Last night I saw Camper Van Beethoven at Potawatomi Bingo and Casino’s Northern Lights Theater. The opening band was a bluegrass quartet called something about turtles… I can’t remember. The turtle band was acoustic with a mandolin, banjo, acoustic guitar, and an acoustic bass. I haven’t seen an acoustic bass on stage for a long time and it actually sounded pretty good. Chris says he’ll never play one but I could see a slight glint in his eye that could have been jealousy or just some wing sauce (which I’ll get to later).
Camper Van Beethoven came on around 9 or so. I don’t remember the time either. They sounded pretty tight and were really freakin’ loud. We didn’t think about the booth that we picked, it was right in front of the left speaker. Woops. Next time… Next time.. They played a bunch of their old hits and a couple off of their new album which I need to pick up one of these days. David Lowery (from Cracker) had a laptop up on stage which he played home videos from that went with each song. That was pretty sweet although the loop repeated a lot. They didn’t do a lot of talking, they just rocked.
The Northern Lights Theater is pretty cool. It’s a nice relaxing atmosphere since the seating is all tables with a waitress going around. We had some Guiness and some appetizers including some over done wings.
If you’ve never heard of Camper Van Beethoven or Cracker you shoud go get some.