![]() It’s a shame that Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart never really found its audience. Their cover of Status Quo’s “Pictures of Matchstick Men” did fairly well, but the rest of the band imploded shortly afterwards. By that time, though, band tensions were growing multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Segel had already left. A year later, the label gave it another shot with Key Lime Pie. ![]() They gave Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart the usual record company push and generated some interest on MTV, but the mainstream audience seemed as confused as the Virgin executives must have been. ![]() Despite all of that effort, they likely didn’t quite understand the end result. The musical mélange was still there, but the chaos was more bottled up and the emphasis was on the vocals. The production polished the band’s sound and added horns, but it also sanded away some of the character. Virgin followed the standard major-label script and tried to support the band, but inevitably applied their own creative aesthetic. Camper Van Beethoven’s first three albums, packed with a quirky mix of Eastern European folk, psychedelia and punk, had scored well with critics and college radio, so Virgin Records signed the band in 1987 and probably hoped for the best. It may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but it was just another case of a record label casting around for the Next Big Thing.
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