Mission of Burma

Members: Roger Miller, Clint Conley, Martin Swope, Peter Prescott

Active: 1979 - 1983, 2002 - Present

Mission of Burma is a post-punk band from Boston, Massachusetts, USA comprising guitarist Roger Miller, bassist Clint Conley and drummer Peter Prescott, with Bob Weston (originally Martin Swope) as tape manipulator and sound engineer. They were first active from 1979-1983, then reformed in 2002. Miller, Conley and Prescott share singing and songwriting duties, with Miller perhaps being the primary contributor. Conley's "That's When I Reach For My Revolver" is arguably the group's best-known song.

Like many of their post-punk and no wave contemporaries, Mission of Burma's efforts are largely concerned with extending punk's original vocabulary without losing its essential rebellious spirit. What makes Burma's approach so distinct is their formal musical training and grounding in modern classical music (Miller had formally studied piano, tuba and composition in college) and to a lesser extent their faith in the sound of late 1960s and early 1970s proto-punk pioneers the MC5 and the Stooges, both from Michigan, Miller's and Swope's home state.

Using rapid shifts in dynamics, unconventional time signatures and chord progressions along with distinctive tape effects, Mission of Burma challenges the prevailing idioms of punk without losing its power and immediacy. On a purely intellectual level, Burma's approach is similar to that of Glenn Branca (another early Burma contemporary) and later Branca disciples Sonic Youth; however, the result is anything but a cold academic exercise.

While in early years Burma's audience was limited, today Mission of Burma is widely acknowledged as one of the first groups to achieve the potential of modern alternative/independent rock, fusing punk and experimental music into some of the most influential music to come out of the American punk/no wave scene.

HISTORY

Mission of Burma owed its origins to a short-lived Boston rock group called Moving Parts, which included Miller (a recent transplant from Ann Arbor, Michigan) and Conley (from Darien, Connecticut via the University of Rochester), keyboardist Erik Lindgren and drummer Boby Bear. While the members were all friendly, Conley and Miller were pulling the group in a different direction than Lindgren. When Moving Parts broke up amicably in December 1978, Miller and Conley began practicing and auditioning drummers, quickly selecting native Bostonian Prescott, formerly of the art-rock band The Molls.

They took their name from a "Mission of Burma" plaque Conley saw on a New York City diplomatic building; he thought the phrase had a "sort of murky and disturbing" quality (Azzerad, 97). Burma made their debut in April 1979 as a trio, but later that month Miller wrote a song ("New Disco") that he felt would be improved by a tape loop. Miller contacted his fellow Ann Arbor refugee Martin Swope, with whom he had earlier written some John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen-inspired pieces for piano and tape. Swope was immediately enlisted as the group's live audio engineer and occasional tape-effects artist (and hence "auxiliary member"). His latter role grew gradually and steadily (both in the studio and in live performances, as documented on The Horrible Truth About Burma), until by 1981 he was adding tape work to most of the group's songs, and was regarded as an integral part of the group, appearing in group photographs and receiving equal credit on recordings.

Prescott explained Swope's methods in a 1997 interview: "What Martin did ... was tape something that was going on live, manipulate it, and send it back in (via the soundboard) as a sort of new instrument. You couldn't predict exactly how it would sound, and that got to be the really fun thing I think we all liked. We wanted to play this hammer-down drony noise stuff, but we also wanted another sound in there."Swope's tapework ranged from subtle and nearly subaural, to prominent and even jarring. Michael Azzerad's Our Band Could Be Your Life reports that "A lot of people never knew about Swope's contribution and were mystified by how the musicians onstage could wring such amazing phantom sounds from their instruments." Though his contribution is widely considered an integral part of Burma's sound, Swope very rarely appeared onstage, occasionally appearing to play second guitar during encores.

Lyrically, the band drew from dadaist techniques ("This Is Not A Photograph", "Nu Disco", "Go Fun Burn Man"), punk rage ("Fun World", "New Nails", "1970"), alienation ("Mica", "That's When I Reach For My Revolver", "Trem Two", "Academy Fight Song"), art ("Max Ernst") and romance ("That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate").

Mission of Burma were rather popular in and around their hometown, and made frequent trips to New York and Washington DC. They mounted a few small-scale national tours, which were generally well-received (San Francisco-based Jello Biafra was a fan), but didn't expand their audience significantly, perhaps due to the fact that Indie rock networks for both live performances and record distribution were nowhere near as well developed as they'd be only a few years later.

Their live performances were notoriously hit-or-miss, and were usually far more rough-edged than their recordings; the Horrible Truth of their live album being an in-joke about these very qualities. Boston critic and scenester Tristam Lozaw paraphrased a nursery rhyme to describe MoB live: "when they were good, they were very very good, but when they were bad they were horrid ... But that was the nature of the beast ... Because they took chances, you never knew whether you were going to get one of the most spectacular experiences of your life or if it was going a ball of incomprehensible noise." (Azzerad, 106) While the band's improvisational side and the unpredictable chaos of Swope's tape work contributed a little to this inconsistency, the two main factors were (as Lozaw implies) the live sound and the pacing and timing of their sets. When faced with a venue where the sound system or room acoustics weren't up to the task of conveying clarity along with the band's trademark wall of harmonics, Swope always refused to compromise, and opted for the latter over the former. The band set lists (composed by committee a few minutes before going on stage) could range from well-constructed to seemingly picked at random, and (aside from "Secrets" as a frequent opener and "All World Cowboy Romance" or a cover as an encore) there was a general reluctance to repeat any song placement or sequence that had worked in the past. The band's already casual showmanship could disappear completely when they found themselves in the middle of a set that turned out to be badly put together. In contrast, when all the segues were working, the band could milk the dynamic contrasts among the songs for thrilling and unexpected drama.

In 1983, after releasing their only full-length studio record Vs., the group disbanded due to Miller's worsening tinnitus, attributed in large part to their notoriously loud live performances. Vs. has since seen wide praise; one review notes "very few American bands from the 1980s released an album as ambitious or as powerful as Vs., and it still sounds like a classic.""New Nails" seems to set the stage for Sonic Youth, with jagged guitar and shouted lyrics influenced by VALIS by Philip K. Dick (and which might be seen as anti-religious), like "The Roman Empire never died / It just changed into the Catholic Church."

Miller and Swope then turned their attention to their side project, the quieter Birdsongs Of The Mesozoic (cofounded with their old friend Lindgren), which they both left in the 90s, Miller to produce several solo efforts and film scores, and Swope to semi-reclusion in Hawaii. Prescott remained active in the Boston music scene, forming Volcano Suns and later Kustomized and The Peer Group. Other than producing an early Yo La Tengo record, Conley dropped out of music until 2001 (working as a producer for a Boston television station), when he returned with Consonant.

In the decades following their demise, Burma's reputation grew to nearly legendary proportions. Contemporary music critics point to their work as a pivotal turning point in North American independent music. Many bands have cited Burma as an inspiration, including Nirvana, Superchunk, Jawbox, The Grifters, R.E.M. (who regularly covered "Academy Fight Song" on their Green tour), Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo, Soul Asylum, Pixies, Sugar, Guided by Voices, Catherine Wheel, Graham Coxon and Moby - the last three of which have covered "That's When I Reach For My Revolver." It should be noted here that when Moby covered the song for an MTV video, he changed the lyrics to "That's when I think that it is over" When questioned why, he responded that he did not want to promote gun violence.

In 2001, Michael Azerrad's popular collection of essays Our Band Could Be Your Life chronicled the history of a handful of influential American bands from the post-punk era, including Mission of Burma. The publication of the book introduced Burma to an audience that had previously never heard of the band.

In 2002, Mission of Burma reunited and began playing reunion shows with Bob Weston of Shellac (and formerly Prescott's Volcano Suns bandmate) replacing Swope at the mixing board and tape manipulation. In an interview Miller relates that "when we approached Bob Weston to fill Martin's position, we told him he could use current digital technology which accomplishes Martin's antics in an easier fashion. However, Bob opted for maintaining the original integrity, and uses a tape deck."A new album, ONoffON, was produced in 2004 by Bob Weston in conjunction with Rick Harte and the band, and released on Matador Records on May 4. The album finished 90th in the Village Voice Pazz & Jop critic's poll. Snapshot, a live recording of the reunited MoB, is an iTunes exclusive.

In September 2005, the band began recording their third studio album, tentatively titled (among other names) Aluminum Washcloth. Production duties this time were handled by Bob Weston. Rechristened The Obliterati, the new album was released on Matador on May 23, 2006.

EP'S/LP'S

1981 - Signals, Calls and Marches (EP)

1982 - Vs. (LP)

1985 - The Horrible Truth About Burma (LIVE LP)

1988 - Mission of Burma (LP/EP)

1988 - Forget (LP)

2004 - ONoffON (LP)

2004 - Four Hands EP

2006 - The Obliterati

COMPILATIONS

1988 - Mission of Burma (LP x 2)

1990 - Let There Be Burma (LP x 2)

2004 - Accomplished: The Best of Mission of Burma (LP, promotional release)

2004 - A Gun to the Head: A Selection from the Ace of Hearts Era (LP)