Black Swan

Like I Melt With You before it or the first Violent Femmes record, no matter how obscure Camper Van Beethoven was for some reason Take The Skinheads Bowling has, over the years, somehow become one of those songs that everybody in the world knows. Here's Camper Van Beethoven's David Lowery on Take The Skinheads Bowling being a "black swan":

Sometime later that fall something unexpected occurred.  We began getting reports that BBC 2 was playing Take The Skinheads Bowling.  Simultaneously it began getting regular airplay in Detroit on WLBS .

Up until this point College Radio had been mildly supportive of Camper Van Beethoven.  But somehow word began to get out that we were being played on the BBC and suddenly our cool factor went way up with college radio.  I had been calling various West Coast college radio stations for some time.  I was always trying to find gigs for Camper through the college stations.  I was also aware that this also helped to promote airplay.

I was always treated decently by these college station program directors  but I could tell that some were just humoring me.  So it was very apparent when the sea change came. Suddenly everyone would take my call.  And everyone wanted to talk about the fact we were getting played in the UK.  Shortly after this we began to see our record charting on nearly every college radio station in the US (as well as a number of commercial stations.)

I have no proof that the BBC playing Take The Skinheads Bowling led to more US airplay.  It is just a strong hunch.  And I think I am probably right.  But what I know to be true is that Camper Van Beethoven acquired Gravitas when the BBC began to play us.

Superslice. More on the album and the My Summer of 1987 HERE.