Even though Camper Van Beethoven would eventually become one of the biggest underground rock acts of the late ‘80s, and helped start the whole indie rock thing, singer/guitarist David Lowery and his bandmates did not have high expectations for the group when it formed in Santa Cruz in 1983.

“We were actually all in other bands,” Lowery says by phone from a tour through Idaho with his other band, Cracker. “Camper Van Beethoven was this weird side project we had.”

Likewise, Lowery had no way of knowing at the time that the band’s debut, Telephone Free Landslide Victory—which was recorded in Davis for a paltry $500—and the album’s quirky single, “Take the Skinheads Bowling,” would become staples of college radio, the precursor to alternative rock stations.

But now, looking back, he can kinda see it. Groups were starting to feel constrained by what Lowery calls “the dogma of punk rock.”

“It sort of made sense at the time,” he says. “There were a lot of people like us. It was the beginning of indie rock.”

Listening to it now, Telephone Free Landslide Victory is a big, unwieldy hand grenade of an album that blows up notions of what a rock band should sound like. The release ranges from ‘60s-influenced psychedelia (“Oh No!”) to a violin-heavy Eastern European stomp (“Vladivostock”) to a punk number that pokes fun at suburban angst (“Club Med Sucks”). Lowery says that the album was just reacting towards others who perceived rock as a narrow niche of music. “We always saw rock as a mongrel that needed to change,” he says.

One of the most memorable songs on the release is a slowed-down, sarcastic take on Black Flag’s punk-rock nugget “Wasted.” Lowery says that during the early days, CVB played punk clubs, and to rile up crowds they would rework and “hippieize” punk classics. “It would give the crowd this love us or hate us thing,” he says.

Following the success of the debut, Camper Van Beethoven released two college-radio hit albums—II & III and Camper Van Beethoven—before signing to Virgin Records and issuing Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart. Its first major-label release found the band furthering its distinct reputation with vaguely exotic instrumentals (“Eye of Fatima, Pt. 2”) and surreal lyrics (“cowboys on acid are like Egyptian cartoons”).

The following album, Key Lime Pie, became the band’s biggest hit, yielding a popular single—a cover of Status Quo’s ‘60s hit “Pictures of Matchstick Men.” But the band was unraveling. Bassist Victor Krummenacher and guitarist Greg Lisher wanted to quit to focus on another project, Monks of Doom. Lowery says that Key Lime Pie was a tough record to make, and after a tour supporting the release, the band called it quits at the height of their popularity. “I think we were just growing apart,” he says. “I think it has been overplayed that it was a bad breakup.”

So Lowery started Cracker, with guitarist Johnny Hickman. An “eclectic” band in the CVB tradition, Cracker pursued a different tack. “When we started Cracker, we decided it was going to be stripped down and more rock,” Lowery says.

Even though Cracker has become popular in its own right—the single “Low,” from the 1993 release Kerosene Hat, is an alt-rock perennial—Lowery started revisiting Camper Van Beethoven with his former bandmates in the late ‘90s. Working with Krummenacher and violinist Jonathon Segel, Lowery helped collect material for a rarities album, titled Camper Van Beethoven is Dead: Long Live Camper Van Beethoven.

Then, in 2002—“around the same time we started smoking pot again,” Lowery says—the band reunited for a string of shows. But Lowery says that everyone agreed that there was one stipulation to the whole reunion thing. “The rule was that we wouldn’t do a reunion unless we worked on a new record,” he says.

So the band started working on what became an ambitious 20-song rock opera, New Roman Times. Lowery says the record is about a United States split up into small countries, including the fundamentalist Christian nation of Texas and the secular commonwealth of California. When Texas invades California, the Golden State—or Golden Nation—gets some assistance from space aliens.

Despite the far-out concept, Lowery says the album is just an extreme exaggeration of the current situation in our country. “We were commenting with this record in a tongue-in-cheek way on this blue state-red state divide,” he says.

New Roman Times is a return to the band’s early mix of ska, world music instrumentals, country rock and violin-laden acid rock. It contains some of the band’s most political songs, along with more personal ones like “The Long Plastic Hallway,” where Lowery reminisces about the band’s early days with killer lines like: “cigarettes and carrot juice/ marijuana and lots of booze/ I threw the flower of youth/ into that stew.”

Now, with Camper Van Beethoven back on track and with Cracker readying a new release for next April, Lowery realizes that he has two full-time bands. He doesn’t seem worried. “It’s something I have to do,” he says. “I have to make records.”

CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN PLAYS MONTEREY LIVE, 414 ALVARADO ST., MONTEREY, MONDAY AT 7:30PM. $15/ADVANCE; $17/AT THE DOOR. 375-5483.