Mission of Burma
To a lot of people 30 years ago, punk rock seemed like a flash in the pan, but reports of its demise were premature and a spate of successful recent reunions among the early punk bands further the point. For Boston art punks Mission of Burma, their return has been more of a second life than a repeat of an earlier one, just one part of a whole musical career.
The musical career of band guitarist and singer Roger Miller certainly didn’t stop in 1983 — he has since had a string of solo albums and other bands, most notably Birdsongs of the Mesozoic and the Alloy Orchestra, as well as a career writing soundtracks. When a one-off, two-show reunion turned into six sold-out shows, Miller and the band had to grapple with their legacy and whether their desire to play together again would taint the memories of the band that tore through “That’s When I Reach For My Revolver” on people’s turntables.
“We really needed our friends around at that point,” said Miller, “because of course there’s a possibility that you’re going to go up on-stage and say ‘Oh, God, I wish I had just left it alone so I could be a legend for the rest of my life.’ But the responses we got from the press and from the people in the audience, it didn’t feel like that. People said ‘Wow, it sounds just like you stopped in March of ‘83 and it’s June of ‘83.’ It felt like that to us and it was totally like we were doing them the correct way.”
Hand holding got them through recording their first studio album in 20 years, “
ONoffON.” For their second effort, “The Obliterati,” they were alone in the studio and confident.
“At this point, we’ve done Mission of Burma, we sound like Mission of Burma,” said Miller, “and I’m going, ‘OK, do we really want to sound like a post punk rock band? How can we not sound like a post-punk rock band but still sound like Mission of Burma?’”
Writing new material was key. Miller insisted that if the band was going to go ahead and reunite, each member — bass player Clint Conley, drummer Peter Prescott, and the newest member, Bob Weston, on tape manipulation — needed to bring a new song to the table.
“That’s just to keep us from being old farts playing their repertoire,” said Miller, “that gave us a little bit of an edge. I figure anytime we play a new show, a new song needs to be in and that’s how we keep alive.”
The band’s outlook has kept them fresh enough to not only attract their old fans back, but to bring in new ones who aren’t there for nostalgia.
“We were playing in New York and there was a kid who is my son’s age out in front just going berserk, he wasn’t even born when our first album was recorded,” said Miller. “Our fans now are anything from 15 to 55, you get all sorts of variations of that.”
Miller credits the band’s smooth trajectory with the fact that music hasn’t really changed all that much since Mission of Burma first blazed some trails in 1979 — a situation very different from the time prior to the punk era that Miller came of age in.
“When you listen to the Jefferson Airplane or Jimi Hendrix, there’s more of ‘Wow, that was a really different time period,’” said Miller. “Then when you listen to Gang of Four or that post-punk stuff, the Minutemen, that stuff still feels very current. When you hear ‘Purple Haze,’ it’s a brilliant song, but it seems like from another era, whereas ‘It Ain’t No Picnic’ seems like it could have been written yesterday.”
Miller feels that the punk and post-punk movements left very little musical territory to explore — or, at least, if there is, no mass movements of young rock musicians have latched onto it in order to mine it. Mission of Burma springs from an idea-driven time when musicians from all levels on the education totem pole were excited to create new sounds and structures.
“I’d already studied composition at the California Institute of the Arts and I was applying a lot of my ideas in harmony and structure to Mission of Burma songs,” said Miller, “so you’d have everything from people who had accomplished a major to people like Lydia Lunch, who had just picked up the guitar for the first time and refused to learn any chords. To me, there wasn’t that much of a difference between those two things, because they were inspired and looking for new ideas.”
The fascination of the scene was not only in the spiral of experimentation but the sheer number of creators who were united in a creative purpose.
“What becomes much more interesting than how good of a musician you are is your ideas,” said Miller. “I’m a very accomplished musician technically, but I would rather play with someone who can barely play but has a vision than with someone who can play Bach fugues 10 times as fast as me and 10 times as accurate. I’m looking for ideas and that’s what punk rock had. It was a naivete combined with actual information and that’s when things get cool.”
Miller has no idea where Mission of Burma is going and acknowledges they could just fold again. It’s no big deal, since Miller has other projects to fall back on — he recently composed music for the film “Traces of the Trade,” a documentary about minister who discovers her ancestors were slave traders. And the band just seems to keep going — recently, they announced a Boston-area concert in benefit for the actual Burma with other reunited punks, The Neighborhoods. While Miller appreciates being part of something that reminds him of the excitement from two decades ago, he’s fine to function on his own — he just keeps experimenting with sounds and watches to see if the world will ignite yet again.
“In the ’60s and the ’70s and even into the ’80s, you felt like things were shifting,” said Miller, “you could see the frontal point of the idea and watch it manifest itself every month, but now you just sort of go ‘I can’t even see that point anymore. It’s just this massive slop and you can pick out things that you like, but I don’t see that point anymore.’ But it’s not really my problem, I go about my business. Before, I could see where things were supposed to go and I could feel it, but now I just look around and go ‘Thank, God, I’ve got enough to keep myself busy.’”
Leave a Reply