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“Take the Skinheads Bowling” – Camper Van Beethoven
(Words/music: Victor Krummenacher, David Lowery, Chris Molla, and Jonathan Segel, available on Telephone Free Landslide Victory, Cooking Vinyl 1985) 

Two chords in the verse and a third introduced in the chorus, and that’s it for “Take the Skinheads Bowling.”  If I didn’t know all the trouble I had getting a F chord to sound good when I first started playing, I’d recommend this song for beginners new to the guitar.  Hell, it would be a lot better of a song for random dude at a party to pick up the guitar and start playing.  It would at least make things a little more interesting. 

I cite the simplicity of the chords only to set the context for my desire to over-analyze the lyrics.  I’ve spent most of my intellectual life training myself in close reading, and with that comes the tendency to look deeper than necessary in some occasions.  With “Take the Skinheads Bowling,” it’s a fruitless exercise trying to find some kind of motif.  It’s unnecessary as well, as it’s a goofy, fun song that might be ruined by a line-by-line analysis.  If anything, I’m tipped only by the final verse and its repetition of the phrase “had a dream” followed by the different images.  If the whole song is meant as a series of oddly related dream images, then it explains some of the oddities.  Then again, the dreams are bookended by dreams that he “forgot what it was” and “nothing,” so perhaps not.

Crap, I fell into the trap.  I’m just going to stop and practice these chords.  Where’s my guitar?

More on Camper Van Beethoven: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm