Song In My Head

I went to a play last night -- actually, a one-man show written and performed by the Brooklyn artist Mac Premo (full disclosure: My brother-in-law). It was an autobiographical piece of performance art, and it closed with a song I hadn't heard or thought of in many years: Camper van Beethoven's version of "Pictures of Matchstick Men", which was originally a hit for Status Quo back in 1967.

The CVB version came along 22 years later, just prior to the band's dissolution. Frontman David Lowery went on to form Cracker, a more straightforward rock outfit that largely did away with many of the folk, psychedelic and world music elements that made Camper van Beethoven so good. The track starts with a fiddle part -- vintage CVB -- before launching into something sounding more like what Lowery would go on to do in Cracker.