Camper Van Beethoven with Leaving Springfield at the Brookly Bowl, Tuesday July 23, 2019

Personally, I've never been a big fan of college rock-styled bands like Camper Van Beethoven, but Melanie dug them back in the day so we made the trek to the Brooklyn Bowl to check out the show. BB is a medium/large venue with a great stage, sound and lights and now locals get free, validated parking behind the venue. Its located right off of the Strip which means that we don't get to it very often, but it is a good place to see mid-sized (popularity-wise) groups.

The Bowl often has local bands open up the shows and this evening it was 90's-inspired rock trio Leaving Springfield. They were good at what they do, but I was not a fan of this genre back in the day and am not nostalgic for it today. But, they did get a good response from the sparse crowd that showed up early to catch them.

CVB are not exactly a visual band, but everyone was super solid players (hat tip to the multi instrumentalist violinist/guitarist/keyboardist) as they demonstrated as they ran through a set of favorites from their various records, starting with their hit cover of Status Quo's "Picture of Matchstick Men". At one point, they did an instrumental that combined "Hava Nagila", "Kashmir", "Communication Breakdown" and "Dazed and Confused" while continuing to return to "Hava Nagla". This went on a bit too long for a joke number, but in a way, that kinda (almost) made it funny all over again, in a stoner-humor kinda way (they did talk about taking acid the last time they were in town). One of Mel's favorites, "Turquoise Jewelry", made an appearance, as did "Take the Skinheads Bowling" (naturally), some hard rock parody (?), a song about Jerry Garcia's daughter and the ending, which evolved into a big jam number. Although the club had filled out reasonably well by this time, there wasn't enough response to warrant an encore.

David Lowery came back out to perform a long-ish acoustic number from his solo album and then he brought out the more commercial Cracker, at which point we all ended up making our way out into the night.

I have to admit that the show did not convert me to a Camper Van Beethoven fan, but it was an enjoyable evening out at a comfortable venue.