Cracker/Camper Van Beethoven Finally Return Home to the Boardwalk Friday

The usual requirement for a free County Fair or Boardwalk concert is that you haven't produced anything artistic or contemporary for a few decades.

Not so, with Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven, two bands that were birthed in Santa Cruz, still tour, are still releasing new albums and once had a song about the Giant Dipper.

"It's such an archetypal gig and kind of cool," says Camper guitarist Victor Krummenacher, who met Cracker singer David Lowery at UCSC. Lowery plays in both bands.  "People have said, 'You must be getting old. You are playing the state fair circuit.' Hey, man, I'm 40 years old and still playing music. Most people my age can hardly make time to play. If you do make time and have a band for 30 years, tell me if you don't feel lucky at some point."

Camper's "Take the Skinheads Bowling" is still a college radio staple, loved by a new generation wearing Ramones shirts. The band released an album in January, La Costa Perdida,  with a single,  "Northern California Girls". The band has always been edgy and slightly skewed. It even did a complete cover of Fleetwood Mac's most experimental album, "Tusk," something that would only make sense to a certain kind of offbeat music fan. It will play the highly touted Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco in August, perhaps the first Boardwalk band ever to do so.

Cracker, which Krummenacher also plays with, is working on a new disc. It had a huge hit with 1993's disc Kerosene Hat, which featured "Eurotrash Girl," a Mott the Hoople-like masterpiece. The Giant Dipper roller coaster is featured in the song "Big Dipper" on 1996's "The Golden Age."

"The last show I saw there was Bo Diddley, I think," says Krummenacher. "Or maybe James Brown. It will be nice to hear David sing "Big Dipper" in front of that place. It's one of his best songs."

His memories of the city, as a UCSC student 20 years ago, was of a place with a "cosmopolitian element, kids and professors from all over the place" and a town that was "idyllic and cheap."

"Education was cheap at the time. In a lot of ways it's a bygone era. We really took advantage of that. It may be hard to create another Camper Van Beethoven today."

He hasn't kept up much with contemporary bands, but found one he likes in England called the Bots, a White Stripes-inspired duo originally from Los Angeles.

"I'm always happy when I see it, but I don't pursue it like I used to," he says of new music. "My muse is a precious little muse and I don't want to inflict a lot of pressure on it."

Cracker and Camper have been playing together for some time, blending more. Cracker was once the softer, more polished band, while Camper was more lo-fi and rockish. It's harder to tell them apart, says Krummenacher, who has a day job as art director for Wired magazine.

"I'm proud of what we've done and the longer we do it, the luckier I feel," he says. It's not easy to do. It's not like we made a ton of money. I have to work a day job. I have to take time off my day job to travel. But I get to do it. A lot of people would give their eye teeth to do it."