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Mission of Burma is a band that arguably is more widely known than heard. The truism applied to The Velvet Underground’s first release, THE VELVET UNDERGROUND AND NICO, is arguably applicable to Mission Of Burma’s first long play release, VS., as well: it didn’t sell a whole bunch of copies, but everyone who did buy it, or heard it, started a band. Indeed. VS. is credited as an influence by such luminaries as Eddie Vedder and Michael Stipe. One hears echoes of their music in everyone from Nirvana to Guided By Voices to The Pixies and beyond.

Mission of Burma is credited as being the link between the punk and the alternative era; just so. They are, however, arguably more than that, linking as well the psychedelic era which imploded and gave way to punk with post-punk. One hears echoes of the free form, trancelike jams popularized by the Grateful Dead and the early incarnations of Jefferson Airplane throughout Mission of Burma’s early work on Ace of Hearts Records. It is ironic that much of this has been out of print for too long, an unfortunate circumstance corrected by the release on Matador Records of Signals, Calls and Marches and the legendary VS., remastered with bonus tracks and DVD clips of performance footage, and the posthumously released The Horrible Truth About Burma, with the tracks sequence corrected an the addition of unreleased tracks. These three discs, a quarter-century on, reveal a musical turning point which was only vaguely discerned at the time of their original release in the early 1980s.

The band, originally formed in 1979 as a quartet consisting of guitarist Roger Miller (not THAT Roger Miller!), bassist Clint Conley, drummer Peter Prescott, and sound engineer Martin Swope. It was unusual, though not unheard of, to include a band’s sound engineer as a working member of the band. Swope, like few others before him (or, for that matter, since), truly understood the use and concept of sound and recording equipment as an instrument unto itself. Taking that idea and combining it with a musical vision that walked the line between a thundering chaos and a principled breakthrough into new territory, the “other side,” if you will, that Jim Morrison exhorted one to reach but that he himself never quite grasped.

Like the best and most influential of rock’s pioneers, there is relatively little in Mission of Burma’s discography from their original incarnation. Signals, Calls and Marches, their debut EP, contains but ten songs, even with the two unreleased tracks, Devotion and Execution. One sees, however, the blossoming of the vision, from the classic and oft-covered (even by Moby, for ghod’s sake) anthem That’s When I Break Out My Revolver to the REM godfather Academy Fight Song. Time changes, vague lyrics, shifting dynamics…one gets the sense of playing a video game more than listening to a CD, of riding in a virtual jeep in a lush green field that suddenly turns into a hostile urban landscape.

This vision is further shaped and ultimately realized in VS., the follow-up to Signals, Calls and Marches and what was to be the only full length by the band in its original form. VS. in its original form consisted of twelve tracks; four unreleased tunes --- Forget, OK/No Way, Laugh The World Away, and Progress --- are included in the Matador reissue. Unpredictable from track to track, even, however improbably, on repeating listening, he lyrics and song topics range from the highbrow to…well, to nothing, actually. New Nails, which sounds like the baby and the bathwater for early Sonic Youth, does an alternate history take concerning the relationship between the Roman Empire and The Roman Catholic Church, borrows, apparently, from VALIS, the brilliantly disturbed novel by Philip K. Dick. Mica, on the other hand, is a manic rundown of items --- radios, whistles --- that seems to peter out before revving up again for another go-around. Trem Two, on the other hand, is a tremolo riff repeated over and over (why hasn’t this ever been used as a soundtrack cut for a Quentin Tarantino film? Or has it?), and The Ballad Of Johnny Burma is a manic and chilling stroll (“I said my mother’s dead/but I don’t care about it”). it is difficult, if not impossible, to love every minute of every track, even if one delays until later the Rosetta Stone examination of what song ultimately influenced what subsequent alt-rock band.

Mission of Burma disintegrated in 1983 following the release of VS. due to the onset of tinnitus in Miller, believed to have been brought on by the volume of the band’s live performances. Which brings us to The Horrible Truth About Burma, which was, as one critic described, that when they were good in a live performance, they were very, very good, but when they were bad they were horrid. Seeking to override bad acoustics with sheer volume, as if they were attempting some aural alchemy, Mission of Burma would play with wild, reckless abandon, sometimes winning, sometimes losing, but never afraid to take chances. The Horrible Truth About Burma, originally released subsequent to the original band’s 1983 breakup, is perhaps one of the most honest live performance releases since Lou Reed’s TAKE NO PRISONERS. It contains everything you want, from the idiotic but endearing Dumbells to New Disco to a spot on cover of The Stooges’ 1970, not to mention That’s When I Reach For My Revolver, a manic, chaotic Go Fun Burn Man, Tremolo AND Trem Two, and, just for grins and giggles, what just may be a fight in the audience, with the band egging on the combatants. Just like at a Faith No More show.

Mission of Burma reunited for some one-off shows in 2002 (with Swope being replaced by Bob Weston), and have since released two new CDs, ONoffON and The Obliterati with a third on the way. As engaging as this new work is, it is Signals, Calls and Marches, VS., and The Horrible Truth About Burma that one has to here to get the full idea about what all of the excitement was, and is, about. And now you can. Highly recommended.