Post-punk Amerindie guitar band Boston legends 1979 to 1985. "Peking Spring" was a local hit in '79 but the first I heard Mission of Burma was a 7" vinyl single, "Academy Fight Song," I bought with my hard earned dough at Singles Going Steady in Portland, OR in '80. Loved the bad college roommate tirade in it; I'm not your academy, your school, your philosophy, club, etc. Prep school punk; real Catcher in the Rye stuff; i.e., catchy, angry, and self-righteous punk declaration of independence. In an interview much later Clint Conley, the songwriter, says he was trying to do a Talking Heads song. And, indeed, there is a jittery New Wave-y pop quality to the song they rarely if ever return to in later records.
Back in the day I was a little underwhelmed by their next record and first EP, Signals, Calls, and Marches. There were standout tracks. "All World Cowboy Romance." And I like "(That's When I Reach For My) Revolver," although, apparently, most other musicians and artists think it is Burma's signature song. It's the most covered of their songs. I get this, I think, but actually prefer another version of the same song they do later on Vs, their only album, '82, or only album in their original post-punk era incarnation, at any rate, called "That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate." Which is a sort of a punk rock Trustfall-song or an inside-out love song that Burma plays with all their scrappy might. Rocking out is in the ear of the beholder, of course, but these guys play music loud and hard. The principle reason they disbanded after a '83 tour, not forgetting the live album of a tour they put out in '85 as the maybe underrated The Horrible Truth About Burma, was because the Tinnitus in Roger Miller's hearing was getting so bad he couldn't continue to be around loud music so much anymore. Their material is heavy, dour, and obviously hard work, if a pulverizingly effective sonic force. But the exhilaration in "Certain Fate" is gleeful and rhapsodic. And in keeping Conley has said of this song that he was trying to do the Buzzcocks.
Live version gives you a look at Burma in their prime, with their original audience and band supporters at the Bradford Ballroom in Boston in '83.
Rock critics, it is my memory, used to disparage instrumental psychedelic riff rock droning like this as tedious filler. This might be known as the English major bias in rock snob era rock criticism, 1960s to 1980s. No words here. Just sounds; that sound like Glenn Branca's symphony of guitars covering Tommy James' "Crimson and Clover." Moment of zen.
I even liked a lot some songs off drummer Peter Prescott's Volcano Suns albums. I think there is that sense that Burma never quite lived up to their potential. Never broke through, had a smash hit. No A+ records or albums. True, maybe. But "Academy Fight Song" and Vs. are close. They were one of those volatile the-sum-is-greater-than-the-parts post-punk bands, brilliant, erratic, too loud and dissonant for the radio or anything beyond college radio but a creative burst of their own post-punk noise rock thing.
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