Mission of Burma (who are playing the Cat this Saturday) has never really made sense. I remember hearing That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate as a young-teens harDCore fanatic in the early 90s and assuming they were some new Dischord band. Then 10 years later I heard songs from their first comeback album ONoffON and I thought it was some lost recording of theirs from 1981 (though to confuse matters some of the best songs like Dirt were written right before the band broke up in 1982) 2006’s all original Obliterati upped the stakes immensely, sounding like a Mission of Burma from 1992—louder, tauter, more earnest rather than snide, but still classic [and ass-kicking]. I’m guessing 10 years from now it’ll be obviously the progenitor of some new crop of punk rock. Now as Matador re-releases their first EP and album from back in the day, they’ve embarked on an every-weekend tour wherein they play the entirety of one of those legendary works onstage. For both audience and performer this exercise must be surreal as well as exciting…

We spoke to drumming-shouter Peter Prescott from a record store in Boston where someone was listening to Public Enemy really loud, about the weirdness of playing whole albums live, being an oddball teenager, and what it’s like to be unstuck in musical history, leaping around like Scott Bakula through eras and genres without ever seeming archaic.

(to get in the mood crank this really loud-:

and then try talking over it. got it? ok, here we go:)

BYT: So you’ve been playing these entire-album-concerts for a little while…
Peter Prescott: We did Boston and New York…last week I guess? But we actually did a week and a half in Spain and France before that. We didn’t do it there, but…the summer is going to be spent doing that.

BYT: What is that experience like playing albums in their entirety? Seems like it’d be a bit weird…
PP: Well at first, yes, it did feel a little weird because the whole basis of us existing at this point in time…you know how a shark needs to eat to exist? We had to keep doing new things to exist. That;s the only reason, six years after we first played a show, that’ we’re still here, that we keep looking forward. We knew this stuff was going to come out, that it was going to be moved to matador and have bonus stuff and dvds, and I think the only way we could handle the idea of stepping into the past was to treat it as a brand new thing, which I guess it is, since we never did that. We never played those records back-to-front, and we certainly in the past couple of years have hardly played any of that material. We’ve basically leaned on the records we put out recently. The other thing is that we didn’t know all of that material! We had to re-learn some of it since when we started playing together again in 2001, or 2002, there were a couple songs that we immediately learned and felt comfortable learning, and there were a handful that we just didn’t go to. So there’s been a challenge to it, relearning those ones that we never played, fitting into this format of doing the record. At this point it’s starting to become natural. We played a few shows that way and the whole flow of it is starting to feel correct now. When we first started practicing toward doing this, it din not feel natural. It was like “Wow this is just bizarre to step backwards!” But I think as long as we treat it as something so old that it becomes new again it will be OK.

BYT: Was there an effort to recapture the exact tone of the record, or did you just let songs develop as you practiced them?
PP: I think the natural way to play it ends up being somewhat like the record. Let’s put it this way we didn’t try to rearrange anything. We didn’t attack it that way because that wouldn’t really be…playing the record, you know what I mean? It’s not like we studied everything, but…those songs that we didn’t learn in the first place, I think we subconsciously put them aside because they harder! [laughs] So, we didn’t go out of our way to recreate it perfectly. We wanted to get the feel right. That’s always been the pre-eminent thing with us as a group that it feels right to us. And if it feels right to us it tends to feel right to other people.

BYT: Is Bob Weston still doing his thing offstage with the tape loops and samplers…filling the position Martin Swope used to occupy?
PP: That’s what he does in the band. As long as we play that’s going to be his role.

BYT: So it does maintain the nuances and spontaneity that brings to the table…
PP: I think so. Like I said I think the most important thing is to make it feel like it’s this out of control jaguar. That it’s just seething and not like we’re recreating a book or something, like its coming unglued, coming unhinged. Now that we’ve played two in Boston and two in New York, now it’s starting to get that feel.

BYT: Would you still agree with the statement behind your live album’s title, that “The Horrible Truth About Burma” is that some nights the machine goes off the rails?
PP: We’re definitely less inconsistent. There were a lot of reasons that it went off the rails back in the day! It’s always a little different, but it is much more consistent than it was in the late 70s.

BYT: It seems like, comparing video footage, that you guys rock out way more now, jumping around and stuff…is that a true assessment?
PP: I guess it is. It’s not conscious but I guess it is. It’s a really strange thing to do this thing we did that long ago at our age now. It’s an incredibly pleasant thing, but it’s odd. Maybe that hour and half you’re on stage matters a lot more now than it did back then. You got to pull every bit of joy out of it. So yeah, I think everyone’s hammering a little harder and making it count more I suppose. Because we never know when we’re going to do it again!

BYT: Toward the end of the band did you start to question the fun of playing onstage?
PP: A little of that creeps in at the end of any band. You’re a little bit more aware of the pitfalls than you are of the fun. So there’s no reason for us to play now and not have fun. Certainly we’ve done it; we don’t have to do it again unless it’s this really joyous thing. So yeah, that’s probably true, that when we were coming to a stop we found more of the frustration in it, and less of the fun.

BYT: When I look back now, it seems like Burma was totally unlike anything else that was happening in the US at the time. Was that present for you all as group, and did it wear on you?
PP: We always felt a little isolated. You kind of get this defensive posture and you say, “OK you don’t want us well fuck you!” Like a rat cornered. I think it made us stronger in away. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, I guess. The feeling that it was hard to find bands that we related to at the time—in a sense that was a weirdly empowering sort of thing. I guess we feel sort of similar now. There’s plenty of music we love now, and there’s plenty we loved then, but I think as a group of people we feel like this isolated club. I think it’s a positive thing in a weird way, it makes you a better group because there’s no point comparing yourself to anyone else, because you have nothing in common with anyone else!

BYT: I liken it to hanging out with the friends you made in middle school, this feeling that no matter how much you’ve changed and grown, you still feel most like yourself around guys you knew back then.
PP: The crazy thing is: I get along with these people as well as, well certainly any band I’ve been in. It’s almost shocking how easily we started back up again. Like you said, people change over the years, which is why most reunions don’t last very long. You go “You’re not the same guy I used to know!” It may be good for a show or two but, in general it’s really difficult to pick up where you left off in terms of personal chemistry—forget about musical chemistry. It is kind of bizarre. I’m not really sure why it works. We have all gone through changes but when we started up again it felt right, in every way.

BYT: You’ve said that you prefer being in bands with peers rather than some kid who’s going to be tentative playing with a legend…does that have something to do with it?
PP: It must, it must. Without even thinking about it, you’re all on equal footing. That probably is an unsaid reason that it feels correct.

BYT: Speaking of musical chemistry, it’s often noted that Roger [Miller: guitarist] had a bunch of music theory training and liked classical and that’s part of what gave you guys such a unique position in punk rock. Did you have any theory schooling growing up?
PP: I couldn’t have less training. It just wouldn’t be possible. [laughs] I had a background in traditional classic rock until I heard Roxy Music, and Eno and the Stooges and Bowie, stuff like that. That sort of sling-shotted me off into a different direction. We all had literary influences: Hunter S. Thomson and the kind of stuff I was reading in High School, as much as the Eno/Stooges kind of stuff. I was fascinated by all the kind of music that gets ignored, since I had grown up on popular music. All of a sudden I would play Eno records to my girlfriend in High School and she’d go, “What the fuck is this?” After a while I was drawn more and more to that angle, and I think that’s where the band comes together. I mean, we all like Hendrix, we all like Pink Floyd, but we were all just drawn to this stuff that was never going to be popular.

BYT: Well there’s one advanced technique that you have down—singing while drumming. Every time I try this I end up playing the vocal line on the hi-hat and screwing everybody up. Do you have any tips?
PP: [Laughs] That’s a real individual thing. I got smitten by the whole notion of playing drums and “singing,” in my fashion, at the end of Burma, and that kind of developed in the Volcano Suns. [Writer's note—VS are fantastic and helped invent indie rock so everyone should find their '87 sophomore album All Night Lotus Party ASAP.] After a certain point I realized that if I didn’t sing I felt weird. I would sometimes run into that problem too, where the singing or the shouting would hook up too much with what I was physically doing on the drums. The thing that fascinated me about it was having two heads—where the rhythm of the vocal stuff would be completely disconnected from the drumming. I think just the repetition of it would allow me to do it.

BYT: I liked your rant on Obliterati [Period], it fit into the mode that you guys have long seemed comfortable with—politically or culturally concerned music that is straight-forward but non-didactic. How do you pull that off?
PP: Clint especially has always been against the didactic. If one of us falls more into it I probably do, since I tend to take a sledgehammer to subjects rather than a delicate carving knife. In general we hate obviousness and lean towards the abstract but…I think we share a collective problem with modern indie rock, in that it’s so inward looking. It’s so based on “Oh someone broke up with me and I’m stuck in my room staring at my navel” That whole thing is the opposite of the way we roll. I think even when a song is quiet or introspective with us, it’s still more of an outward abstraction than it is some kind of inner turmoil thing. We’re just driven by that. So Clint’s been the main one, but we all hate obviousness. I’d say now more than ever since what would be the point of getting back together to do things that have already been done. It seems even more antithetical to what we are.

BYT: There was this moment in hardcore in the early 90s, especially in DC, where it seemed feasible to make music that was political and personal and not annoyingly trite, and I think the legacy of bands like Burma actually had a lot to do with that possibility. Could a movement like that happen again?
PP: I hope so! The pendulum is constantly swinging. You get old enough and you see that it always moves back and forth. Look at it in politics…I hope, we all hope there’s going to be a President Obama, and who would have thought that four years ago? Music has just as much of an ability to morph and change like that. I would not be surprised if that kind of impulse does come back. The only thing that makes it seem like it might not is that we have so many distractions now. I’ve heard people say, “Why aren’t people marching the streets and being really pissed off?” and I think you’ve got a culture, and not just a youth culture, that’s got their head stuffed with three hundred channels of cable TV and video games and ipods and iphones and I think that’s what you have to get your head away from, pull it out of all this modern technology, in order for stuff like that to happen again. And it will, but it just may take some big event to push it over.

BYT: You’re playing the Pitchfork Festival [with Public Enemy who'll be playing It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back] [which is badass] next week. Is Pitchfork and the internet music criticism machine part of the distraction fog that’s holding music back from being relevant?
PP: Well I don’t really go to too many music sites like that. I still buy a lot of music on ebay or something, and I’ll read music journalism in print, but I tend not to go to too many sites to read about stuff. I’m glad they’re there, and they’ve certainly been supportive of us. You can’t stop time from moving and you shouldn’t want to. The fact that sites like that have sprung up in the past few years is neither bad nor good—it’s there, and its another way that people sell and check out music now. You can’t put a value judgment on it.

BYT: That sounds pretty good but…if MOB hadn’t gotten back together a few years ago what kind of experience do you think you’d be having in the music business?
PP: [long pause] Well, musically, at home I use loops and samples apart from the band, though I don’t know how that will play out. I have drum pads and a little studio that I mess around with at home. But the way that I would fit in as a 50 year old guy? That’s a little more confusing. Tell you the truth I don’t really have a clue. I don’t know that I would. There are lots of 50 year old guys out there making music, but it’s hard to say. I hope that I am able to do stuff apart from Burma for a while yet and I think it would be in the direction I mentioned, but as far as how you’re received and how you work within the industry…I mean I’m sure I’d use new technologies but beyond that I don’t have a clue.

BYT: I hope that the success that you’re having on this tour and in making great new music opens up doors for the music industry to realize that people can make awesome rock and roll at any age, whenever they make it you know?
PP: I like to think that’s possible. That’s the other thing, whether you’re 50 or 20, your shit has to be good. If it’s not good it deserves the most brutal assessment possible.

BYT: Or just to be ignored until it disappears into history, pretty much the opposite of the Burma story. Thanks for your time Peter…
PP: No problem!

WANT MORE:
befriend them here: http://www.myspace.com/missionofburma
catch them living and breathing on Saturday
and
you still have a little time to win tickets to the show

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