Know what? Soon as I get some upload problems sorted, I can get you motherfuckers a video of me being a spaz. Just gimme some time.
Haha! Success! We have ignition, fucks, uh, folks. Next time, more Mission of Burma, some Rock Band-ing, and some rockin' good times.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Christianity: the Death of Language.
What does that phrase mean, "the death of language"? It is the destruction of meaning, the sapping of explanatory power from normally expressive speech. Upon seeing Godard's film Weekend, I found that phrase one of the most memorable and relevant.
Christianity is the religion I grew up in, but I never professed belief. Even from my earliest days I was a skeptic. The whole enterprise just smacked of obvious deception. Even my simplest objections seemed damning evidence of the simplistic rationalizations shakily supporting the Christian belief system. A child that asks "Why does no one see God?" is told that he is invisible, but omnipresent. The effects that he has on our lives are extolled and praised mightily, but there is no proof that he does anything. The assumption simply exists that he must be there, directing things.
"Why are there so many conceptions of God or the gods? Why do different cultures have their own interpretations that incorporate their societal values?" The obvious answer does not occur. Not all religions can be correct, but if only one religion must be correct, it must have some demonstrable truth value that makes it more likely to be true. However, the very nature of religion is to shun proof, to revel in mystery, and to make truth claims without knowledge or examination. Hume's point about the contrariety of religious claims stands. Therefore it is impossible to make a rational decision regarding a choice of religion.
"Why do people largely inherit their parents' religion? Why do they not stray if somehow there are more convincing claims for Christianity, or Islam, or Judaism?" The truth is, most people simply swallow the dogma of their parents. Once the decision is made to bring that child up in a religion, most commonly they do not abandon it throughout their lives. In general, converts to another religion make up a very small percentage of that religion's membership.
"Why are there no obvious miracles today, when there were in ancient times?" Of course, it is common to call just any coincidence a miracle, but these are obviously meant to console and bolster the faith of those who believe in an interceding, active God with a plan for all people. But the paltry evidence offered is a double-edged sword for believers. For every one person who survives a car crash, thousands die. For every family given a delicious warm meal on Christmas morning, thousands die of starvation in Africa. And the list goes on. The suffering isn't some sort of punishment for the wicked; there is no just or equal distribution. In fact, one might say that suffering is random, exactly as we would expect it would be if there were no God looking out for his faithful flock. The miracles are just invented.
Every aspect of the universe, in fact, looks exactly as if there were no God. We move further and further away from the "God of the gaps" of the everyday believer with each new fact, every morsel of knowledge. As we gravitate closer to the gods of the theologians, we see language itself die in the service of religious "learning".
What does this phrase then mean, "the death of language"? It is the rote, the ritual, the veil of equivocation, the tired and empty show that destroys meaning. For the faithful Christian, many words lose their meaning in being subsumed to their faith. Love, justice, belief, grace; so many words rendered so meaningless by equivocation and repetition of the same weary rebutted explanations. For the theologian, his faith is so vague and nebulous that scarcely any import can be assigned to the rotting dust he spews forth. Obfuscation abounds in the most sophisticated treatises; little if any meaning can be gleaned from their twisted pronouncements on the mysteries of the transubstantiation, or the ascension of Mary to heaven, or the sublime nature of the Trinity. They speak of nothing known, of things no man could ever observe, and pretend to be sage in such chicanery. What folly! What arrogance, to presume oneself gifted with the keys to the divine!
But this is exactly it. Every man has his own keys to the gates of heaven, for no two conceptions can really be the same. With no reference, no corresponding reality, every religious idea must necessarily be as individual as the mind that birthed it. No agreement can be made, for there is nothing to agree upon. Every man molds his own religion, one that supports his own views and renders him correct in his interpretation of reality. His biases, his hates, his loves, these are all projected onto a waiting emptiness he calls his God. When he proclaims, "I cannot disobey my God", he means, "My God cannot disobey me."
And atheists are slandered as arrogant. The Bible calls them fools.
How droll.
Christianity is the religion I grew up in, but I never professed belief. Even from my earliest days I was a skeptic. The whole enterprise just smacked of obvious deception. Even my simplest objections seemed damning evidence of the simplistic rationalizations shakily supporting the Christian belief system. A child that asks "Why does no one see God?" is told that he is invisible, but omnipresent. The effects that he has on our lives are extolled and praised mightily, but there is no proof that he does anything. The assumption simply exists that he must be there, directing things.
"Why are there so many conceptions of God or the gods? Why do different cultures have their own interpretations that incorporate their societal values?" The obvious answer does not occur. Not all religions can be correct, but if only one religion must be correct, it must have some demonstrable truth value that makes it more likely to be true. However, the very nature of religion is to shun proof, to revel in mystery, and to make truth claims without knowledge or examination. Hume's point about the contrariety of religious claims stands. Therefore it is impossible to make a rational decision regarding a choice of religion.
"Why do people largely inherit their parents' religion? Why do they not stray if somehow there are more convincing claims for Christianity, or Islam, or Judaism?" The truth is, most people simply swallow the dogma of their parents. Once the decision is made to bring that child up in a religion, most commonly they do not abandon it throughout their lives. In general, converts to another religion make up a very small percentage of that religion's membership.
"Why are there no obvious miracles today, when there were in ancient times?" Of course, it is common to call just any coincidence a miracle, but these are obviously meant to console and bolster the faith of those who believe in an interceding, active God with a plan for all people. But the paltry evidence offered is a double-edged sword for believers. For every one person who survives a car crash, thousands die. For every family given a delicious warm meal on Christmas morning, thousands die of starvation in Africa. And the list goes on. The suffering isn't some sort of punishment for the wicked; there is no just or equal distribution. In fact, one might say that suffering is random, exactly as we would expect it would be if there were no God looking out for his faithful flock. The miracles are just invented.
Every aspect of the universe, in fact, looks exactly as if there were no God. We move further and further away from the "God of the gaps" of the everyday believer with each new fact, every morsel of knowledge. As we gravitate closer to the gods of the theologians, we see language itself die in the service of religious "learning".
What does this phrase then mean, "the death of language"? It is the rote, the ritual, the veil of equivocation, the tired and empty show that destroys meaning. For the faithful Christian, many words lose their meaning in being subsumed to their faith. Love, justice, belief, grace; so many words rendered so meaningless by equivocation and repetition of the same weary rebutted explanations. For the theologian, his faith is so vague and nebulous that scarcely any import can be assigned to the rotting dust he spews forth. Obfuscation abounds in the most sophisticated treatises; little if any meaning can be gleaned from their twisted pronouncements on the mysteries of the transubstantiation, or the ascension of Mary to heaven, or the sublime nature of the Trinity. They speak of nothing known, of things no man could ever observe, and pretend to be sage in such chicanery. What folly! What arrogance, to presume oneself gifted with the keys to the divine!
But this is exactly it. Every man has his own keys to the gates of heaven, for no two conceptions can really be the same. With no reference, no corresponding reality, every religious idea must necessarily be as individual as the mind that birthed it. No agreement can be made, for there is nothing to agree upon. Every man molds his own religion, one that supports his own views and renders him correct in his interpretation of reality. His biases, his hates, his loves, these are all projected onto a waiting emptiness he calls his God. When he proclaims, "I cannot disobey my God", he means, "My God cannot disobey me."
And atheists are slandered as arrogant. The Bible calls them fools.
How droll.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Therapy? Yes, Virginia, and How!
Let's get it all straight here, folks. Any of my close friends could tell you that I've struggled with emotional problems for a lot of my life. I don't know if this is too personal for something so superficial as a blog mostly concerning music and whatnot, but I feel it's worth talking about.
Today was my intro session with my first real therapist. She seems quite nice, and she was surprisingly positive about my situation considering my reaction to it. To be honest, though 22, I don't drive just yet, I have only had a semester of college, and I don't have a great paying job. I live with my paternal grandparents, my twin, and my father, who has a terminal illness. I struggle daily with resisting the urge to collapse into despair. That's quite a personal thing to say, I must acknowledge, but I hope that in some ways this blog is not just entertaining but also instructive for those who read it. People should know that they are not alone in feeling useless or powerless, or trapped inside their own lives. The anger and resentment present in my life needs an outlet, and it is my aspiration that if even a single reader can gain wisdom from my experience, this will have been worth it.
My problems began early with my premature birth. Being three months prematurely born, I was very small and sickly, not expected to live. As I grew up, I always knew that my mother was a terrible person. She never gave a thought to the consequences of any of her actions. She constantly lied to and manipulated the people around her, and I was often the one ensnared in her web of lies and deception. I may not have been physically abused as far as I know, but I was heavily damaged emotionally thanks to her sociopathic actions. I was used as an emotional bludgeon against my own father, and our relationship has never recovered. Countless lies were told, insane accusations flying, always the hate and corruption and manipulation. As a result, tensions pervaded my every interaction with any of my family, and I learned not to rely on others for my emotional support.
In school I was intermittently a good to excellent student, obviously gifted, but the fact of my small stature and the uniqueness of my being a twin and an intellectual made me a target early on for ridicule and sneering jokes. Girls laughed at my pathetic social skills and nerdy dress, guys jeered at my constant reading and quiet, polite nature. I oscillated between achievement and just scraping by, the isolation and loneliness deepening from grade school on into junior high and high school. Even in high school where grades really counted and the academically gifted were encouraged, I could find little companionship among the so-called 'smart kids'. They studied, they worked hard, they worked in groups and palled around together, forming their own semi-cool clique. I slacked off and made the grade anyway, everything came to me easily, and I stood alone even in a group. I had a few close friends, but in the wider social scope of the high school, I was a freak, a misfit. I wasn't even geeky enough to be a full-fledged geek, because I adored vulgarity and high art, punk rock and D&D, drug culture and French novels. I existed in the area between the freaks and the nerds, belonging to neither.
All this would have been enough for an angry and confused teenager just trying to make his way in the world, only wanting to be noticed by somebody, anybody. But at home, I had HER, my mother the cunt. Her drunk breath, her cowed gaze, her constant fighting and bickering and bullying. Always acting the martyr, she heaped on the guilt and paranoia when she wasn't ignoring me entirely or out sleeping around. She latched onto men left and right, slithering up to them with sweet talk, feigning interest in their hobbies and lives, and crushing the life out of them like some fucked up anaconda.
When I was old enough to think for myself, I began to question Christian dogma. I had never believed in fairies or Santa Claus, and I only believed in one real monster, who lived in my house and for whom I had, even after all she had done, the obligation to feign affection. I never had faith to lose, but once I began to question, it never stopped until the whole Christian system fell apart. All the rationalizations, the childish insecurities, the most obviously invented ad-hoc explanations. After a while it became so ridiculous that I realized that I had been an atheist since the day I was born. I had stopped going to church for a number of years, and once I was no longer immersed in an atmosphere of Christian indoctrination, I felt free to self-identify as an atheist. This became (of course) a huge source of tension on my mother's side of the family, who were mostly nominally Christian but who couldn't allow a young person to think for himself. I was constantly emotionally assaulted over the issue for some time, most of the family believing that I had been pressured or manipulated into renouncing my faith by my paternal grandparents.
My religious non-conviction also put me in stark contrast to most of the people I knew at school, and became just one more factor separating me from them.
Every facet of my life pushed my further away from other people. I stopped listening to the radio, I stopped watching TV. I began to cultivate a distinctly hipster taste, delving into avant-garde and art rock music and foreign films. For me, the mainstream became boring, uninspiring, catatonic in its mind-numbing stupidity.
Other people became my enemies, and I cut them down mercilessly in my assessments. "Too dim. Too vapid. Pseudo-intellectual. Fraud, fake, pissant, jerk." No scorn was too viscous, no one was to be spared. I judged them all and threw them away. However, I took no pleasure in belittling them, because I turned my sights on myself. "Loser. Child. Weakling. Freak. How can you even stand yourself?" I had always lacked confidence, but soon developed a full-blown self-hatred, cutting myself down constantly, undermining my abilities, accusing myself silently without cease.
I lapsed often into depression, even when I went away to college and gained my freedom. For a semester I slacked off, stayed up, secluded myself and shut down. Managing a couple of credits, I asked my mother to pay up for a loan she had promised to take out. Her response was a stark no. She gave no reasoning. I argued, I pleaded. I said that if she was declined (as she claimed falsely to be in bankruptcy) I could get a loan myself. But it was to no avail. She didn't care whether she paid a cent or not; she only wanted to watch me squirm. So I did, as I had to, and when all was said and done, I left school and moved out, deciding that my father and his parents would take me in.
In the years following, I kept up with my friends from high school, got a job at a fast food place, started saving some money. Things have been calm these last few years, but time is passing me by, and I can't seem to escape these same problems of isolation, loneliness, and frustration.
But that brings us back to today. I've been on medication for a couple of months, and now with today's session, I'm in therapy. I can only hope that I achieve some small breakthrough. Or maybe I can upsize it for just a dollar more....
Today was my intro session with my first real therapist. She seems quite nice, and she was surprisingly positive about my situation considering my reaction to it. To be honest, though 22, I don't drive just yet, I have only had a semester of college, and I don't have a great paying job. I live with my paternal grandparents, my twin, and my father, who has a terminal illness. I struggle daily with resisting the urge to collapse into despair. That's quite a personal thing to say, I must acknowledge, but I hope that in some ways this blog is not just entertaining but also instructive for those who read it. People should know that they are not alone in feeling useless or powerless, or trapped inside their own lives. The anger and resentment present in my life needs an outlet, and it is my aspiration that if even a single reader can gain wisdom from my experience, this will have been worth it.
My problems began early with my premature birth. Being three months prematurely born, I was very small and sickly, not expected to live. As I grew up, I always knew that my mother was a terrible person. She never gave a thought to the consequences of any of her actions. She constantly lied to and manipulated the people around her, and I was often the one ensnared in her web of lies and deception. I may not have been physically abused as far as I know, but I was heavily damaged emotionally thanks to her sociopathic actions. I was used as an emotional bludgeon against my own father, and our relationship has never recovered. Countless lies were told, insane accusations flying, always the hate and corruption and manipulation. As a result, tensions pervaded my every interaction with any of my family, and I learned not to rely on others for my emotional support.
In school I was intermittently a good to excellent student, obviously gifted, but the fact of my small stature and the uniqueness of my being a twin and an intellectual made me a target early on for ridicule and sneering jokes. Girls laughed at my pathetic social skills and nerdy dress, guys jeered at my constant reading and quiet, polite nature. I oscillated between achievement and just scraping by, the isolation and loneliness deepening from grade school on into junior high and high school. Even in high school where grades really counted and the academically gifted were encouraged, I could find little companionship among the so-called 'smart kids'. They studied, they worked hard, they worked in groups and palled around together, forming their own semi-cool clique. I slacked off and made the grade anyway, everything came to me easily, and I stood alone even in a group. I had a few close friends, but in the wider social scope of the high school, I was a freak, a misfit. I wasn't even geeky enough to be a full-fledged geek, because I adored vulgarity and high art, punk rock and D&D, drug culture and French novels. I existed in the area between the freaks and the nerds, belonging to neither.
All this would have been enough for an angry and confused teenager just trying to make his way in the world, only wanting to be noticed by somebody, anybody. But at home, I had HER, my mother the cunt. Her drunk breath, her cowed gaze, her constant fighting and bickering and bullying. Always acting the martyr, she heaped on the guilt and paranoia when she wasn't ignoring me entirely or out sleeping around. She latched onto men left and right, slithering up to them with sweet talk, feigning interest in their hobbies and lives, and crushing the life out of them like some fucked up anaconda.
When I was old enough to think for myself, I began to question Christian dogma. I had never believed in fairies or Santa Claus, and I only believed in one real monster, who lived in my house and for whom I had, even after all she had done, the obligation to feign affection. I never had faith to lose, but once I began to question, it never stopped until the whole Christian system fell apart. All the rationalizations, the childish insecurities, the most obviously invented ad-hoc explanations. After a while it became so ridiculous that I realized that I had been an atheist since the day I was born. I had stopped going to church for a number of years, and once I was no longer immersed in an atmosphere of Christian indoctrination, I felt free to self-identify as an atheist. This became (of course) a huge source of tension on my mother's side of the family, who were mostly nominally Christian but who couldn't allow a young person to think for himself. I was constantly emotionally assaulted over the issue for some time, most of the family believing that I had been pressured or manipulated into renouncing my faith by my paternal grandparents.
My religious non-conviction also put me in stark contrast to most of the people I knew at school, and became just one more factor separating me from them.
Every facet of my life pushed my further away from other people. I stopped listening to the radio, I stopped watching TV. I began to cultivate a distinctly hipster taste, delving into avant-garde and art rock music and foreign films. For me, the mainstream became boring, uninspiring, catatonic in its mind-numbing stupidity.
Other people became my enemies, and I cut them down mercilessly in my assessments. "Too dim. Too vapid. Pseudo-intellectual. Fraud, fake, pissant, jerk." No scorn was too viscous, no one was to be spared. I judged them all and threw them away. However, I took no pleasure in belittling them, because I turned my sights on myself. "Loser. Child. Weakling. Freak. How can you even stand yourself?" I had always lacked confidence, but soon developed a full-blown self-hatred, cutting myself down constantly, undermining my abilities, accusing myself silently without cease.
I lapsed often into depression, even when I went away to college and gained my freedom. For a semester I slacked off, stayed up, secluded myself and shut down. Managing a couple of credits, I asked my mother to pay up for a loan she had promised to take out. Her response was a stark no. She gave no reasoning. I argued, I pleaded. I said that if she was declined (as she claimed falsely to be in bankruptcy) I could get a loan myself. But it was to no avail. She didn't care whether she paid a cent or not; she only wanted to watch me squirm. So I did, as I had to, and when all was said and done, I left school and moved out, deciding that my father and his parents would take me in.
In the years following, I kept up with my friends from high school, got a job at a fast food place, started saving some money. Things have been calm these last few years, but time is passing me by, and I can't seem to escape these same problems of isolation, loneliness, and frustration.
But that brings us back to today. I've been on medication for a couple of months, and now with today's session, I'm in therapy. I can only hope that I achieve some small breakthrough. Or maybe I can upsize it for just a dollar more....
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Liam Neeson is not afraid of you and he will beat your ass.
Don't be fooled by his smiling eyes. This mother will eat you.Soon as I get home from the movie, it was totally ROCK BAND TIME! Who else here has a love/hate relationship with Rock Band and/or Microsoft? Personally, I don't regret either the purchase of Rock Band 1 or 2, nor the 360, but I've had to deal with plenty of bullshit. Probably not as much as some others, but a lot.
My Xbox is now on its fourth refurbishment, and the guys at MS are kindly sending me a new one. Still, four is overkill, and even they admitted that. What kills me is the frequency of problems that not just I but everyone has with the 360. I know only one person who has had no refurbishments. The people I know that own PS3- no problems. My PS2 still works. Hell, my Genesis, though finicky, still fuckin' works. But my original Xbox, and now my 360, both died constantly. I don't want to have to buy a PS3, but I'm tired of sending that shit in.
Let's talk Rock Band. I'm a drummer and guitarist in-game, and I do like the Rock Band 2 drums overall. They feel great, they're quieter, all that shit. But what the hell, I've had to send mine in three times, and once I just ended up buying an extra set. I've had three kick pedals break on me, one RB1, two RB2. (Damn you, Next To You. Damn you.) I eventually just bought an all-metal pedal, expensive, but worth it. No dropped notes, no more playing in my socks. Still, I don't see why the hinge wasn't reinforced on the RB2 pedal. I mean, there was a metal plate, but that just kept the pedal itself from snapping in half. The real problem was still and remains the hinge of the pedal.
I think what we have here is a failure to communicate.
But, that's not my problem anymore. Now I've got my badass metal pedal... which cost another 70 bones. But no worries. No sirree, the only thing left for me to do is to enjoy the game.... and get back over a hundred dollars they charged me mistakenly. ARGH. (Which is now done and took two seconds, honestly not a big deal.)
Listen though. Once all is said and done, and it's all over with, it's been worth all the hassle and bullshit. 360 is a great system, Rock Band is a great game. I just wish it were simpler sometimes, that things could just work right the first time and as intended.
What the fuck ever. Go see Taken. Then go watch Weekend. For no reason.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Task of Myanmar.
Let's get down to business here. If you like sound fashioned into some sort of rhythmic/tonal/melodic form of communication and stimulation, and you've got the good fortune to know anything about underground rock music, you already know Mission of Burma in passing at least. If you are not already intimately familiar with their work, I am sorry to say that though they are one of the greatest rock and roll bands since rock and roll itself existed, they are not easy, palatable, accessible, instantly catchy or even great at everything they do. However, they are better when they suck than most bands on their best day, simply by virtue of their inimitable form and function. They're a thinking man's rock band, or a thug's art rock outfit, or maybe a poppy kid's secret punk weapon.Whatever the hell you want to call them, they're not simple or easily imitated. Not just anyone can get a handle on their style, because of its highly individualistic nature. No other band really replicates their chemistry and wholly unique dynamics and songwriting. This isn't to say they're perfect. Their singing style is pretty amateurish, their songs can be excessively conceptual in nature, and because of their three songwriters, they can be quite scattershot in both their style of songwriting and the overall quality of their output. However, even admitting they have such (admittedly minor) faults, I would have to characterize them more as pleasant eccentricities than true marks of failure. Even at their conceptual nadir, they still make better music than most bands can on their best day.
No band so wholly unlike the mainstream can appeal to everyone, but MoB's highly singular style and the sheer talent of the band members has endeared them to thousands.
Take, for instance, our man on the skins, Peter Prescott. A future bandleader himself before the Mission of Burma reunion, drummer Peter Prescott is a perennial fan favorite, possessing a high energy post-punk attack of both highly complex beats and jarring screams and proclamations from behind the kit. One can only imagine the difficulty of singing and drumming in differing rhythms simultaneously, but Mr. Prescott accomplishes this with great discipline. His scorched-earth punk anti-anthems kick up a bratty, discontented storm of equal parts intellectual scorn and contrarian tantrum, with some honest-to-goodness pop hooks thrown in just for shits. Since he even switched to guitar for his band Kustomized, he contributes guitar arrangements for some Mission of Burma songs as well, such as the slashing and spasmodic riff to his own "Let Yourself Go" from their 2006 album The Obliterati.
Pete's the one in the back engulfed in bliss. Bliss, I tells ya!
The most popular Mission of Burma songs are usually the creation of their bassist, Clint Conley. Our hero Clint is lavishly gifted with pop-song prowess and razor wit, and his high barking and keening delivery lends a biting emotional edge to his damaged military marches and penetrating political and personal manifestos. What really sets apart his bass style from most other second fiddle twiddlers is that he isn't content to be 'just' a bassist. He doesn't play some watered-down guitar lines, or slavishly imitate some vanilla funk groove or scrub out boring indie rock simplicity. Like Peter Hook of Joy Division, he uses the bass as an instrument should be used, carving out unique sonic territory; he packs each song with an array of double-stops, chords, and fantastic riffs occasionally supplemented by effects pedal usage. His driving and muscular hooks really propel most Mission of Burma compositions from extremely interesting guitar rock music to divine and sublime realms of body and mind-shaking grooves.
At Brown University, Clint wields his legendary white Fender.
So we've covered the drummer and the bassist. But, wouldn't most people be wondering by now, what about the guitarist? In most bands, the guitarist is the De facto leader and lead songwriter, and would be a priority in most band biographies. Interestingly, Mission of Burma is different, but at the same time, really isn't. Roger Miller is the lead songwriter for Mission of Burma, contributing most of the band's output, handling most of the singing duties, and has the most formal musical training, having studied piano and tuba in music school and coming from a background of 'serious' music rather than pure punk rock or new wave. However, the band is a very collaborative enterprise, and having three singers and songwriters, the title of 'leader' is not bandied about much.
That said, Mr. Miller still commands quite a bit of stage presence. His angular and bizarre compositions form the bulk of Mission of Burma output, and his highly rhythmic guitar style and unconventional solos place him at the forefront of post-punk guitarists. Back in the first phase of Mission of Burma, he began experiencing tinnitus, and his rifle range earphones served as both a safety measure to prevent his tinnitus from worsening and an inadvertent fashion icon. Tinnitus, a disease characterized by a constant and often painful ringing in the ears, is a clear hazard to those musicians who do not take preventative steps to protect their hearing and who utilize massive amounts of volume in their stage performances. Roger's tinnitus was a clear factor in the original breakup of MoB in 1983, but after 19 years, the time seemed right to reunite, and he took steps from the outset to avoid damaging his ears further. He now wears ear protection and is separated from the drums by a Plexiglas wall, but boasts no less energy or passion from the years intervening the breakup and the reunion.
So he's no Aretha. I don't hear anyone complaining.
So, who's this fourth guy, here? We've got the bassist, guitarist, drummer... but there's another element to their sound, if you know what you're listening for. Some hooks, some sounds, just aren't instruments. They are, in fact, tape loops, provided in Burma Mk. I by Martin Swope. When the whole reunion business went down, Swope was in Hawaii, and so Bob Weston, bassist and producer, he of Shellac fame, was offered the job of providing tape loops and sound engineering for one of his favorite all-time bands. Lucky bastard...
Swope, far left. Few photos are floating around, he's pretty enigmatic. (Spooky ghost noise)
Bob Weston, first a bassist, now a producer and tape guy too! Yay!
I've been talking about these guys in the present tense, but you may wonder, just what is the deal with the breakup and reformation? Well, if a little history lesson would do ya good, sit down on old Altron2095's knee, and he'll tell ya a story.
Let's journey back to 1979, to when Mission of Burma became a band. First we've got the Moving Parts, Clint's in the band. Roger, sensing that Ann Arbor is a dead end, moves to Boston and answers and ad for a bassist for the Moving Parts, but, they say they need a guitarist. So, he switches to guitar after being a bassist back in his hometown, and after a little while, tensions begin to arise in the Parts. Erik Lindgren, their leader, is a keyboardist that writes more fractured and arty pop songs, while Roger writes more rocking and unconventional compositions. After an amicable split, Roger and Clint decide to audition drummers for their new band. After trying out a few times, Peter Prescott is drafted to hammer down their crazy beats. After less than three shows as a trio, Roger feels that a song he's written, New Disco, would benefit from tape loops. Martin Swope, who was sort of hovering around in the background by this time, was good with tape loops, and so the last piece of the puzzle fell in place.
Buncha dour motherfuckers, weren't they?
After getting early support from local radio stations and zines, Burma hit a wall when it came to going national. There just wasn't an infrastructure there for them to get the word out and tour successfully. So, after their Academy Fight Song single, the Signals, Calls and Marches EP, and one very promising and powerful debut album, Vs., they called it quits due to Roger's tinnitus and their lack of success.
Their story was nearly a tragic one: a truly great band making exciting music derailed by hearing loss and public indifference. But something changed in the 19 years afterward. Maybe it was the grunge explosion, the rise of college radio, maybe it was the rise of major labels and indie rock, maybe the Internet's capability for information sharing began making it easier for smaller bands to become more well-known. Michael Azzerad's book on the underground rock scene, Our Band Could Be Your Life was also certainly a factor, putting Mission of Burma in a historical context alongside their contemporaries like Black Flag, Husker Du, Minutemen, and the Replacements.
Whatever the combination of reasons, the reunion happened. When the band decided to reunite for two shows, they went over well enough that they booked more shows, and then more. Things went so naturally and smoothly that sometime later, they were no longer reunited, but were simply united. After enough material accumulated from their new rehearsals and shows, in 2004 Burma put out Onoffon, only their second album in 22 years. It was widely hailed as an excellent return to form that boasted both solid new compositions and excellent reworkings of older material, both from MoB and from Roger's solo outings in the years between.
The band didn't wait another 22 years to record a follow-up. Their 2006 album The Obliterati contains some of their very best pop music, and that's no slight. The hooks are golden. The choruses sparkle when they need to and explode with abandon. Just from one listen to "Nancy Reagan's Head" it's clear that the same zany brains are at work behind the twisted arrangements and goofy breakdowns that pervade this behemoth.
The Obliterati- crazy stupid awesome title, crazy stupid awesome music.
Since then, they've been touring intermittently, finding an audience of both old and new faces. As the old fans dropped off, a generation of indie rock fans has risen up to meet the band who they owe everything to. In some crazy stunt that isn't likely to ever happen again, Mission of Burma have managed to outlast their first incarnation in terms of time and in output, with seven years going strong in the reunion and the two aforementioned albums under their belt. Such a fluke has been warmly appreciated by fans, and they are doing great as of this writing, having re-released their back catalog and with another album expected. Hell, they even made it into my personal favorite fake music game, Rock Band. So what's next for the Burma cats? No one can say for sure, but rest assured, this Mission is as accomplished as it gets.
No band so wholly unlike the mainstream can appeal to everyone, but MoB's highly singular style and the sheer talent of the band members has endeared them to thousands.
Take, for instance, our man on the skins, Peter Prescott. A future bandleader himself before the Mission of Burma reunion, drummer Peter Prescott is a perennial fan favorite, possessing a high energy post-punk attack of both highly complex beats and jarring screams and proclamations from behind the kit. One can only imagine the difficulty of singing and drumming in differing rhythms simultaneously, but Mr. Prescott accomplishes this with great discipline. His scorched-earth punk anti-anthems kick up a bratty, discontented storm of equal parts intellectual scorn and contrarian tantrum, with some honest-to-goodness pop hooks thrown in just for shits. Since he even switched to guitar for his band Kustomized, he contributes guitar arrangements for some Mission of Burma songs as well, such as the slashing and spasmodic riff to his own "Let Yourself Go" from their 2006 album The Obliterati.
Pete's the one in the back engulfed in bliss. Bliss, I tells ya!
At Brown University, Clint wields his legendary white Fender.So we've covered the drummer and the bassist. But, wouldn't most people be wondering by now, what about the guitarist? In most bands, the guitarist is the De facto leader and lead songwriter, and would be a priority in most band biographies. Interestingly, Mission of Burma is different, but at the same time, really isn't. Roger Miller is the lead songwriter for Mission of Burma, contributing most of the band's output, handling most of the singing duties, and has the most formal musical training, having studied piano and tuba in music school and coming from a background of 'serious' music rather than pure punk rock or new wave. However, the band is a very collaborative enterprise, and having three singers and songwriters, the title of 'leader' is not bandied about much.
That said, Mr. Miller still commands quite a bit of stage presence. His angular and bizarre compositions form the bulk of Mission of Burma output, and his highly rhythmic guitar style and unconventional solos place him at the forefront of post-punk guitarists. Back in the first phase of Mission of Burma, he began experiencing tinnitus, and his rifle range earphones served as both a safety measure to prevent his tinnitus from worsening and an inadvertent fashion icon. Tinnitus, a disease characterized by a constant and often painful ringing in the ears, is a clear hazard to those musicians who do not take preventative steps to protect their hearing and who utilize massive amounts of volume in their stage performances. Roger's tinnitus was a clear factor in the original breakup of MoB in 1983, but after 19 years, the time seemed right to reunite, and he took steps from the outset to avoid damaging his ears further. He now wears ear protection and is separated from the drums by a Plexiglas wall, but boasts no less energy or passion from the years intervening the breakup and the reunion.
So he's no Aretha. I don't hear anyone complaining.So, who's this fourth guy, here? We've got the bassist, guitarist, drummer... but there's another element to their sound, if you know what you're listening for. Some hooks, some sounds, just aren't instruments. They are, in fact, tape loops, provided in Burma Mk. I by Martin Swope. When the whole reunion business went down, Swope was in Hawaii, and so Bob Weston, bassist and producer, he of Shellac fame, was offered the job of providing tape loops and sound engineering for one of his favorite all-time bands. Lucky bastard...
Swope, far left. Few photos are floating around, he's pretty enigmatic. (Spooky ghost noise)
Bob Weston, first a bassist, now a producer and tape guy too! Yay!Let's journey back to 1979, to when Mission of Burma became a band. First we've got the Moving Parts, Clint's in the band. Roger, sensing that Ann Arbor is a dead end, moves to Boston and answers and ad for a bassist for the Moving Parts, but, they say they need a guitarist. So, he switches to guitar after being a bassist back in his hometown, and after a little while, tensions begin to arise in the Parts. Erik Lindgren, their leader, is a keyboardist that writes more fractured and arty pop songs, while Roger writes more rocking and unconventional compositions. After an amicable split, Roger and Clint decide to audition drummers for their new band. After trying out a few times, Peter Prescott is drafted to hammer down their crazy beats. After less than three shows as a trio, Roger feels that a song he's written, New Disco, would benefit from tape loops. Martin Swope, who was sort of hovering around in the background by this time, was good with tape loops, and so the last piece of the puzzle fell in place.
Buncha dour motherfuckers, weren't they?After getting early support from local radio stations and zines, Burma hit a wall when it came to going national. There just wasn't an infrastructure there for them to get the word out and tour successfully. So, after their Academy Fight Song single, the Signals, Calls and Marches EP, and one very promising and powerful debut album, Vs., they called it quits due to Roger's tinnitus and their lack of success.
Their story was nearly a tragic one: a truly great band making exciting music derailed by hearing loss and public indifference. But something changed in the 19 years afterward. Maybe it was the grunge explosion, the rise of college radio, maybe it was the rise of major labels and indie rock, maybe the Internet's capability for information sharing began making it easier for smaller bands to become more well-known. Michael Azzerad's book on the underground rock scene, Our Band Could Be Your Life was also certainly a factor, putting Mission of Burma in a historical context alongside their contemporaries like Black Flag, Husker Du, Minutemen, and the Replacements.
Whatever the combination of reasons, the reunion happened. When the band decided to reunite for two shows, they went over well enough that they booked more shows, and then more. Things went so naturally and smoothly that sometime later, they were no longer reunited, but were simply united. After enough material accumulated from their new rehearsals and shows, in 2004 Burma put out Onoffon, only their second album in 22 years. It was widely hailed as an excellent return to form that boasted both solid new compositions and excellent reworkings of older material, both from MoB and from Roger's solo outings in the years between.
The band didn't wait another 22 years to record a follow-up. Their 2006 album The Obliterati contains some of their very best pop music, and that's no slight. The hooks are golden. The choruses sparkle when they need to and explode with abandon. Just from one listen to "Nancy Reagan's Head" it's clear that the same zany brains are at work behind the twisted arrangements and goofy breakdowns that pervade this behemoth.
The Obliterati- crazy stupid awesome title, crazy stupid awesome music.Friday, February 20, 2009
Introductions are in order.
Welcome, web, to the World of Ron. (Patent pending.) "I am"... those are dangerous words, I would wager. To say "I am" is to declare, and ambiguity and silence have always been a good safe haven in my bet. I've never been great with labels and such, so... If you really must know, I am of a semi-rare class of individual known for their looks (not good looks) because I am an identical twin. I am in the estimation of most a pretty rare bird. I have an affinity for the weird and "out there", and I'm not the easiest person to get to know or to read. If you knew any weird hipsters that you avoided in high school, I was one of those guys. I listened to better music than you did, I watched French films, I read Existentialist novels, and I generally thought you were a douche. Hell, the title of the blog comes from a Godard film. "Christianity- the death of language!" I loved the line so much, I had to use it. I suppose that clues you in that I'm not a Christian. I have nothing but good things to say about Christians that I know, but their belief system is as fucked as they come. Hard as they try, they just can't make it make sense to someone who's not already indoctrinated. But that will be for a later post. For now, I am an atheist, if you must put a label on it. I am an intellectual first and foremost, and it seemed to me to be the most tenable and agreeable opinion for a rational person. There will probably be a few posts on this blog dedicated to Christian bullshit, but for the most part, expect a variety of things. Music, movies, and criminally unknown things of all kinds. I hope you have a pleasant stay, first real post will be about one of the best bands ever out of Boston, Mission of Burma.
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