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mission of burma
texted for raygun by gabriella marks
No scene, not even the schizophrenic scene that strays the streets of Boston today, lacks precedent. The cycle of culture, time and punk, modern and indie rock synchronize for a nostalgic glance back to punk. Acts that paved the way for both indie and processed rock are being paid their due. Last year's Rhino Records DIY series chronicling the pinnacles of punk rock boasted a disc titled Mass Ave., tracking Boston's smashes.Of the bands that crossed Mass Ave., Mission of Burma is revered as a major influence today. Lead singer and guitarist Roger Miller was looking for a town that transcended the insulation of his hometown Ann Arbor, Michigan, but wasn't as "massive and cutthroat" as New York. He made the pilgrimage to Boston to launch a career as a piano technician, but fell prey to the allure of punk. Within months, he was playing with other musicians.
Following the demise of their band, Moving Parts, Roger Miller and bassist Clint Conway recruited Peter Prescott to play drums for the newly built Mission of Burma. "Our first gig was April Fool's Day. There were seven bands, and it was all their first gigs. In those days, because punk rock was so vital, the scene wasn't cluttered with attitudes, kind of like it is now. It's nobody's fault now, but at that point the energy was so fresh that you could have a night with seven new bands and people would be really excited."
The time could be considered the Boston music scene's adolescence, an age of image irreverence. The punk predecessor of today's un-scene was unlimited to the generational cleavage of current "alternative rock." Peter Prescott recalls, "I would see people my age when I was 18, and I'd see old guys, like 45-year-old guys with weird haircuts or no hair or whatever. It seemed like the one basis was that you were outcast."
The eclectsacy had a contagious kinetic force, drawing outcasts from separate quarters. "It was a great time to be in Boston with that kind of energy," say Miller, "where there was a whole bunch of people who felt the same urgency. You had the people who were into rock Śn' roll, you got the art school types, you got the Avant-Gardists, curio seekers -- you got them all. They were all pulled together by this bizarre idea which was punk. Punk rock didn't polarize; it was the kind of scene that made things collect rather than pull them apart."
Coupled with this harmonic solidarity was punk's iconoclastic tendency to wreak havoc on the establishment. Unfettered by institutions of corporate rock -- competition for labels and commercial viability -- there was a tenuous unity (not to be confused with conformity) of spirit and form.
"Nobody started a punk rock band to be famous," explains Prescott, "or if they did, they would never admit it. You know, people got together and made a bunch of noise and had fun. There was no hope for anybody making noisy rock music to get popular. There wasn't this light at the end of the tunnel, you just did it. You didn't assume that you'd get big."
Being a band was in itself the Big Deal. "There wasn't much national attention," Rpger Miller remembers. "In those days, no one knew how to make records, no one made records. I am in no way trying to slight things now and glorify the past, but when someone made a record in those days, it was an epic thing. Everyone was like, ŚWow, another record came out by another Boston band!' Nowadays, every year there's like 20 records put out by Boston bands, and I'm not saying that's bad, it's just not as exciting."
Less than exciting, if not deeply disturbing, the tradition of punk expression has been drowned in the mainstream. The DIY ethic and subversive meaning of punk is by definition mutually exclusive with corporate rock, but the sounds and styles that Boston recognized as their punk have been consumed. Prescott predicts "the status quo does need to be smashed again. It always comes from young people that are fed up with what all the other young people are doing. It's not gonna come from an old fart. I see good bands where that isn't really their main agenda. Just by being good bands in a way, they're helping to do that. Punk rock began to smash the status quo. Now it is the status quo."
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