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"SIGNALS, CALLS, AND MARCHES" EP | "VS."______ ______R Y K O D I S C BY GAVIN MCNETT | today is Burma Day! It's a big holiday -- with parades and fireworks
and hot dogs and ice cream for the kids. Yes, here they are: one, two,
three original Mission of Burma records -- freely available on CD, while
for almost 15 years the vinyl market was cornered by jaded old
scenesters and rapacious collector scum. Why am I cackling? Why aren't
you? We've waited a long time for this. This is the day, folks, when
the right finally reverts to us '80s kids to go around sniffing that all
this modern rock stuff is OK, we guess, but music was really much
better 15 years ago. Now we have proof, dammit.
Mission of Burma, just to catch up, was one of those seminal rock bands
one hears about that never had much mainstream attention while it
was around, but when one looks up from one's breakfast one day, years
later, one finds that every band in the world is trying to sound like
it -- often without realizing it. Think of the New York Dolls in
relation to '80s cheeseball glam-metal, or the Windham Hill label with
regard to ambient electronica. Burma's territory, which it rules with
an army of thousands, is Lit-major Artcore, or Bourgeois Slackerpunk.
But the difference between Burma and, say, Unrest or Superchunk (or any
of the bands that have followed them) is like the one between the Dolls
and Poison -- or, to be fairer about it, the one between the Velvets and
Galaxie 500. Burma was edgier, deeper, more exploratory. Its palette
was richer, and its highs and lows more extreme. Bassist Clint Conley,
who wrote "That's When I Reach For My Revolver" and "Academy Fight
Song," two of the band's small treasury of painfully good songs, was
both the stronger and the less prolific of the band's principal
songwriters, while guitarist Roger Miller, who somehow gets most of the
acclaim, wrote the bulk of the album tracks. Miller's style was like a
warmer, smoother-edged early Mekons or Gang of Four, and although his
songs are great in bursts of two or three, it's possible to hear too
many of them at once. Ryko's 1988 Burma collection, the famous
cram-jammed 80-minute disc that Peter Buck claims forced him to buy a CD
player, presented a bit of a problem that way -- as well as suffering from a
serious shortage of graphics and documentation. It was a great value on
a per-song basis, but with only two tracks from the out-of-print live
album, "The Horrible Truth About Burma," it left quite a bit unsaid.
Everything's better now. Ryko's new Burma reissues preserve the albums'
original track order and art, tacking on the label's entire supply of
bonus cuts (Taang! Records' "Let There Be Burma" collection mops up the
rest). "Signals, Calls, and Marches," the band's first EP, is the
strongest package, with both "Revolver" and the "Academy Fight Song" single.
The other incandescently wonderful Burma hit, Miller's pulsing, legato
"Trem Two," is on "VS.," as are most of the group's minor peaks. You'll
want the live album, too. Carry the whole stack around with you and go
frighten some college students. This is your time -- savor it.
Gavin McNett is a regular contributor to Salon
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![[Mission of Burma]](burma970728.gif)
