Mission of Burma Album: “Vs.”

Mission of Burma is without a doubt one of the most exciting, intense, cerebral, inticing, and genius groups to ever live. This disc is proof of that. Songs like "Trem Two" and "Weatherbox" show off the groups' more avant-garde leanings, whereas gems like "Mica" and "That's How I Escaped my Certain Fate" are pure, unpretentious art punk. The range of musical diversity in this one album is absolutely mind-blowing. "Vs." was originally released in 1982 and it sounds as if it could have been recorded today. A truly remarkable feat in independent music by 1982's or 2004's standards. My advice: buy this album and study it. Listen to it many, many, many times for not only the songs, but the song structures, as they are the most exciting part of any Burma song. I truly believe that no one has been able to top Burma yet, and no one ever will be able to for that matter. And it is an absolute miracle that they reunited and are playing live once again. It almost makes me believe that there is a god if such a talented band could join forces again after a 22-year hiatus. So listen, learn, and rock out as hard as you possibly can because life is too short to listen to watered-down "punk rock" like Blink 182 or NOFX. If you want the real deal, the real gritty in-your-face intelligent kind of stuff, then you have come to the right place.

"Brainiac rock disguised as blind rage." That's how I would describe this album. MOB attack your eardrums with unabashed fury, yet the songwriting is layered & interesting enough that it never gets boring, or unpleasantly cacophonous. Not to say that this music isn't loud, hard & noisy....just that it rocks in such a completely unique way that's so challenging yet so rewarding at the same time that I, personally can't get enough of this recording. I've never heard anything that sounds quite like this album, and I doubt I ever will. But perhaps that doesn't tell you enough. Shall I describe a few songs for you?

The Wire-like opener "Secrets" drones on the same two speedy chords for about a minute & a half before a sloppy tape-looped "drum solo" comes in, after which all 3 vocalists/instrumentalists in the band take turns screaming, as the song officially starts. Midtempo "Trem Two" is even dronier, with the robotic descending guitar line sounding more like a distorted synth and a high-pitched noise looping on every 2nd & 4th beat. Probably the closest thing this band's ever done to a "dance" number. "Dead Pool" is deathly slow & numbing; Not depressing, mind you, just terribly bleak. Clint Conley's vocals in particular sound like a mortally wounded soul wishing itself out of exsistence. "Weatherbox" features a mesmerizing guitar noise/tape loop solo & one of Clint's best ever basslines. "Einstein's Day" is a sweeping epic recalling the instrumental "All World Cowboy Romance" from their first ep; but with an even greater sense of desperate urgency. And "That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate" ends the album(and effectively, the band's recording career) with a crash, boom, bang, go! Undoubtably the catchiest song of them all.

As great as the album tracks are though, the 4 outtakes pasted on as "bonus tracks" at the end are actually some of the best they ever did. "Forget" is an upbeat, happy(??!?!) number with a beautiful melody & haunting lyrics, predating all of today's "emo/nu-pop-punk" crap by at least a couple of decades. "OK/No Way" manages to fit a confusing time signature into a song that smashes & flails chaotically. "Laugh The World Away" is just plain weird, unlike anything else they'd ever done, yet fitting right in there somehow. And "Progress" is one of Clint's most poignant, heartbreaking laments about the uselessness of modern society.

It didn't get any better than this...not in 1982(the year I was born), anyway. Check out everything this band's ever done and also Clint's new band Consonant, too. For it is the best way I can think of to escape from the vacuous vapidity of today's shallow, target-demographic radio pop.

I saw Mission of Burma more than any other live band in the early eighties. MOB never got their due. I remember them playing in a club, which was previously a cellar in a laundromat in Allston MA. MOB played all the punk rock dives in Boston like the Rat in Kenmore Sq. and Cantones in the downtown district. One of the best shows MOB ever did was in the In Men Square bar which was a narrow shot-gun bar where patrons would frequently crowd the floor level stage in order get a breath of oxygen. MOB paid it's dues.

There was a chemistry in the band which was electrifying to the folks that knew MOB. Outsiders said that MOB sounded like a bunch of yelling and screaming, but insiders knew. Roger Miller's guitar style was a union of Hendrix psychedlica and no/new wave guitarists like Andy Gill (Gang of Four) and Arto Lindsay (Contortions). Clint Conley's frenetic bass lines underpinned the mad shreiking feedback of Roger's guitar. Peter Prescott's powerful drumming was the focal point that punctuated the call and response style of vocals. The final touch was Martin Swope at the controls adding tape loops and "found" sounds.

This studio album is a typical set that MOB would play live in 1980-81. None of the band's live power is diminished on this studio set. It appears that the band went into the studio and did a live take of all of their concert songs. At the time, "Vs." was released, MOB appeared to be on the thereshold of a national breakthrough. Major labels were looking at the band and, REM was talking about recording a version of MOB's "Academy Fight Song". This all fell apart when Roger Miller fell a victim of tinnitus, an ear condition that many musician fall prey to. Tinnitus comes about from exposure to loud noise for a long period of time. Miller's ears constantly rang from the volume level that MOB had played at for so many years. The band broke up after a monster concert at the Statler Hotel ballroom in Boston, in 1982. Miller had to play that concert with a pair of rifle range headphones on his ears to alleviate the ringing in his ears. Miller continues to play keyboards and has released a number of minimalist CDs with avant garde stylings. Clint Connley has given up music. Peter Prescott is still drumming and involved with production work on music. Martin Swope is somewhere in Hawaii doing things unknown to me. MOB, of course, will live on....

I don't know where I first heard Mission of Burma, but it was pretty early on in their existence, because I had all their records AS records. They were a favorite right away, and ranked up with The Fall, Flipper and Wire's album "Pink Flag" as the favorite music of my late teen and early 20's years.

All that stuff still holds up (for me at least) all these years later. Mission of Burma was a strange case because back then (and even now) I was the only person I knew who had ever heard of them, and it's still a mystery to me where I latched on to this group. This was (I believe) their only full scale in the studio album, signals, calls and marches being more of an EP and their other album of the time (Horrible Truth, etc.) being a live record. I never saw them live or anything, but I had these records back then, listened to them constanlty and have them now as CD's. If your taste runs to this type of music, or even what in the last decade has come to be called "alternative", try out Mission of Burma and find out what Alternative Music was like when you couldn't hear it on any commercial radio station, and you had to go down into some basement record store on Prince St. in Manhattan in order to buy the VINYL records.

This is a GREAT rock album, but like most great things it's not for everyone. If you're not already a fan of punk or indie music, I doubt that MOB will be the band that changes your mind, because they're just too darned uncompromising. Not that they're rampaging hardcore loons a la the Germs--Roger Miller and Co. can be very subtle--but they are every bit as intense as the Germs, in a different way. The sparse instrumentation can be deceptive--these are very complicated songs, and one of the many impressive things about this album is its range. Here you've got full-speed-ahead rockers like "The Ballad of Johnny Burma" alongside gorgeous, restrained songs like "Einstein's Day," and verse-chorus-verse-chorus proto-pop-punk like "That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate" alongside whacked-out stuff like "Learn How", which, as far as I can tell, has no verses and no chorus. Perhaps the most surprising thing of all is that all four of these songs are absolutely wonderful, and so are most of the other songs on the album. I had to listen to this one a couple of times before I got into it, because it's too densely packed and too intricate to take in all at once, but now I think it's one of the greatest albums of all time.