mission of burma is great

I’m a little late to the table writing about this one, but can we just go back in time to last Saturday for a minute? I went to see Mission of Burma performing “Signals, Calls, and Marches” at the Bowery Ballroom and it was such an incredible experience I was glad we traversed through the “dangerous ceiling to floor lightning” and “flash flood warning” to get there.

Mission of Burma has always had a little near and dear place in my heart, growing up near Boston they were part of the pantheon of groups that I was too young to see when they were happening, but was always aware of as a “cool boston band” as I got deeper and deeper into music. Only around from 1979-1983, their recordings had an immediacy that still resonated to me in high school in the late 80’s early 90’s, and still resonates so much today. The experimentation mixed with the anthemic sing along, and the noise, the cool sounds, that almost scratchy tinny guitar sound so refreshing, making you want to pick up yourself and stop the bullshit and be glad that human beings make art.

Or something like that.

I never got to see Mission of Burma when they reformed in 2002, And missed a show last year somewhere outdoors in Connecticut for their new album “The Obliterati”. I heard that they were playing with Bob Weston from Shellac. I heard that they were still excellent live. So I jumped at the chance to hear them perform “Signals, Calls, and Marches” with all the songs that I know and remember. “Academy Fight Song” and of course “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver”, “Max Ernst” among others.

It was exactly as I expected, a really great show. And they all seemed really happy to be playing. And this is the best thing, I think, about the punk/indie reunions in general, is that back in the day we all looked at aging bands playing super expensive arena shows that our parents or parents friends would go to as extremely lame, that we would never ever do that, we would stop playing while we were good, there wouldn’t be any nostalgia shows ever for our kinds of music. It was about NOW. But the way this scene is doing it is real, and the bands we want to see seem so grateful that they get to play again, and seem to be having fun and they are really good, and its not lame, and there are generations of kids who were too young and never got to see it who get their chance. Its a win win situation both ways, seeing these shows sometimes seems like a rare glimpse to see something you never thought was going to happen. The surprise of it all makes it all the more great. This was never supposed to happen. We thought we missed the boat. But it is and its pretty awesome, you’ve got to admit. At least I think so.

The tour is in conjunction with the re-release of the Burma records on Matador records. It looks like they did a really good job with the packaging. In a world of downloads, this seems like a special object. They each include a dvd of “unreleased live footage” and two of them have additional unreleased tracks and are remastered from the original analog tapes. The booklets look good too, from these pictures:

(I got these photos from the Matador Direct site, where they are entitled “ MISSION OF BURMA RE-ISSUE GLAMOUR SHOTS. )

I’m glad that Mission of Burma are getting some of the attention they deserve and it was a great show, making my little former bostonian heart proud.

Speaking of Bostonia, there are some great flyers and back in the day stories here at Joe Harvard’s site, where I got this Mission of Burma flyer that is spelled wrong from a show at Mass College of Art.

This Pere Ubu one is good too. I miss flyers.