ground by an angry mob, or perhaps even strapped to a rocket motor and shot deep into the Earth's crust.

What did you find more offensive about Boy Island, the writer using your band to tell his own story, or his smug attitude toward how rock bands function on the road?

I hate false humility. Tom has always written his reviews in character, some kind of seemingly humble miscreant, but it's actually a not-so-clever ruse to hide his massive ego. He inserts himself into others' stories as a sort of "moral center." He's like some kind of Victorian Christian crusader, only more self-righteous. That's what he tries to do in Boy Island, in all his books. Most annoying, though, is his sense of morality, which includes poverty, obscurity and obliqueness as virtues, and success, fame and forthrightness as sins. That is so white and upper middle class it makes me cringe. Can you imagine hiphop artists bragging about how obscure and poor they are?

My main objection to the book is that it's bad. It's poorly written. Is it a coming-out book? Is it gay fiction? [The Camden Joy character comes out at the end of the book.] Rock fiction? And why does he keep inserting the Gulf War into the book? Yeah, it's kind of weird that he mixes facts with embellished fact and outright fiction. This is all to get his point across, which is some harebrained thing about how musicians that try to be successful are somehow immoral. (Oh, wait, I get it! Immoral! Like the Gulf War!) I wish I had as much fun on the road as the fictional me. Tom combined events from Camper, Johnny Hickman's and Davey Faragher's old bands, all into a single three-week tour. But left out all the good (real) stuff like Faragher's crossdressing, or his attempt to buy a Catholic schoolgirl outfit for himself in a Bible Belt town.

If it's any solace, I was a minor Cracker/Camper fan going into Boy Island and came out a major one. If anything, it made me feel even more oily for writing about rock music, as it pointed out how manipulative and sad so much of the music press is. I'd apologize, but I'd join the John Birch Society before I called myself a music critic.

Thank you. I feel much better now that you have told me you are oily. I feel oily sometimes while playing rock music. Other times, I feel liberated, or ecstatic, but this is usually followed by crippling depression, paranoia and delusions. It's because for my (at best) middling commercial success, I had to make a Mephistophelean pact. I have no moral compass now.

Your website (www.Crackersoul. com) is a good example of how bands should handle MP3s. You have a link that goes to a URL filled with downloadable b-sides and rarities, and all one has to do is register with his e-mail list to gain access. What's your take on Napster?

Yes, asking for e-mail addresses for access to the MP3s has really expanded our mailing list. And that has been critical in keeping the clubs we play filled. Internet folks would call that community building, or something like that.

I have no problem with giving MP3s away off of our own website. I have no problem with people trading songs?I do it all the time myself. I burn CDs of songs, I like to turn on my friends to cool artists. But that's not what Napster is?it's wholesale bootlegging. Don't fool yourself.

And why is it that anyone who defends Napster seems to think they are only ripping off the record label? Has no one heard of songwriting royalties? Whether CDs cost too much or not, the fucking artist needs to get paid. Napster is just another example of bullshit hippie capitalism. Didn't Napster raise something like 40 million bucks? Where's mine? The whole company is based on the value of other people's intellectual property. It would be like me taking a second mortgage out on Mr. Napster's house. Hey, that's not a bad idea. Maybe all us artists should go to Napster headquarters and "borrow" all their stuff.

How do you think Napster is going to affect smaller labels like pitch-a-tent? From using Napster, I get the impression that the real victims might be the kind of mildly popular alternative bands a college audience would get into, meaning a lot of pitch-a-tent artists.

It won't really affect us directly, as most Camper Van Beethoven fans were Luddites. I'm surprised anyone visits our pitch-a-tent site at all. Seriously, the folks who are most interested in what we put out seem to want to have a physical copy of the music. I think it will hurt bands that have a big radio single worse. Unless there is a compelling reason to buy the whole album.

Indirectly, it will change the economics of the music business. Everyone bitches about the big record labels, but no one points out that the U.S. music model is kind of socialistic. Maybe not in a sexy, Swedish sort of way?maybe more in a matronly, Warsaw Pact kind of way. Nevertheless, the most popular records essentially fund the other 90 percent that don't make any money. And most good music is in that unprofitable 90 percent. If a lot less CDs are sold, then the major record labels will have to make hits only. There will be no more "developing" bands. All hail Britney and Celine.

Whether it was with Camper or Cracker, you've been with Virgin for about 12 years. What are the good and bad points of being on a major label?

The one good part of being on a major label is that you actually get paid. Everyone wants to romanticize the indies, but Rough Trade went bankrupt owing Camper close to $50K. And it wasn't like Camper could afford to not get paid that money. That sucked in a major way. My experience with major labels has been generally good; we've largely been left alone to do our own thing. I never had to dress up in period costumes for a video or sleep with Nancy Berry. I am disappointed I missed the whole "hookers and blow" era of the music business. By the time Camper was signed to a major label, it was all 12-step programs, Free Tibet and personal trainers. Then again, I don't know if my experience with major labels has been all that good because we've largely been left alone to do our own thing.

Since you've been in the music business for almost 20 years, what have you learned about longevity and whatever impulse drove you to become a musician in the first place?

I genuinely enjoy playing music. Not every show, not every song, but it's something that I feel like I would have to do whether I was successful or not. I have a lot of friends who play music, make records even though they don't make a living at it, and they have to work straight jobs. That would be me. Shit, in a way that's me already, because I've lost the urge to do the six-months worldwide tour. For the last three years we just go out and play eight or 10 shows a month?whether we have a record out or not. The rest of the time, I collaborate with other people, produce records, work at my studio, work on the pitch-a-tent site. So in a way, maybe Cracker is really more like a hobby; we rarely get sick of playing this way. Maybe that's how Johnny and I stuck it out 10 years.

Camper Van Beethoven never struck me as a hippie band, yet when I saw you play at the Student Union building at Penn State in 1985, 90 percent of the audience was Deadheads and people of that ilk. How did you get this audience?

Camper and Cracker have always had a significant hippie contingent in the audience. Most people don't remember, but Camper was considered a hippie band by many people in the underground music scene, and dismissed because of that. We enjoyed that because we were never really trying to be a "cool" band. We spent a lot of time making fun of those we perceived to be the cool people. When we started to get popular, we were living in Santa Cruz, but we were always playing in San Francisco. Everyone we knew in San Francisco was in some cool art-punk band. These people probably made us feel insecure in some way, so we became their opposites.

The first time we played in New York, we had a similar experience. I was standing outside the club after the show with Victor [the bassist], and this slightly older guy (with entourage) came over and started pontificating on how he didn't really understand our record, didn't get what we were trying to do, but nevertheless he had enjoyed our show. I just figured everyone in New York acted like an arrogant prick. Later, Victor told me that that dude was Thurston Moore. I still didn't know who that was until he explained he was in the band Sonic Youth.

What kind of audiences do you get at Cracker shows these days?

Well, largely the same weird mix of hippies, disillusioned hipsters, college kids and unreformed rockers. Kind of the Camper audience minus the creepy indie-rock types.

What's wrong with rock stars today? It seemed like what bands like Camper were doing in the 80s, and what Nirvana was doing before they lost control, was to kill off that rock mythology that, I imagine, is the key selling point in most bands' marketing plans, as quality control is not an issue. Now we have that same mythology, boiled down to all the most empty, meaningless cliches of the 70s, sold to asshole kids who don't know any better.

What Camper inadvertently helped do was create the alternative version of being a rock star. Although most of the blame for this can be laid squarely at the feet of Michael Stipe. You know, that crappy "I don't really want to be a rock star, I don't really want all the attention, but really I do" bullshit. You know, like Ed Vedder. I think that people got sick of that and went to the opposite extreme.

If VH1 were to do a Behind the Scenes on you, would there be any touching scenes with you wearing a bandanna and crying, or bragging about the time you snorted a line of fire ants from the sidewalk?

Bandannas in rock mean "I'm going bald." I still have my full head of hair. I also found out that if you wear a hat onstage, girls think you are going bald. I know this because immediately after a show, I went out the alley entrance of this theater for some fresh air. The audience was coming out the front and these two girls had stopped at the entrance to the alley, and they were talking about the show. Some strange acoustic effect was happening, so I could hear their conversation like they were standing next to me. "But why was the singer wearing that cowboy hat?" "Oh, honey, don't you know, whenever these musicians start going bald they either shave their head or start wearing a hat."