TUE., MARCH 18, 2008
About the Albums: Mission of Burma
by Douglas Wolk
When Mission of Burma broke up in 1983, they were a cult band — local heroes in Boston who hadn't made much of a dent elsewhere. When they began their still-running, "inexplicable" reunion in 2002, their cult had gotten a whole lot bigger. It had been fed by a series of posthumous releases, covers of their songs by artists from R.E.M. to Moby to Blur's Graham Coxon, and formidable live tapes passed hand-to-hand, but mostly by the sound that the American rock underground fell in love with: a complicated but mighty roar, augmented by live tape loops from offstage member Martin Swope (replaced in the reunited lineup by Shellac's Bob Weston). Last year, they finally made their excellent second studio album, ONoffON, which sounded like they'd spent the past two decades revving up for it.
The complete Mission of Burma discography is now available on eMusic; here's a brief oral history of their recordings, courtesy of interviews with the group's singer-guitarist Roger Miller and shouter-drummer Peter Prescott.
Signals, Calls and Marches EP (1981)
Roger Miller: We were under the influence of a certain post-punk experience, such that we did not want to use any reverb. We wanted natural sound, like the first Gang of Four album — and as much as I love that album, it's flawed sonically. Signals has a similar kind of flaw. I've never really liked that record, though there's moments I like: in "All World Cowboy Romance," when [Martin Swope's] tape loop kind of does a slow glissando up, I think that's a beautiful moment. We were getting good, and Clint [Conley, bassist] had written a couple of monumental tunes, but we didn't get to be a really good rock band until Vs.
Peter Prescott: There was a tension between us wanting to be absolutely raw and annoying and irritating, and [producer] Rick Harte wanting to... not make us accessible, but frame it in a way where it was a little bit more understandable and clear-cut. It went against the grain of what we were doing, but in retrospect it was a good idea.
RM: You know how they used to have a Bobby Vinton record on the back of a cereal box? We wanted to have another song, "Secrets," pressed into the back of the sleeve of the "Academy Fight Song"/"Max Ernst" single [now appended to Signals]. But it was just too out-there an idea.
Vs. (1982)
RM: A thing about that album that may account for my tinnitus: The third Wire album was called 154, because that's how many gigs they had played. Vs. was our first album, and it could have been called 300. It was recorded in one night and a day — very much like a live situation, to take advantage of our strengths. We'd do five songs in a row, listen to them, then do another set of five songs. At the end of "New Nails," if you listen closely, I say "my headphones were so loud I couldn't tell if the fuzztone was on." And it has Pete's first song, "Learn How."
PP: I hate traditional song structure, and I think those guys do, too — we like veering into it now and then as long as we don't have to do it for a whole song. We felt then, and we feel now, that the batch of songs and the way they were done hit it on the head, at least for what we wanted. That was the first time we made a record where we said "this is what we sound like."
The Horrible Truth About Burma (1985)
RM: Rick Harte hauled around his reel-to-reel Revox recorder on our final tour — we have a photo of him carrying it in an airport in what looks like a shopping cart. I fought to keep [a cover of Pere Ubu's] "Heart of Darkness" off it, but I was outvoted. I thought it was self-indulgent and retro. Years later, I was playing in No Man in North Carolina and heard something on the radio, and I said "wow, this sounds like new Sonic Youth!" And then I realized it was "Heart of Darkness" by Mission of Burma. That's why you hang out with people that are smart and that you trust, because even when you're wrong, somebody's right.
Peking Spring (1987)
RM: The song "Peking Spring" itself was recorded in 1979; others, like "Active in the Yard," "Dirt" and "He Is/She Is" were recorded in '82. Curtis from Taang! offered to release them [years after the breakup] — we were just happy that someone wanted to give us money for our work. We mixed both Peking Spring and Forget in '85 — Clint might have re-cut a vocal and I might have re-cut a vocal, but that doesn't count.
PP: That was really a hasty run-through. We didn't consider them real recordings — it was just sort of a sketchbook. We knew we were going to stop soon, and we wanted to get them all on tape.
Forget (1988)
RM: When we recorded [the demo tapes that became Forget], we'd just come back from a tour, and my voice was really shot, so my singing there is much worse than it actually was in real life. Those were very old songs — "Manic Incarnation," "House Flaming" and "Anti-Aircraft Warning" were songs I wrote for the Moving Parts [Miller and Conley's band before Burma]. But the chord in "Anti-Aircraft Warning" is essentially me hitting the open guitar. That's a very strong Burma aesthetic: just let the guitar be the goddamn guitar, you know?
PP: We played a few shows a few weeks ago, and we finally pulled out "Progress" and "Manic Incarnation." That was really exciting for me, especially.
ONoffON (2004)
PP: We have really high standards, and we're critical of music, movies, pop culture — and if you're going to apply that to other things, you have to apply it to yourself. I feel as good as I possibly could about Mission of Burma making a record in 2004. I like it, and I feel like it doesn't really fit into music any more than we did back then.
RM: We weren't sure we wanted to make a new record, but we kept having new songs. I took a couple of new live recordings, and I A/B'ed them with Horrible Truth — and we sounded better! I think my vocals improved. We came into it with some trepidation, but as things started to unfold, it started to get real natural. Rick Harte was there, as a sort of roving infielder, to do whatever was needed — that was a nice link to the past. I always thought that one of our secret weapons was the three vocals. On Vs. and Signals, the concept of three-part harmony would be all of us yelling at the same time. This time, we've gotten beyond the immediate post-punk experience.
The complete Mission of Burma discography is now available on eMusic; here's a brief oral history of their recordings, courtesy of interviews with the group's singer-guitarist Roger Miller and shouter-drummer Peter Prescott.
Signals, Calls and Marches EP (1981)
Roger Miller: We were under the influence of a certain post-punk experience, such that we did not want to use any reverb. We wanted natural sound, like the first Gang of Four album — and as much as I love that album, it's flawed sonically. Signals has a similar kind of flaw. I've never really liked that record, though there's moments I like: in "All World Cowboy Romance," when [Martin Swope's] tape loop kind of does a slow glissando up, I think that's a beautiful moment. We were getting good, and Clint [Conley, bassist] had written a couple of monumental tunes, but we didn't get to be a really good rock band until Vs.
Peter Prescott: There was a tension between us wanting to be absolutely raw and annoying and irritating, and [producer] Rick Harte wanting to... not make us accessible, but frame it in a way where it was a little bit more understandable and clear-cut. It went against the grain of what we were doing, but in retrospect it was a good idea.
RM: You know how they used to have a Bobby Vinton record on the back of a cereal box? We wanted to have another song, "Secrets," pressed into the back of the sleeve of the "Academy Fight Song"/"Max Ernst" single [now appended to Signals]. But it was just too out-there an idea.
Vs. (1982)
RM: A thing about that album that may account for my tinnitus: The third Wire album was called 154, because that's how many gigs they had played. Vs. was our first album, and it could have been called 300. It was recorded in one night and a day — very much like a live situation, to take advantage of our strengths. We'd do five songs in a row, listen to them, then do another set of five songs. At the end of "New Nails," if you listen closely, I say "my headphones were so loud I couldn't tell if the fuzztone was on." And it has Pete's first song, "Learn How."
PP: I hate traditional song structure, and I think those guys do, too — we like veering into it now and then as long as we don't have to do it for a whole song. We felt then, and we feel now, that the batch of songs and the way they were done hit it on the head, at least for what we wanted. That was the first time we made a record where we said "this is what we sound like."
The Horrible Truth About Burma (1985)
RM: Rick Harte hauled around his reel-to-reel Revox recorder on our final tour — we have a photo of him carrying it in an airport in what looks like a shopping cart. I fought to keep [a cover of Pere Ubu's] "Heart of Darkness" off it, but I was outvoted. I thought it was self-indulgent and retro. Years later, I was playing in No Man in North Carolina and heard something on the radio, and I said "wow, this sounds like new Sonic Youth!" And then I realized it was "Heart of Darkness" by Mission of Burma. That's why you hang out with people that are smart and that you trust, because even when you're wrong, somebody's right.
Peking Spring (1987)
RM: The song "Peking Spring" itself was recorded in 1979; others, like "Active in the Yard," "Dirt" and "He Is/She Is" were recorded in '82. Curtis from Taang! offered to release them [years after the breakup] — we were just happy that someone wanted to give us money for our work. We mixed both Peking Spring and Forget in '85 — Clint might have re-cut a vocal and I might have re-cut a vocal, but that doesn't count.
PP: That was really a hasty run-through. We didn't consider them real recordings — it was just sort of a sketchbook. We knew we were going to stop soon, and we wanted to get them all on tape.
Forget (1988)
RM: When we recorded [the demo tapes that became Forget], we'd just come back from a tour, and my voice was really shot, so my singing there is much worse than it actually was in real life. Those were very old songs — "Manic Incarnation," "House Flaming" and "Anti-Aircraft Warning" were songs I wrote for the Moving Parts [Miller and Conley's band before Burma]. But the chord in "Anti-Aircraft Warning" is essentially me hitting the open guitar. That's a very strong Burma aesthetic: just let the guitar be the goddamn guitar, you know?
PP: We played a few shows a few weeks ago, and we finally pulled out "Progress" and "Manic Incarnation." That was really exciting for me, especially.
ONoffON (2004)
PP: We have really high standards, and we're critical of music, movies, pop culture — and if you're going to apply that to other things, you have to apply it to yourself. I feel as good as I possibly could about Mission of Burma making a record in 2004. I like it, and I feel like it doesn't really fit into music any more than we did back then.
RM: We weren't sure we wanted to make a new record, but we kept having new songs. I took a couple of new live recordings, and I A/B'ed them with Horrible Truth — and we sounded better! I think my vocals improved. We came into it with some trepidation, but as things started to unfold, it started to get real natural. Rick Harte was there, as a sort of roving infielder, to do whatever was needed — that was a nice link to the past. I always thought that one of our secret weapons was the three vocals. On Vs. and Signals, the concept of three-part harmony would be all of us yelling at the same time. This time, we've gotten beyond the immediate post-punk experience.
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