Secret History of Rock. The Most Influential Bands You've Never Heard (60 page)

MISSION OF BURMA

Roger Miller, Mission of Burma:

The minute we died I could feel us getting bigger. As I drove back from our last gig I told a friend, “In three or four years, people will refer to us as the Velvet Underground of the ‘80s. I’m not saying we are, but that’s how they’ll refer to us.” And lo and behold, in a few years it was in print: “The Velvet Underground of the ‘80s.” It’s just absurd the stuff they’ll say.

By incorporating avant-garde and progressive techniques into rough-hewn punk rock, Mission of Burma put an American face on the post-punk style spearheaded by British bands like
Wire
and the
Fall
. And in doing so, they brought an uptight and angular sound firsthand to the ears of contemporaries like
Hüsker Dü
and younger bands such as R.E.M., who would follow their lead in crafting the alternative rock sound of the ‘90s. Though Mission of Burma were always smart and often subtle, they could rock as fiercely as any punk group. It was this love for loudness, ultimately, that was their undoing. Yet their premature demise has only added to the band’s mystique and legend.

It would seem Roger Miller was destined from childhood to lead America’s premier art punk band. He grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where as a kid in the late ‘60s he witnessed the
MC5
and
Stooges
do their part in inventing punk rock. But Ann Arbor was also a college town, and as the son of a professor, Miller had access to the world of 20
^th
-century art music as well. In his late teens he pursued both strains, playing briefly with Ron Asheton’s post-
Stooges
band, Destroy All Monsters, and studying atonality and serialism at music school.

By the late ‘70s, though, Ann Arbor was no longer the place to be. Having heard about the diverse music scene brewing in Boston, Miller moved east. “I was going to play piano with tape loops and synthesizer, maybe a saxophone, that was my ideal at the time. But when I came to Boston, the punk scene was really good. The first show I saw was the Girls, La Peste, and Human Sexual Response, the three art punk bands in Boston. My jaw dropped. I said, ‘I came to the right town.’ So I joined a rock band, I couldn’t help it.”

Miller soon joined Moving Parts, a band led by two friends who would both become important collaborators with Miller (though in separate bands). When the band broke up in 1978, Miller – a multi-instrumentalist who was then playing guitar – formed Mission of Burma with Moving Parts bassist Clint Conley. (Two years later, Miller would reunite with Moving Parts’ Erik Lindgren in his keyboard-oriented instrumental side band, Birdsongs of the Mesozoic.) Conley shared Miller’s love for English groups like
Wire
, Magazine, and the
Fall
that were incorporating progressive elements into punk.

Lou Barlow, Sebadoh / Folk Implosion:

I was really into the way they played. They were this American band taking that
Gang of Four
early ‘80s jagged guitar sound from England, but they made it even more listenable and added more space to it, and the songs were just gorgeous. The way Roger Miller played guitar was a huge influence on the way I play now. He uses a lot of cool chords, and doesn’t rely on your usual consonant folk chords. He just changed the fingerings a bit and rattled the strings.

With the recruitment of drummer Pete Prescott from local band the Molls, Mission of Burma began gigging as a trio in early 1979. But soon, in the true post-punk style of bringing avant-garde elements into rock, the group incorporated a fourth band member, Martin Swope. Swope was not an instrumentalist – he wasn’t even on stage with the band – but rather he operated a tape machine behind the mixing board that added strange effects and electronic loops to the rather traditional guitar/bass/drums lineup.

Scott Kannberg, Pavement:

They were a big influence on our early records. I’m really into bands that use electronics and tape loops as an accompaniment to rock, and they were that type of band. We tried to do it like that. They’re an under-acclaimed band, they should’ve been a lot bigger.

From the start, Burma was largely a democracy, with Conley’s anthemic rock songs on equal ground with Miller’s more experimental and challenging material (later, Prescott wrote songs as well). In fact, the group was made stronger by the variety; Miller’s compositions fulfilled the group’s impulse to explore the boundaries of punk, while Conley’s tightly wound melodies – such as the group’s first single, 1980’s
Academy Fight Song
(later covered in concert by R.E.M.) – became alternative rock classics.

Eric Bachmann, Archers of loaf:

[Burma’s]
That’s When I Reach for My Revolver
is the first song I ever learned on guitar. Some of my guitar parts have obvious references, just because that was the first thing I learned. To me, it’s like a foundation. Listen to our “Harnessed In Slums” and to
Academy Fight Song
, there are parts that are similar.

Burma’s 1981 EP
Signals, Calls, and Marches
produced a second standout,
That’s When I Reach for My Revolver
(later covered by Moby). Led by a metallic bassline and droney guitar that invited comparisons with their English contemporaries,
Gang of Four
, the song combined raw passion and dry humor with an unforgettably insistent chorus.

It wasn’t until 1982 that Burma finally released a full-length album,
VS.
(a title likely borrowed by Pearl Jam for their 1993 record Vs., and definitely adopted by the band Versus). The album found the band at its creative peak. Many of the songs seemed to strike a perfect balance between the band’s pop and experimental impulses. Unusual chord progressions and rhythms were integrated with driving guitar tunes. While no song on
VS.
was as independently memorable as
Academy
or
Revolver
, it stands as the band’s most unified and successful statement.

By the time they released
VS.
, though, Burma was fast on its way to breaking up. Miller had long suffered from tinnitus – a hearing disorder caused by his repeated exposure to intense volume – and by early ‘83 the condition had worsened to a point where it became clear he’d have to pursue quieter music. And so, just as the rave reviews for
VS.
promised to push Mission of Burma toward a larger audience, the band amicably called it quits.

Jenny Toomey, Tsunami / Licorice:

Mission of Burma are just amazing. Their lyrics are incredibly ambitious. They really don’t pander to their audience at all, and they’re not being willfully obscure. I wish there were more bands out there that really inspired you to think. It’s like they were precursors for what became emo-core, the idea of emotional songs as part of the punk thing. They’re a band I go back to all the time. They’re so much of what became the later indie rock style. Running open chords up the neck of the guitar. A lot of times I’ll come up with a really good pattern and realize it’s part of a Mission of Burma song.

Though posthumous Burma releases continued for years – including a live album with
Stooges
and
Pere Ubu
covers – the individual members quickly moved on. Miller and Swope made Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, a quieter, more experimental “rock chamber music” group, their primary focus. Miller left Birdsongs in the late ‘80s and continues to perform and record, under his own name and with groups such as No Man and Binary System. Swope left Birdsongs shortly after and currently lives in Hawaii.

Clint Conley produced Yo La Tengo’s debut album in 1986, but has since left music to work as a television news producer, while Pete Prescott went on to front the Volcano Suns, Kustomized, and his current band, Peer Group. The former bandmates have remained friends, and in 1996 Conley and Miller reunited to record a single under the group name Wrong Pipe. While more material may follow from them, as long as Miller wishes to keep his tinnitus stabilized there’s no hope of hearing Mission of Burma together again.

DISCOGRAPHY

Signals, Calls, and Marches
EP
(Ace of Hearts, 1981; Rykodisc, 1997)
; a six-song debut, with
Revolver
, reissued together with the
Academy Fight Song
single.

VS.
(Ace of Hearts, 1982; Rykodisc, 1997)
; the one and only album, the fullest realization of the band’s power.

The Horrible Truth About Burma
(Ace of Hearts, 1985; Rykodisc, 1997)
; a posthumous live album, revealing their rougher live sound, taken from various shows on their 1983 tour.

Peking Spring
(Taang!, 1987)
; a collection of unreleased recordings made between 1979 and 1982; some of which was originally released as a self-titled EP.

Forget
(Taang!, 1987; 1994)
; a second less essential collection, featuring different unreleased recordings from the same sessions.

Mission of Burma
[CD]
(Rykodisc, 1988)
; an out-of-print release that collects all the formally released material, including singles, the first EP, and
VS
.

FLIPPER

Lou Barlow, Sebadoh / Folk Implosion:

Flipper were a huge influence on me. I got their first single and it blew me away. Just the fact that they were lumped in with these hardcore bands but they were really slow. The guitar wasn’t making any effort to stick to the standard punk rock bar chord thing. It was just a total mess, and no one else really played like that. The churning noise, this wall of muddy agitated slug groove, with these really amazing anthemic lyrics. They were the first real heavy sludge band. Grunge was really influenced by that.

Just at the point where hardcore made punk rock a whole lot faster than ever before, Flipper was heading in the other direction with a dissonant, lumbering sound that got heavier and dirtier the slower it became. Almost two decades since their debut, Flipper don’t sound nearly as snail-paced today as they no doubt seemed when compared to speedy contemporaries like
Bad Brains
. But the unrelenting din of their most plodding work still sounds like it’s taking its sweet time and going nowhere in particular.

Flipper’s sense of humor and disdain for convention – even punk convention – made them favorites of bands like the Butthole Surfers, who broadcast a radio show on the Internet named after the Flipper song
Brainwash
. And from Flipper’s sludge rock, of course, it was only a short step to grunge. The Melvins, a heavy rock band from Aberdeen, Washington, liked Flipper so much they covered one of the group’s best songs,
Sacrifice
. And Flipper clearly had a huge impact on the Melvins’ “little brother” band, Nirvana.

King Coffey, Butthole Surfers:

They were a hardcore band but they played so slow, and they played forever, and were really confrontational. Like every great band they had a lot of myth about them, like they’d play
Brainwash
and lock the doors to the club so everyone would be forced to hear the same song for four hours. I really respected Flipper for being a hardcore band that wasn’t playing hardcore. The Butthole Surfers were like that as well.

Flipper formed in 1979 out of the San Francisco band Negative Trend, which featured bassist Will Shatter (born Russell Wilkinson) and drummer Steve DePace. The group was part of an early Bay area punk scene that included bands like the
Dead Kennedys
, the Avengers, and the Nuns, with groups like
Chrome
and
Residents
on the more damaged side. When Negative Trend collapsed, Shatter and DePace recruited guitarist Ted Falconi and vocalist Bruce Lose (Calderwood). Lose had been known in the punk scene more as an audience member than a musician because he’d invented a dance, called the Worm, where he’d throw himself on the floor and flop around. He was just the theatrical nutcase the others were looking for, and soon Lose and Shatter entered into a creative partnership, where they switched off on bass and vocals, and wrote songs together.

After placing their muddy and slinking
Earthworm
on a compilation by local punk label Subterranean, Flipper released a debut single in 1980: the nuclear fallout noise of
Love Canal
backed with the mocking
Ha Ha Ha
. The following year they released their best-known song,
Sex Bomb
, an open ended dirge-jam with stupid lyrics repeated over and over for effect. It was the ultimate statement of their supremely loose, unmitigated racket.

Flipper managed to get a full-length record together in 1981. Naming it
Album: Generic Flipper
, the group beat
Public Image Limited
to the punch (and when
Public Image
released their, generic Album five years later, Flipper responded with the live
Public Flipper Limited
). Most songs – catchy and compelling despite the band’s obliviousness to song structure – relied on a simple heavy riff and bassline that repeated throughout the whole song. Though it sounded downright polished next to the early singles, the record was by most standards a masterpiece of artfully inarticulate slop. Tempos had increased slightly as well, though various details – handclapped beats, blaring saxophones, sound effects (like the bomb drop noise in a re-recorded
Sex Bomb
) – made clear this was not your typical hardcore band.