MISSION
OF BURMA
by Joe Harvard
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Considering
the now-acknowledged importance of Mission of Burma, there is a relative
pausity of material concerning the group. A web search for the band produces
surprisingly few hits, far less than you'd find for a glut of later groups
that traded on the band's innovational sounds and techniques. In that
respect, they may be the ultimate Boston band, coming as they do
from a scene where practically all the very best bands were often overlooked
in their time. The key difference is that they are now recognized for
their true worth, unlike equally important bands such as the Real Kids
(currently enjoying their own mini-comeback), Willie Loco Alexander,
and the Turbines. Perhaps the two reasons that M.O.B. have enjoyed
a kinder fate are: 1)unlike most of the other overlooked Beanscene groups
they left behind a recorded legacy that closely approximates the live
energy of the band (exception: Last Dance Before Highway by the
Turbines, a great record which had no impact due to the breakup of the
group right before it's release); and 2)Burma took enormous chances, and
their achievements were commensurate with those musical risks. While many
listeners were baffled by the band's sets (read here: "personal confession")
at the time they hit the scene, once you warmed up to what they were doing
there was no question that they were completely unique, original, and
musically overwhelming.
 
 Peter Prescott was with the Molls before joining Burma. EARLY
MILLER SITING: Responding to the Neats article on this site, Kathleen
Patton (who describes herself as "a devoted scene-maker in Boston from
about 1979-1985, before I moved to NYC"), writes: I have very fond memories
of going to Neats parties at their famous little white shingle house in
Allston. A diary entry I wrote about one of them said something like: Burma
held their last planned show- a pair of them - at Boston's Bradford Hotel,
across from the Music Hall (now Wang Center). Over at the Burma Groupies
web site "fifth Burma" Eric Van sheds some light on the last Burma
shows, which some folks (including me) believed were the Bradford Hotel
gigs, while others recalled were down in NYC.:
Our
paths have crossed now and again: when we began music bookings at the
Middle East Restaurant, Billy Ruane and Skeggie and I agreed he should
be on the bill for the very first regular show that we held after the
accidentally-inaugural event held on Billy's 30th birthday. Part of the
reason for this may have been Billy's knowledge that it was Roger's wife,
Su Millerz, who had booked the first rock show at the Middle East, a month
earlier, for Roger's Maximum Electric Piano CD release party- the CD in
question was Miller's Ace of Hearts LP The Big Industry.
Su and Roger had been looking for a place to hold the release party, and
recalled a Steel Cello Ensemble gig they'd been to at the club. So add
the planting of the seed that blossomed into Boston's most popular nightspot
to Roger's already impressive resume. His Megawegawistus show was
powerful, with Roger on bass and Russ Smith playing electronic percussion.
I had the feeling that Roger was playing this one-off performance somewhat
tongue in cheek...sort of like the "Punk Rock" novelty item that his very
lovely, way cool wife SuMillerz designed (also a one-off, the Pet Rock
spinoff had a mohawk! I bought two for Xmas gifts...Su is now a slam poet
who's very active in the Boston area, and New England in general...Roger
sez he likes her stuff a lot). With Megawegawistus, I couldn't tell if
he was rocking with us or laughing at us, and in response to reading that
comment Roger wrote me that the show was "definitely slightly tongue in
cheek, but not overly". But the crowd seemed to love it, and it took me
forever to "get" the original Burma, so what the fuck do I know, really? Roger
Miller's other current involvement is with the Alloy Orchestra.
Miller joined up with the Orchestra last summer, and since then he relates
they've played the Lincoln Center "once or twice a year,did Celebrate
Brooklyn this summer, played London, San Fransisco, etc., and will be
performing in Spain next Spring". Alloy was also was in Entertainment
Weekly twice this year: once reviewing the video release of their score
to STRIKE, and then this summer in the "IT" edition. Roger notes: "we
were 'One of the 100 most creative people active in the US' - which makes
me either 1/3 of the most creative people, or one of the 300? Hard to
tell (but I'll take it)." So if Prescott has been more accessible to the
old school Burma fans, and enjoyed a goodly amount of rock attention,
Miller has inherited the "risk taking" mantle of the Burma legacy, and
pursued his own path with equal or greater success...you just have to
read something besides Spin to find out about it. For example,
the other night I was watching the Arts Channel, and a way-trippy, surrealist,
silent film came on. It was a 1920's short subject called The Story
of A Man With A Camera, by a Russian named Divak or something close
to that. The film was full of the early trick camera techniques associated
now with Eisenstadt, Bunuele or Lumiere- split screens, superimposition,
montage. It was fascinating, and the music track that was playing was
no less so. I thought it was ideally matched to the filmic images, but
also seemed too sophisticated for that time period. At the end of the
short I watched for the audio credits: lo and behold, the Alloy Orchestra!
In all of the great religions of the world, there was an initial, charismatic period, a first generation wherein the belief of its followers was vital, first-hand and cathartically rooted in the present. Later, that charisma was gradually replaced by dogma, as external, worldy features and practice by rote obscured the original, burning purity of revelation. Complex ceremonials took the place of a personal experience of worship; repetition replaced spiritual stimulation; buildings, golden ornaments and icons were substituted for the simple riches of the spirit. The same thing happens with most marriages, and most bands. In Mark Woodlief's excellent article (see link below), Clint Conley says: "We laugh about this,but the best move we ever made was to break up and then do nothing. Forever. There's something to be said for just going off gracefully and graciously and with dignity intact before things start ripening into a rotting mess. Just leave it there and leave people with memories of something that was really exciting and compelling." And there's absolutely no doubt that Mission of Burma have done exactly that. In place of the frequent reunions that some bands of that era have pursued, where you get to see slightly older, greyer, and slower-moving phantoms of once-vital bands, Burma exited at the peak of their prowess. Unlike some other bands, who over the years kept beating the same dead horse through numerous personnel changes and reincarnations, until all vestige of former brilliance was flogged out of the poor beast, and the group resembled a cover band playing their own material, Burma came, they conquered, they split...all with the same line-up, and with no diminishing of the initial quality that made them great in the first place. By leaving us with only the great memories of brilliant sets, a handful of excellent records, and the recollection of a band whose members were still truly turned on by what they were doing, Clint, Roger and Peter made sure that the "Church of Burma" would never supplant the initial charisma of one of Boston's finest and most highly original bands. Rather than rewrite a piece someone has already written better, below are a few excerpts from the excellent Burma article written by Mark Woodlief for the Phoenix. Take the link at the bottom of the page to read the entire article. ON
POPULARITY: ON
LONGEVITY: ON
ACCESSIBILITY: You
can hear what Conley's talking about on The Horrible Truth About Burma,
which was recorded during the group's farewell 1983 tour and originally
released in 1985 on Ace of Hearts Records. Although the disc's title was
just meant as a joke among band members, Miller admits that the horrible
truth about Burma is that not everyone got what they were trying to do
during the few years they were doing it. "At our last show in LA there
were 10 people," he recalls. But as with many of the influential American
acts that came before them -- Big Star, Television, perhaps even the hallowed
Velvet Underground -- the impact of Mission of Burma's formative sound
was felt far beyond the crowd of insiders who actually saw the band play.
Moby's "That's When I Reach for My Revolver" is only the most prominent
cover of that tune -- Chicago's Pegboy did it on a '95 disc. And a decade
ago R.E.M. put their signature jangle behind a version of Burma's "Academy
Fight Song."
ON
MARTIN SWOPE: ON
THE BAND's SOUND: REPRINTED
WITHOUT PERMISSION; EXCERPTED FROM BOSTON PHOENIX
Founded 1979
Lineup Visit
these other sites for bands in the Mission of Burma family tree:
Roger Miller... Molls... Volcano Suns... Burma Groupies United... Phoenix article "Mission Impossible" by Mark Woodlief... Roger Miller's website |
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Besides
memories of some genuinely amazing MOB sets I've seen at Cantone's, the
Rat, the Space and the Underground, two incidents stand out in my mind.
One involves a night I was hanging out on Landsdowne Street, I think it
was when the Lyons Brothers club the Axis/Metro was still known as Boston-Boston.
I'd gotten into a conversation with a musician who was visiting from California,
and played in the band Agent Orange. Details are fuzzy...I do recall
that I pretty was loaded, and he was drunk as a skunk. The guy asked me
who my favorite bands were in town, and I mentioned a few, including the
Real Kids and Baby's Arm, off the top of my head. Suddenly he turns on
me, livid, and says "Mission of Burma is the best fucking band in the
country today. What they are doing is the most important thing going on
in Boston, and anyone who doesn't know that doesn't know what he's talking
about." I felt as though I'd insulted the guy's religion, or his mother.
Like many afficionados of the sort of "classic" Boston rock that the Real
Kids and Nervous Eaters represented, I had indeed been confused by the
chaotic din of the early Burma shows I'd seen. But after a few shows I
came to appreciate the risks that the band took on stage, and the excitement
of the layered sounds they produced with the interplay of tape loop and
live musicians. I still liked the more "trad" stuff better, but
that was simply a matter of taste. After the argument with this Agent
Orange dude, I realized that Burma was making its mark all over the country
in a big, big, way, and I suspected that they would soon be one of the
most critically lauded bands ever to come out of Boston. Only their break-up,
which I believe came at a time when the band was only just reaching its
maturity, prevented that. Two more albums and they would have been unstoppable...although
looking at the post-Burma careers of two of the three members, maybe they
still were.
(RIGHT:
Who the hell is Mission TO Burma? The guys over at Skunk Piss must have
been smoking Skunk Weed when they made this poster up.)The second
incident that sticks in my head regarding Burma is a little embarrassing.
My own band, the bones, had been having a really hard time getting
shows at the Underground, the cool Kenmore Square establishment
run by Jim Coffman that favored New York and LA bands, as well
as cutting edge local groups like Burma. We had played the place once,
and after that Coffman refused to re-book us, saying "we don't book cover
bands". Cover bands!! There were precious few clubs to play even then,
and we were so pissed that I drew a picture of Coffman on Richie "Cunningham"
Madallo's snare head, and for years afterward every bones backbeat landed
smack dab in the middle of his nose (sorry, Jim...water under the bridge).
Just because we did "Slow Down" by Larry Williams at break-neck
speed, an unrecognizable version of "Simple Desultory Philippic" by Simon
and Garfunkel, and alternated between a couple of MC5 tunes,
that didn't make us a cover band. And it wasn't as if the groups he lionized
never did covers, because they did- many of them, like the Mod
Lang (who later morphed gradually into the Sex Execs) were
good friends of ours. In fact, we ended up on stage at the Underground
during the closing nights of the club's existence, when Dave Bone and
I jumped up with Slow Children, joining the Neats' frontman Eric
Martin, Slow kid Joe Fagan and the late (and sorely missed)
Anthony Rauseo for...yes, a cover!...of Iggy's "Funtime". Anyway,
it was much later, when I listened to the Burma versions of Pere Ubu's
"Heart of Darkness" and the Stooges "1970" that I actually realized why
Coffman saw things the way he did. And, in his own way...he was right!
What the Bones did with our covers may have been clever at times, but
it was just another rock band playing another version within the recognized
bounds of stock arrangements and instrumentation. Burma's cover versions
transcended the boundaries of the originals, added something absolutely
unique, specifically because their sound was so defined, so highly original
and representative of them and noone else, that the band owned
any tune they played. I'll say it again: the band took great risks, and
their accomplishments were commensurate with those risks- great.
I
have for many years believed that the band was named after an old war
movie in the Bridges at Toko Ri "we gotta blow it up at any cost"
mold, and indeed there is a film by that name. Recently, however, Roger
Miller saw the article and wrote to tell me that this was not the genesis
of the band's monniker, so where I got that idea is a mystery. Burma formed
in 1979, when drummer Peter Prescott (formerly of the Molls)
hooked up with guitarist Roger Miller and bassist Clint Conley.
The latter two had been with seminal Boston punks the Moving Parts.
It was however the addition of Martin Swope, Miller's Ann Arbor
pal, that added the truly transformational element to the band. Swope
had been playing around with tape loops, and when he moved to Brighton
to shack up with Clint and Roger they were intrigued by the noises he
was creating. Soon Swope was mixing at Burma's live gigs, then adding
his sweeping aural effects in the recording studio, and then, as Conley
says, he "started showing up in our photographs...I can't remember any
sort of ceremony where we slit our fingers and traded blood, or anything
like that."
(PHOTO:
Peter Prescott goes primitive during his Volcano Suns days. Depending
on your tastes, you may or may not want to see the man behind the mask
in this Alex Williams photo taken for the Boston Rock Jocks
Calendar) Peter Prescott has perhaps had the most accessible of the
post-Burma members' careers (for Burma fans, that is). His music certainly
contains the strongest element of Burma's balls-to-the-wall, maximum rock
approach. First as drummer for the Volcano Suns, then playing guitar
and singing for Kustomized, now front man for the Peer Group.
Fans who go to Peter's shows get the most consistently "Burma-esque" rewards
for their efforts. During the period when Fort Apache was enjoying what
I still consider to be our heyday, Sean Slade worked with the Suns to
produce some powerful LP's, including Bumper Crop. 
Roger Miller has stayed continually busy, but his excursions have been
squarely centered in more "outside", avant-garde stylings. Part of his
avoidance of the "classic" Burma din could be due to his tinnitus, which
was the reason that the band shit the bed in the first place in '83. He
joined with Martin Swope in the original Birdsongs of the Mesozoic,
recording with Mass. Ave guru Erik Lingren (Arf Arf Records,
Space Negroes), before Swope moved along (he is now reportedly residing
in Hawaii, where I'd bet the farm he is not a surfer boy). Birdsongs
became very popular, locally, and the group turned out plenty of shows
to keep the fans happy. Miller's Maximum Electric Piano project
came next.
No
Man followed the Maximum Electric Piano band, with an attendant release.
I next ran into Roger at the Middle East Tenth Anniversary show. I was
performing solo (well, I thought I was- Skeggie turned up and turned in
a rousing drum performance on a few tunes), and went on just after Willie
"Loco" Alexander (a slot I do not recommend) and just prior to Roger (better
than trying to go on after him, I assure you). He was exceptional that
night, and the crowd responded enthusiastically. The Binary System,initially
courted by SST Records, is one of the latest Miller projects, and I've
heard nothing so far but positive reports on them, though I confess to
not having seen them yet, due to my new address in NYC as of April 98.
They play the Knitting Factory on a regular basis, though, and I look
forward to catching their next spin through the Apple. The group has just
signed with the Atavistic label from Chicago (other Atavistic acts include
Lee Ranaldo, Lydia Lunch, and Glen Branca). Miller tells me that the CD
will be out in mid-November ('99) and that then they'll do an East Coast
tour. 
