So, this is some old news. The event itself happened on September 5th and it went to print on the 11th, but I wrote so much about the event that I had to cut out about 1,000 words from the article. So, here's the whole thing, as it was originally written, augmented with wonderful photos courtesy of my friend and colleague, Adam Wisniewski. Enjoy!
Since its first inception in 1981, 91.1-FM WRUW’s annual Studio-A-Rama music festival has been an exciting yet humble event full of free local music, usually bolstered by a headlining act that is moderately well known in the independent music community.
Since their reunion in 2002, alternative rockers Mission of Burma have released more material than they did in their original run, and have had difficulty comprehending their status as independent music legends.
On Saturday, September 5, these two entities met for what may have been the most intense, enjoyable and well attended Studio-A-Rama in history, and a further assertion of Mission of Burma’s importance in rock and roll.
This, the 28th Annual Studio-A-Rama, was organized primarily by Neal “Dare Waves” and Steven Barrett, and was under the direction of current Station Manager and CWRU student Daniel Hill. The event, like every year preceding it, was held in the Mather Memorial courtyard and spanned ten hours worth of live music.
Although past Studio-A-Ramas have hosted such notable headlining acts as Guided By Voices and Naked Raygun, Mission of Burma, despite still being relatively unknown in the vast world of popular music, are arguably the biggest band the event has ever hosted.
Certainly, the headliner’s notability earned the festival more press coverage and hype than usual in the weeks preceding it, even making the front page of alternative Cleveland weekly Scene. Still, this is not to downplay the importance of the event’s eight local opening acts, who made up the bulk of the festival’s music and provided a continuous vitality that Burma could not have created on their own.
The Kyle Sowashes play as the courtyard starts to fill.
These eight Ohio-based acts ranged in style from heavy, bass-driven punk to experimental solo vocal improvisations. Each performance brought something new to the persistently amassing crowd and there wasn’t an act throughout the ten hours of music that failed to energize and captivate the audience.
Opening with a faint whimper that slowly developed into a sweeping, cinematic stomp, the festival began with the multi-layered sounds of Cleveland’s Chief Bromide. The six-piece band, which features dual keyboard players and slide guitar used for experimental effect, covered much stylistic ground, from loud, brash punk to dense, moody progressive rock. As an opening act, Chief Bromide provided welcome insight into the variety of sounds that would surface throughout the rest of the evening’s performances.
Consisting of young men not unfamiliar with Case Western Reserve University, garage punks the Neon Tongues took cues from the hazy, ramshackle sounds of bands like the Black Lips and NODZZZ and brought spastic, youthful aggression to the Mather stage. Fronted by current CWRU student Dylan Baldi and former CWRU student Adam Upp, the band was a recent collaboration between the two and despite the positive reception after a three song demo CD and only a few shows, the band’s state might be jeopardized by inconvenience.
“We were originally all going to meet up here at Case this year while everyone was still back home,” explained Upp. “Now they’re all here and I’m at Baldwin-Wallace, so it’s kind of problematic.”
Despite this issue, the Neon Tongues are still set to open for the Antlers when they perform at the Spot on Wednesday, September 23, 2009. (Edit: This already happened.)
The uncouth noise of the Neon Tongues was followed by the more systematic, shoegaze and gothic influenced noise of Flowers in Flames, who sound like the possible musical offspring of Sonic Youth and Bauhaus. The band, which has been receiving positive press from locations as far as France and Russia, gave a tight, energetic performance worthy of such distant praise.
Guitarist and vocalist Dave Chavez, who has performed with Flowers in Flames at Studio-A-Rama prior and who has appeared on WRUW’s “Dare Waves” show as a guest, offered an explanation for the European appeal. “They’re just really far more into the post-punk gothic thing,” he said, “And while bands like Interpol and The Editors have made it big in America, there’s far more of a niche for that sort of music abroad.”
Keyboardist, guitarist and singer Cynthia Dimitroff confirmed this notion. “They have a festival over there, the Drop Dead Festival, which is basically a Glatsonbury for gothic rock,” she said. “We’re hoping we can gain a following in Europe and have that travel back over here.”
Changing gears completely, the next act, Uno Lady, featured no more than a woman, her own voice and an effects/loop console. Her compositions, initially improvised and since composed, lyric-less and melismatic, are ethereal, haunting and compelling.
“The whole thing was a happy mistake,” said Christa Ebert, the Uno Lady herself. “I really wanted to create music in some way so I just sat down at a computer and started singing to it and it all just happened right there.”
Mike St. Jude and our giant banner.
After the experimental vocal aerobics of Uno Lady came a triad of punky power-pop bands, who together performed three hours worth of high-energy, fast-paced, irresistible rock and roll. The Columbus-based Kyle Sowashes played early 90s alt-rock in the vein of early indie heroes Superchunk and went so far as to close their set with a cover of Guided By Voices’ “Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory.” Kyle Sowash, the band’s titular frontman, at one point expressed an ironic surprise when the audience was clapping, although the band’s hooky sensibilities rendered his own shock shocking.
Having recently had the distinction of being the band to initiate this year’s Spot Nights at CWRU, Mike St. Jude and the Valentines followed up with a more modern take on power-pop, reminiscent of bands like the New Pornographers and the Apples in Stereo. The songs had a straightforward, danceable, good-times aesthetic with occasional ‘60s pop and surf influences thrown into the mix. St. Jude gave a heartfelt performance, having sung himself hoarse by the end of the set, and drenched himself in his own sweat.
Kid Tested doubtlessly leaned far more toward the punkish end of popular music, although their songs were still catchy and tuneful enough so as not to mark a significant change of pace from the prior two bands. These three Clevelanders wear their influences well on their sleeves, performing songs with titles like “Between the Devil and Daniel Johnston” and “Hüsker Don’t.” Although they don’t meet the nearly impossible challenge of living up to such artists, they did manage to deliver a thoroughly infectious and enjoyable set.
MEGACHURCH
Certainly the most intense and abrasive of the local openers, Megachurch, consisting of two bassists and a drummer and using tape loops of found sound instead of vocals, pummeled the now-massive audience with glorious and gratuitous amounts of low end. The band played with a post-hardcore and math rock nuance at blazing punk speeds, only pausing to let the bizarre tapes of religious sermons enrapture the audience further.
By the time Megachurch finished, everyone was ready for the headlining act, a band which had earned its legendary status through an assimilation of the sounds heard throughout the eight prior acts – deft experimentalism, pop songcraft and acerbic punk.
Regardless of all of this, the humble men behind Mission of Burma were still baffled by the effect they’ve had on underground music.
“The whole thing has just been mysterious from start to end,” said Burma bassist and vocalist Clint Conley, “I just know I’m in a very lucky position right now.”
Burma guitarist Roger Miller, entertainin' for the now-massive crowd
Mission of Burma formed in 1979 out of the ashes of the Moving Parts, a Roxy Music-influenced art-rock band that featured Conley as well as guitarist and vocalist Roger Miller. Burma drummer and vocalist Peter Prescott went through three tryouts to be involved in a new guitar-oriented project that Conley and Miller were putting together.
“The new sound that they wanted was going to be much more of a response to the band they really were, with much more feedback,” said Prescott. “I mean, their old frontman played the bassoon and looked like Fidel Castro.”
After recruiting Prescott, the band finalized their sound with the experimentation of friend Martin Swope, who during performances, would record the band playing, manipulate the sound and play the loops back live. This experimentation carried into the band’s first EP and LP, Signals, Calls and Marches and Vs., respectively.
“On the first round, well, we certainly toured enough,” said Miller, “But nothing was well organized.”
“We were very worried on the first go-around,” said Conley.
The worry and lack of success combined with Miller’s developing tinnitus caused the band to break up in 1983. In the twenty years that followed, however, the band’s influence began to burgeon in ways the members of Burma could have never predicted. Their post-punk anthems, “Academy Fight Song” and “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver,” were covered by R.E.M. and Moby respectively and they were featured with twelve other independent bands in Michael Azerrad’s seminal book on American independent music, Our Band Could Be Your Life.
“People say that we’re the first American post-punk band,” said Miller, “But that’s just what we’ve been told. The legend has completely exploded.”
In 2002, after years of relative inactivity, either in smaller groups or abstaining from the industry altogether, the band was asked to reunite for a one-off show in New York City, with Shellac bassist and recording engineer Bob Weston taking Swope’s place as tape manipulator.
“It was terrifying,” said Miller. “I asked Clint about it and I was hoping he wouldn’t want to do it, but he said, ‘Sure, absolutely.’ And then I talked to Pete thinking, ‘Oh, he’s not going to want to do this,’ but he was in.”
Burma drummer Peter Prescott, probably swearin' up a storm.
Since their reunion, they released two acclaimed LPs on Matador records, 2004’s ONoffON and 2006’s The Obliterati. Their third post-reunion LP, The Sound, The Speed, The Light arrives in stores on October 6, making Mission of Burma one of the few bands in existence to be more productive since its reunion than it was in its initial run. The band was characteristically ambiguous about their upcoming release.
“Everything is unpremeditated and unstructured and there’s no guiding approach when we go in and record a new album,” said Conley. “I guess it might be a bit more melodic than what we normally do.”
“Not too much has changed since the early days,” said Prescott, “We approach everything the same way we used to.”
“It’s extremely difficult for me to gauge how an album is going to sound until I receive feedback on it,” said Miller. “I thought The Obliterati was just not going to work and that would be the end of our run. Then it came out and started getting all these great reviews and I was shocked.”
The band ran through several new tracks from the new record, including the single “1, 2, 3, Partyy!” which, according to Prescott, “…Is just made up of a bunch of crap Clint’s dad used to tell people.” The new songs blended in well with other post-reunion tracks as well as the pre-reunion classics.
Despite initial technical difficulties that required Miller to make a last minute amplifier switch, the show was an hour and a half long stream of post-punk aggression, off-kilter rhythms, frenetic, energetic tempos and anthemic, fist-pumping singalongs. Highlights included fan favorites “Academy Fight Song,” “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver” and “That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate,” as well as newer highlights, “2wice” and “Donna Sumeria” and diehard fan favorites “Heart of Darkness” and “Peking Spring.” At this point, the Mather Courtyard was full of concertgoers, likely the largest crowd any Studio-A-Rama has ever seen.
The concert’s only disappointment came in the encore when the band charged through a verse of classic “Max Ernst” only to stop and change their minds. Prescott kept the crowd amused by joking, “Sometimes we stop songs in the middle for conversation, what the f***?!”
Burma Bassist Clint Conley, shouting out one of his many anthems.
Such abrasiveness is completely essential to Mission of Burma’s aesthetic and is the sort of thing the band wishes were far more prevalent in today’s music.
“There have been lots of bands since we first broke up who’ve really impressed me,” said Prescott, “The Jesus Lizard, Andrew W.K. and most recently, F****d Up. But it really lets me down just how many bands out there lack that sort of confrontation. For me, there’s just a need to grab the audience by the neck.”
“There’s a lot of music around whose popularity just baffles me completely,” said Conley. “It’s just very bland music that gets a lot of attention for some reason.”
Even so, despite their own drive for intensity, their newfound success still shocks them.
“The most telling moment,” said Miller, “Was when I was looking through a reissues section in Rolling Stone, and they had music from Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Van Morrison and us. It just freaked me out and I’m still not used to it.”
“Having our songs covered by big names is still shocking and there have been many more shocks along the way,” said Conley
Prescott, however, felt differently about the ordeal.
“Nothing’s really shocked me at all,” he said. “I don’t see it in any sort of historical context. I’m just living in the here and now, which is really the only place to be.” He then paused and laughed, “Until it no longer makes sense. That’s when we’ll quit.”
For a band whose parts are generally absurd – the tape loops, the twenty-year hiatus, the songs about surrealist painters – seeing Mission of Burma live, the final whole, assures that it all makes perfect sense.
The 29th Annual Studio-A-Rama has a lot to live up to.
Your faithful blogger, after babbling incoherently to a poor, confused Clint Conley
LOOK HOW FANCY YOU ARE, WITH ALL THAT INTERVIEWIN'.
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