The group formed in 1979 with Roger Miller on guitar, Clint Conley on bass, Peter Prescott on drums, and Martin Swope contributing audiotape manipulation and acting as the band’s sound engineer.
[2] Despite their initial success in the growing independent music circuit, Mission of Burma disbanded in 1983 due to Miller's development of tinnitus caused by the loud volume of the band's live performances.
[3] In its original lineup, the band released only two singles, an EP, and one LP, titled Vs. Mission of Burma reformed in 2002, with Bob Weston replacing Swope.
Auditioning new drummers was accomplished, as Michael Azzerad puts it, "by playing 'out' music, such as Sun Ra and James Brown, until the applicant left.
[6] They took their name from a "Mission of Burma" plaque Conley saw on a New York City diplomatic building; he thought the phrase had a "sort of murky and disturbing" quality.
From the start, Mission of Burma received support from local music magazine Boston Rock, which printed a lengthy interview with the band before they released their first record, and MIT community radio station WMBR.
When tickets sold out very quickly and concert dates expanded to two nights in New York and three in Boston, Mission of Burma decided to re-form more permanently to tour and record new material.
[24] In June 2020, Boston NPR affiliate WBUR-FM reported that the band had amicably disbanded, with Conley, Miller and Prescott remaining "good friends."
[1] Throughout Mission of Burma’s career, Roger Miller and Clint Conley handled most of the singing and songwriting, with Peter Prescott contributing a few songs per record as well.
[25] Conley’s composition "That's When I Reach for My Revolver" remains Mission of Burma’s most well known song having been covered by Moby, Graham Coxon, and Catherine Wheel.
Prescott explained Swope's methods in a 1997 interview: "What Martin did ... was tape something that was going on live, manipulate it, and send it back in (via the soundboard) as a sort of new instrument.
"[9] Swope's tapework ranged from subtle and nearly subaural (such as the quiet shifting feedback sounds in Conley's "That's When I Reach For My Revolver"), to prominent and even jarring (such as the high-pitched two-note squeal in Miller's "Red").
Journalist Michael Azerrad later wrote: "A lot of people never knew about Swope's contribution and were mystified by how the musicians onstage could wring such amazing phantom sounds from their instruments."
"[26] While the band's improvisational side and the unpredictable chaos of Swope's tape work contributed to this inconsistency, the two main factors were (as Lozaw implies) the live sound and the pacing and timing of their sets.
The band's set lists were composed by committee a few minutes before going on stage, and could range from well-constructed to seemingly picked at random, and there was a general reluctance to repeat any song placement or sequence that had worked in the past.
Numerous bands and artists have cited Burma as an influence, including Foo Fighters,[27] the Replacements,[5] Thurston Moore,[28] Hüsker Dü bassist Greg Norton,[29] Buffalo Tom,[30] Drive Like Jehu,[31] Unwound,[32] Metz,[33] and the Dirtbombs.
[34] Artists such as Grand Theft Audio, Scott Sorry, Catherine Wheel, Graham Coxon, Pegboy, Moby and Down by Law have all covered Conley's "That's When I Reach for My Revolver,”[35] while both R.E.M.