''Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart'' is a 1988

album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...

Camper Van Beethoven Camper Van Beethoven is an American rock band formed in Redlands, California in 1983, later based in Santa Cruz and San Francisco. Their style mixes elements of pop, ska, punk rock, folk, alternative country, and world music. The band init ...

, released on

Virgin Records Virgin Records is a record label owned by Universal Music Group. It originally founded as a British independent record label in 1972 by entrepreneurs Richard Branson, Simon Draper, Nik Powell, and musician Tom Newman. It grew to be a worldwid ...

. It was the band's first major-label album, and was produced by

Dennis Herring Dennis Herring is an American record producer, engineer, mixer, and musician. Herring has produced for The Hives, Elvis Costello, Counting Crows, Modest Mouse, Camper Van Beethoven, and Jars of Clay. The producer owns a 24-track recording st ...

, the first time the band had used an outside producer. The lineup on the album included David Lowery on lead vocals and rhythm guitar,

Jonathan Segel Jonathan Segel (born September 3, 1963) is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist. He has played with Camper Van Beethoven, Sparklehorse, Eugene Chadbourne, and Dieselhed. Early life and education Segel was born in Marseille, France, and ...

on violin, mandolin, keyboards, guitar and backing vocals,

Victor Krummenacher Victor Krummenacher is an American bass guitarist and guitarist. He is a founding member of alternative rock band Camper Van Beethoven. Career In addition to co-founding Camper Van Beethoven, Krummenacher is also a co-founder of CVB offshoot ...

on bass and backing vocals,

Greg Lisher Greg Lisher (born 29 November 1963) is the lead guitar player for Camper Van Beethoven. He is also one of the founding members of the Camper Van Beethoven spin-off Indy prog rock group Monks of Doom. He has also released three solo records. His ...

on lead guitar, and Chris Pedersen on drums. It was the first Camper Van Beethoven album not to feature founding guitarist/drummer/multi-instrumentalist Chris Molla. The album featured the band's trademark eclectic mix of musics, including

folk Folk or Folks may refer to: Sociology *Nation *People * Folklore ** Folk art ** Folk dance ** Folk hero ** Folk music *** Folk metal *** Folk punk *** Folk rock ** Folk religion * Folk taxonomy Arts, entertainment, and media * Folk Plus or Fol ...

ska Ska (; ) is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. It combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. Ska is characterized by a walki ...

, Eastern European music,

Americana Americana may refer to: *Americana (music), a genre or style of American music *Americana (culture), artifacts of the culture of the United States Film, radio and television * ''Americana'' (1992 TV series), a documentary series presented by J ...

psychedelic rock Psychedelic rock is a rock music Music genre, genre that is inspired, influenced, or representative of psychedelia, psychedelic culture, which is centered on perception-altering hallucinogenic drugs. The music incorporated new electronic sound ...

, and Middle-Eastern music. Despite this, it has a considerably slicker and more mainstream sound than the band's previous, more garage-rock oriented albums, largely due to Herring's production. The reunited Camper Van Beethoven features a number of tracks from the album in its setlists, including most of the first side, as well as "Waka", "Tania", and "Life Is Grand" from the second side. Lowery described the inclusion of the folk song "O Death" as a tribute to the American 1960s psychedelic band

Kaleidoscope A kaleidoscope () is an optical instrument with two or more reflecting surfaces (or mirrors) tilted to each other at an angle, so that one or more (parts of) objects on one end of these mirrors are shown as a regular symmetrical pattern when v ...

, who included their version of the song on their album ''

Side Trips ''Side Trips'' is the 1967 debut studio album by American band Kaleidoscope. It was released in June 1967, on Epic Records BN 26304, and re-released on vinyl by Sundazed Records (2007). The album has a raw, non-limited instrumental mentality, for ...

''.

Track listing

On the reissue, tracks 15-17 are from the "Life Is Grand" single, track 18 is from the "Eye of Fatima"/"Turquoise Jewelry" promo single, and track 25 is from the 1987 compilation ''At Dianne's Place''. Tracks 20-24 were recorded October 14, 1988 at UMass Amherst, Amherst, MA; they and track 19 were previously unreleased.

References

Camper Van Beethoven albums 1988 albums Virgin Records albums Albums produced by Dennis Herring {{1980s-alt-rock-album-stub