Mission Of Burma "OnoffOn" (Matador)
By Dave Schutz
Wednesday. Jul 28, 11:09 AM
An interview with bassist/vocalist Clint Conley

When Mission Of Burma got back together in the fall of 2001, they titled their reunion “Inexplicable.” It was a fitting description for both the band and its fans. In the years after their 1983 breakup, which stemmed mostly from guitarist/vocalist Roger Miller’s battle with tinnitus, the members of Mission Of Burma consistently discounted the possibility of a reunion. So when I discovered the band a few years ago, it was a bittersweet situation. I was instantly floored by the depth, range, and visceral impact of their songs, but most of all, how utterly fresh it sounded nearly two decades later. Simultaneously, I relegated myself to the reality that I’d never get to see them live and would never hear what could’ve been beyond their short-but-sweet four-year existence.

But you know what they say about saying never. Inexplicably, Mission Of Burma reunited. Inexplicably, I found myself on a plane to Boston to see one of the first reunion shows (possibly the best live performance I’ve ever seen). Inexplicably, I went out on May 4th and got my hands on OnoffON, the first proper Burma studio record since 1982’s Vs. And most inexplicable of all, I recently found myself talking to bassist/vocalist Clint Conley about the new record, juggling the reunion with real life, and, of course, bling.

I’d like to talk about the new record first. The production seems a lot darker and heavier than the first two records: kind of in between that and some of the stuff on the Taang! tapes. Was Bob Weston’s (producer/current Burma soundman/tape manipulator) influence a big part of that, or did you go in wanting to make a beefier record this time?

I don’t think we had any preconceived plan when we went in. We were all familiar with Bob’s work and he’s a pretty straight recordist. He doesn’t muck around with the band’s sound much, and that was fine with us. I think it pretty accurately reflects what we sound like. I don’t know... it’s all just accidental. That’s how it ended up sounding and we’re happy with it.

You went pretty far into left field with “Nicotine Bomb.” I thought that was an interesting song as far as pushing the limits of the Burma sound.

I guess there were a couple songs I brought in that I thought might test the fellas. And “Nicotine…” and “Prepared” are a couple that might’ve sounded out of place on our earlier recordings. But basically – this sounds a little bit like my last answer – there’s not much forethought, there’s not much planning, there’s not much calculation or strategy. Those are two songs that sort of came out around the time Burma was starting to think about recording a record. And I’d been busy completing (Conley’s other band) Consonant’s second album, so I hadn’t written much for Burma, and those guys sort of looked at me and said, “If we do do a record, it’d be great to have a couple more songs from you.” So I just sort of steered the next two songs that came out toward Burma. Those could’ve easily been Consonant songs. There’s no real distinction in my head.

I was impressed with a lot of the textures you guys added on the new record. For instance, the string melody at the end of “Prepared,” the backing chorus on “Wounded World,” and how much they resemble the tape manipulations and the treatments that Martin (Swope, original soundman/tape manipulator) added in the old days and what Bob is adding.

Yeah, we played at All Tomorrow’s Parties in England a couple years ago and Rachels, a string group, were playing as well, and they offered to do string arrangements for anybody who wanted them. I encouraged Roger to put strings on “Wounded World” (according to him – I don’t remember being the encourager, but that’s his version, so we’ll run with it). So he drew up some string charts for them, and it sounded great. Then Roger mentioned “Prepared.” He thought he could work some strings in there. And I had a guitar line that I liked over it, so we wrote that up as a string part, and I kept getting haunted by another countermelody in my head and I hummed it out for Roger and he scribbled it out on paper and transcribed that for the strings. So Roger transcribed and arranged the strings based off of melodies in my head. But yeah, it’s totally fun to stretch into different areas. Obviously I have sort of a melodic jones – always have, so it’s kind of taking it and going off in that direction.

Your kids were part of the background chorus for “Wounded World”?

Yeah.

Did they actually come into the studio?

Yeah, we came into the studio one day and we had a little pack of kids. And they were great. They kept at it. We kept making them do it over and over again. They were awesome.

What do they make of dad’s rock and roll life?

Until I start walking around with a lot of bling and stepping out of super stretch limos, they’re not going to be too impressed. They don’t think of me as a musician. Musicians have lots of vice and do funny hand signals, and I haven’t gotten those down yet. I don’t know what they think. It’s hard to tell. I don’t think they think of it too much.

Are you more comfortable on stage now?

Yeah, I really am. That comes as a total surprise. Looked at from the outside, you might think it would go the other way. But I was never that comfortable on stage the first go around and sort of self-conscious, always vaguely unhappy about the performances and just felt like an asshole on stage, like a fraud. I mean, we did have fun back then, but if things weren’t going really right, I was kind of funny. I just have a much less complicated reaction now to playing live. I think part of it is that I was out of music completely for 15 or 20 years, and now to come back and have sort of an automatic audience – to have far more people interested in what we’re doing than back then, I mean, it’s just a total gift. It’s hard to look at it any other way but, “God, you’re a lucky bastard. Look at you. You haven’t done jack shit for 20 years, and you have this ready-made situation.” Really, it’s hard to be complicated and complaining in that situation – hard for me, at least. So I just feel really lucky. I feel very fortunate to have this opportunity. And I’m like, “Jeez, enjoy it. Don’t mess this up.” I feel really confident playing, for one thing. We’ve taken it really seriously and really gone at the music. So when we play out now, it’s a very intense experience. But it’s also loose at the same time. We’re obviously having fun. We’re obviously really feeling joy from playing together and playing in front of the audiences that seem so generous and appreciative. But at the same time, we just really hit the music hard. Peter (Prescott, drummer/vocalist) is playing really well and Roger’s a monster. So that part, it just feels great. It feels like we getting on some SST jet and just going for the ride.

Aside from the obvious, like the bigger shows and widespread appreciation and feeling more comfortable, what else is different about being in Burma now than before?

There are so many things that are different. There are a lot of things that are the same. Internally, in the band, at least, it’s like we took a couple of weeks off or something. We’ve always had a really good personal chemistry. So that part is great. That’s the same. But there are a lot of things that are different. Not to overstate it, but it was a struggle in the early ‘80s, and you know, you go into a club and nobody was happy to see you: not the club owners, not the bartenders. The bartenders know they’re going to have a lousy night. It was sort of antagonistic everywhere you went. A lot of these places were just starting to experiment with “new wave” music. Now we go in and we’re certainly treated better, so that makes it easier. I know for a fact I’m singing better, and a lot of that is I was smoking back then. And I was drinking back then… I don’t drink now. But a lot of it… we were just going so fast back then, just hanging on by our fingertips to a semblance of order and intelligibility. It was just going so fast and sloppy and messy. And that does have its appeal, but frankly, I think the music is stronger and more intense and more powerful just slowly reined back a little bit.

Stepping back into Burma, does it feel like stepping into an older version of yourself, or do you still feel like you relate to it?

Well, it’s a little weird. Some of the songs are very punky, and the stuff I write now is not that punky, in general. But I plug into it and it’s automatic. I’m just playing it, you know? I’m just right inside the music. A lot of the lyrics are awkward to sing because they’re so earnest and obviously written by some 20-year-old who’s just taken Philosophy 101. But fortunately, I think rock is mostly about the music and words are sounds that go with the music. So I just try to go past lines and some lines that I don’t like, I just kind of mumble or screw up the words on purpose. Because, man, I could write some stinking lyrics.

So you’re talking about music being the forefront and words being a sound that goes along with that, yet you obviously kind of took the whole thing to a higher level by collaborating with (poet) Holly Anderson and incorporating poetry and sort of raising the lyrical standard. I tend to agree with you. The lyrics don’t always suffer in rock music, but one side – the music or the lyrics – always seems to suffer for the other. In Consonant, I think the music is really strong and the lyrics fit in really well and it’s some of the best imagery that I’ve seen in rock lyrics in a long time.

That’s great. I’m happy to hear that. I love Holly’s words and I like to think that I’ve made good musical beds for them. But I would say my lyrics now are much better than my lyrics back then. I’d say the words take a stronger position in the Consonant stuff. Burma is just this big roar: this big internal engine that’s exploding. And you just gotta stay out of the way and let the music roar on.

But at the same time, you have the reputation of writing the Burma “anthems,” like “That’s When I Reach For My Revolver” and “Academy Fight Song,” and I think a lot of people really got a lot out of those lyrics in some form. I think the first time I ever heard that song (“…Revolver”) was at a Pegboy show, and the singer prefaced it with, “This song saved my fucking life when I was a kid,” or something like that, you know? And it couldn’t have just been the music. He obviously got something out of the lyrics.

That’s great. That’s so cool. I’ve never heard Pegboy’s version. I’ve heard people say good things about it. Yeah, I don’t know what to say about that. I think people bring a lot more to songs than they tend to realize in terms of listeners imputing meanings to things. I know I do. And there’s something about the combination of the sounds and the music and the beat that can create very, very powerful feelings. And when we kick into the chorus of “That’s When I Reach For My Revolver,” there’s some sort of blend there that elevates it way above what the words would mean on paper. It’s just this explosive, cathartic sort of release that I was lucky enough to stumble upon. I don’t know how these things work.

Roger seems to have taken over that role. Some of his stuff on OnoffON is more accessible and pop and anthemic than he’s ever done before. I was really surprised by that.

I think that’s accurate. He’s sort of flexing different muscles for himself too. When I listen to the new record – and I haven’t done it in a month and a half or so – I just feel like it’s a very logically mixed album. It doesn’t sound exactly like our old stuff. It doesn’t sound like a brand new direction. It sounds like a very logical sort of mutation from what had come before. And I think if you were to do the old desert island test and drop down these records for someone to listen to, they probably wouldn’t guess that there were 20 years between them, that it might’ve been two, it might’ve been two months. Our identity is carried through in a sort of consistent way, but there’s different songs, different muscles being flexed, different sounds. It doesn’t feel forced to me. It sounds really natural and kind of un-thought out, which, anytime you can take our brains out of the equation…

But that’s how the whole return trip has been: just let it go as it comes, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And beyond the gigs we have booked now, which are basically in the summer, we don’t know if we’re going to be doing this anymore. There’s just no master plan, no central office with some five-year plan or anything. We’re just not ambitious and we’re not out to make a career. Personally, I like my life as it is and I don’t want Burma to disrupt it too much. It’s been terrific fun, but I don’t want to professionalize it and have to be worried about it. But yeah, we’re just doing it at our pleasure, and it’s kind of a healthy way to do it.

As opposed to how harried it probably was back in the ‘80s.

Yeah, I mean, we were trying to survive on the music and in general, the world really had no use for us. (laughs) You know, “Are we getting enough respect?” And all that stuff is completely gone for us now, because this is all total gravy. We expected nothing and here we are with all these bounteous riches, by our standards. You know, attention, and people like you wanting to talk to us and people buying tickets to our shows. And all this stuff is like a first time around the track for us.

So you go to Europe for a couple weeks and a couple more shows are booked in the States. There’s been talk about further U.S. touring. I know you guys aren’t planning into the future, but are you planning on taking another trip around the U.S.?

I don’t think so. I think we’re going to go out in little short bursts. I’m all dried up with my vacation time here. Been talking to my boss about trying to cut me some slack. Yeah, you know, I’ve got a real life. I’ve got a real job. I’ve got a family I love being around. This doesn’t sound very rock and roll, but these are the considerations when you’re in your mid-40s.
www.missionofburma.com
www.consonant.cc
www.matadorrecords.com

Dave Schutz

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