Drink Only When Drunken To: The Indie Totems, Mission of Burma

by Matt Ealer

I have this problem with not wearing earplugs at shows. I can’t get a bead on exactly what it is; some long-held childishness about needing to “authentically experience the music,” which is probably just a cover for not wanting to look like “that guy” (“that guy who wears earplugs”?), or maybe just a willful and teenage-defiant attitude about the glories or total bodily desecration?

Whatever it is, it was still pretty imposing when Mission of Burma’s guitar tech rolled that Marshall stack right up to the edge of the Black Cat’s main stage, feet from my skull and inches from the club’s already pretty formidable house system.

But I mean, I hadn’t flinched throughout Office of Future Plan’s set; when a throaty tenor of a bass played against the keening wail of needling neon green guitar lines at opposing right angles (sort of like a version of the Jesus Lizard that forgot to drink the whiskey laced with mescaline) while the cello droned out washes of scrapes and the drums click-clacked in dub suspension until they all crushed together in a riffing fury, the vocals going from deadpan to heart-bleeding-off-sleeve harDCore scream-strains in an instant. That hadn’t hurt! So.

Here we were, though, the roadie and Roger Miller both now jingling a bottle that looked like some oversized container of Excedrin from a bad farce full of precious orange earplugs, almost pleading with us, their stupid children. Still I demurred. Still the both of them seemed to give me, individually, looks of “okaaaaay, yer funeral.”

And then it built. Miller’s three-chord bashing giving way to staccato, militaristic riffage giving way to noise breakdowns that never lost the melody, becoming at once the Anti-Rock Solo and the perfect rock solo, because you get the idea that he’s still exploring the thing, testing the possibilities, tossing what doesn’t work and making note of what does.

This is fine, I think. I’ve been at louder house shows, fer crissakes! (Peter Prescott jokes from behind the traps, “I sure Deep Purple was louder than us. I’m sure of it. Well, I’m not sure.” The reference is apt; Mission of Burma has been a band for, technically, more than thirty years.) In fact, my head is so not exploding that I can think about how well Miller’s stage shtick goes with his playing: marching like a a member of Janet’s Rhythm Army while also doing a version of the Keith Richards white-dude-with-a-guitar trope, simultaneously rendering it ridiculous and reminding you why it worked in the first place.

Bob Weston is back behind us, not only recreating the spirit of Martin Swope’s tape loops (which only sound kind of old hat today because they directly influenced 30 years of dudes and dudettes with guitars to play around with that thread), but smoothing out the chaos such that Clint Conley’s bass starts to take on his presence — the corduroy blazer quickly lost, the pretty soft gray button-up wrinkled into submission and slowly seeping sweat, the once-gleaming P Bass in tatters, paint chipped away to the bare wood. And it all looked magnificent.

So too his playing. A buzzing bundle of that sounded as though you could make out each rusty string vibrating wildly, jagged and violent. But it all coalesced, it never lost the plot, and when he worked it high you heard elegies for all the dead rock stars. And it all felt magnificent.

During one of the many encores, Prescott introduced “Academy Fight Song” with a plea for “complete silence!” Taking in the put-on from behind the wall of plexiglass that separated us, I thought about how aside from Steve Shelly, I’ve never really heard or seen live that drum sound of the post-punk original indie bands (from when “indie” did not connote bearded bros in flannels singing 38-part harmony in reverence to a song about the plight of the hummingbird). And maybe it was Weston, maybe it was that barrier, but I got the feeling that I was hearing it just as it was on record, that bubbling tom-kick attack punctuated ever-so-sparingly with snare thwacks that sounds dry and cracked but somehow also warm.

It’s an American sound, I think. The English bands of the time reveled in the cool until it was icy and you could see your breath. This, on the other hand, always sounded orange, a bright rust that blinded you into a haze.

I was really glad that they did sort of silly things like recreate the background shouts from the records exactly and get the tech to come up to Miller’s mic and count out just behind the beat the “1,” the “2,” the “3,” and the “party” of new crowd favorite “1, 2, 3 Partyy!”; because if they hadn’t, if they hadn’t taken me out of it, I could easily have gotten lost in those fey little thoughts.

Finally they stopped responding to the cheers, they stopped coming back out and back out again. And when the house lights came up on LCD Soundsystem’s “North American Scum” (which I thought was an odd choice at the time, but now I sort of “get it”), the crowd started to get the point that they really weren’t gonna come back and do “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver.”

Which was fine. Because to the guy beside me who kept going on about how “when am I ever gonna get the chance to see Mission of Burma again, you know?!?!” I say, hey man. Chill out? They have been back together and putting out music and touring the world just like a real Rock and Roll band since 2002 now.

Maybe there’s a chance that since they aren’t any longer some monolithic legend of the indie totem, that they have revealed themselves as a real flesh and blood group of guys, that their perfectly melodic sing-shouts over tasty churning will make them something of a rallying point? Like, is it too much to hope that when someone says “Boston bands,” that their name could come up?

Anyway, you should watch this excellent “1, 2, 3 Party!” video. Because not only is the song a total rad blast, but do you see the guy in the beginning who gets clocked in the face with a bottle of brew? That is how my ears/head/sense of equilibrium felt the morning after. And I didn’t even drink!

Mission of Burma is on tour this spring. Matt Ealer would probably see them again

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