It seems to be very difficult for me, sometimes, cutting things down to bite-sized bits for easier consumption for our treasured PCP readers. It's especially difficult when I have that occasional interview that goes so well, and so much is said that you almost wish you could print it all. In the case of my story on Consonant, the wonderful new project from Clint Conley, it was impossible for me NOT to ask about his OTHER band Mission of Burma. Conley was (with Martin Swope, their Eno of the group) part of the half of the band that all but disappeared from the music scene for nearly 20 years. This interview should help clear up much of the mystery about Conley's side of things.

The good news, of course, is that (along with Consonant, his group with former Come guitarist Chris Brokaw, Bedhead / the New Year member Matt Kadane and former Fuzzy member Winston Braman) Conley is now playing with Roger Miller and Peter Prescott again (with Bob Weston assuming the role of Swope). There has been sporadic touring, an appearance at Shellac's All Tomorrow's Parties festival, and, hopefully a new album…eventually. For an excellent history of Burma's original era as indie pioneers search out their chapter in Michael Azerrad's book Our Band Could Be Your Life.

dnl.) So I take it you're calling me from work?
Clint Conley.) I am calling you from work, yeah…
dnl.) Sticking it to the man, huh!?
cc.) Sticking it to tha man! That's right, it's on the H*%rst Corporation!
dnl.) Good, good! I'm disappointed that M-O-B is playing up in Detroit on a weekend when I can't really go.
cc.) Oh, well, we're gearing up for that.
dnl.) Are there going to be more shows eventually?
cc.) Well, we're just sort of stumbling along; there's no master plan.
dnl.) Was there ever a master plan?
cc.) Well, yeah, that's a good point; there was never a master plan!
dnl.) I think that was one of the great things about that band was that…
cc.) The direction-lessness?
dnl.) Well, not completely, but you didn't have the agenda of, say, some of the Hard-core bands or whatever.
cc.) Right. Yeah, we were just out there kind of flailing around.
dnl.) And it was important for somebody to be doing that, because it was kind of at a time when nobody was really doing that. I was in bands at the time and none of my stuff ever got released because it wasn't Hard-core, it wasn't Synth-Pop, and there weren't a lot of other bands doing that (other music) and you guys were.
cc.) That's a generous assessment. I'm not sure you're getting away with it, but it's gratifying that the passage of time has worked to our favor.
dnl.) Well, maybe it's just taken a long time to get back to you guys that you were so well thought of (influential).
cc.) Well, yeah, I would say in general, it's all a sort of surprise to us. We were definitely into our music; we had the utmost conviction in its validity, or merit, or worth. We were sort of unshakable on that front, but we just sort of took it for granted that not many people were going to like it. So, this sort of second spring that we're going through, with these shows and everything, is really kind of wonderful, and a really nice surprise to us.
dnl.) Well, I know that you've been lumped into this bunch of bands before, so I'm not going to feel guilty for saying it, but it's kind of like the Big Star, Velvet Underground thing where most of the people who listened to you went out and formed other bands.
cc.) Well, yeah, I guess. I think that's a very generous outlook on it. I don't even begin to put us into the same category of those two bands, but it's, yeah, I don't know. I certainly don't hear many bands that sound like us too much, but maybe the attitude and the independent kind of mentality.
dnl.) Well yeah. I think that…
cc.) Kind of "seek your own sound."
dnl.) Well, yeah, but just sort of attaching the two things together, with kind of like an experimentalism and a really strong sense of tunefulness. There's still a lot of that. It was kind of glaring to me that the people that you worked with in Consonant were all sort of from bands who were sons of that. Who were examples of that in the newer sense?
cc.) Maybe. Although…maybe Come, to some degree.
dnl.) Well, definitely Bedhead!
cc.) Yeah, true, well certainly a different texture and feel, but yeah, we're distant distant cousins.
dnl.) I hope it doesn't feel like you're working with grandsons or something!
cc.) No, no it doesn't. Fortunately. There's an aspect to it. I feel so unsure about myself in so many aspects of this. We're getting ready to record our second record and I just don't have a clue about recording studios and people there. I mean we (M-o-B) were such naïve (people) back in the day and the guys that I'm playing with are so much more accomplished in terms of knowledge of studio techniques and I'm just completely clueless. That's just an example, I feel, in a lot of ways, like the novice of the band.
dnl.) Well, and you're also the pioneer of it. Technology was a lot more basic back then.
cc.) Yeah, it was more primitive.
dnl.) I remember that it wasn't too long before that (M-o-B) that there were only one or two digitally recorded albums.
cc.) Right.
dnl.) And I'm sure that you guys weren't privy to that.
cc.) No, we weren't. But, in fact, still about half of the studios aren't digital. A lot of people are still stuck with the tape. I was actually surprised about that. I went in, I thought the boards would be all automated, with all this kind of whizz-bang doodads, but I was surprised that the studio was more or less the same kind of equipment that I remembered. You still had to put your hand on the fader and move it up at the right time all that kind of crap.
dnl.) The human element.
cc.) Right. I asked (Bob) Weston about it, I said "I thought everything would be digital, faders would be moving up on their own," and he said, "well there are places like that but most of the people of our ilk still prefer the tape and the analog."
dnl.) I know that a big part of that is the Steve Albini school of producing is still very important. And it's good that he's been such a force in that. Keeping old things alive.
cc.) Right. He's quite a force. No question about that.
dnl.) Did Albini have a hand in sort of getting you guys (M-o-B) back together?
cc.) No. However, when word went out that we were going to do those handful of gigs in NY and Boston, Shellac was pretty quick on offering us a spot at…
dnl.) All Tomorrow's Parties…
cc.)Yeah, so, that's the relationship.
dnl.) I think that's a brilliant concept altogether though, getting together a bunch of groups you like.
cc.) Oh yeah, and it was really fun.
dnl.) It's very much a part of our history, of what we did, when we were in scenes with bands, of bringing bands to town that we liked, and trying to play with bands that we thought were cool.
cc.) I think that that's a really positive thing. To try to create a community of people who had a sense of mutual support and encouragement. Particularly when you're doing music that's not tailored to commercial success, it's particularly important to have that sort of system in place. It's just immensely encouraging.
dnl.) I saw Roger play a lot over a number of years. I was kind of wondering what you did in all of the time in between.
cc.) Well, when Burma broke up I was very divided, conflicted about starting another band. I wrote music for about a year after Burma and was pretty intensely writing music that I thought was pretty good, but I could never really get over the hump and start a new band. I just didn't want to enlist anybody; I was just sort of unsure if I wanted to do the whole thing again. So I just sort of let it dwindle away. Sort of atrophy. I slowly stopped writing music, and just working a day job sort of deal, and ended up going back to graduate school and got a masters degree in broadcast journalism and started working in TV here in Boston. I'm a television producer at the ABC affiliate. I've been here for a little over ten years.
dnl.) So you're still in communications, in a way!
cc.) In the meantime I got married and have two little girls and all that beautiful stuff.
dnl.) You got a life!
cc.) Yeah, exactly!
dnl.) Which a lot of us that were so involved in "the scene" had a life, but we didn't really have that sort of life. It was kind of like we were fighting against it for so long.
cc.) Yeah, I know what you mean. I felt very fortunate, because I really enjoy what I do, so life filled in with good stuff. I pay attention to the music scene; there's really good college radio here in Boston. I listen and go out to see music every once and awhile. Mostly, I just sort of had a different life. I certainly never disavowed the music thing, I was always very proud of that. Just sort of curious about where it went.
dnl.) Was Burma such an intense experience that you kind of just had to get away from music?
cc.) No, I don't think that that was it so much. Burma was intense, but it was also intensely positive. We're not one of the bands that broke up with bad feelings or resentment or all that. I had nothing but good feelings about Burma. Even though our commercial acceptance was pretty low, I never felt gypped. We were sort of playing for our friends when we started and we were playing for our friends in the end, so…we always got good feedback from other musicians. So I always felt that writers tended to like us, so it's not like we were gypped or anything. We were never big, but we never thought we would be. So I had very good feelings about the music. I was just ready for something different. I have other talents. I figured, it's time to explore something else and, I think I was in my mid to late 20s when Burma broke up, so I just pictured myself being older…I was thinking "do I wanna be in bars playing, waiting around for a soundcheck, ten years from now?"
dnl.) I felt exactly the same way when (d.n.l's former band) Elizabeth broke up. It was such a heartbreaking experience for me that I never got back into it. It really is difficult, once you get out of it for so long, like if you don't form a band in the next six months to a year after it you might never do it again.
cc.) And that's what happened to me. I just let it…time kept passing and I started this kind of other new life and that was really a good thing. Also, in the music scene I had problems with drinking and substance abuse so I sort of straightened up. That wasn't the primary motivator, but I actually spent the last year of Burma straight. It felt great, so it wouldn't be completely honest to say that it didn't have anything to do with it. That's also a factor, so I was just sort of reorienting myself. And I'm in no way turning my back on music, god, I loved it, but I was just ready to explore something different. So this is working out fine. I have a big, full, happy life here. Then, a couple of years ago…from time to time somebody would ask me to play on a song in the studio or do a gig periodically. Peter Prescott, of Burma, had a group, Peer Group, and before that, Kustomized. But in Peer Group, a couple of times he asked me to play bass. He had a hard time holding bas players for some reason. I just stepped in, I'd do rehearsals and a few gigs and it was always just a ton of fun, always felt completely natural. But then I'd put the bass away and wouldn't play it for a year and a half or something. I'd never play it; it was often in a closet somewhere. He asked me to do a gig with him a year ago last January (2001) down in NY. Peer Group was playing with Shellac and I said "well, I'll do that gig with you." So I did that gig and it just jarred something loose in my skull or something because I came back from that gig and I just kept playing guitar and started fooling around and new ideas started coming in out of the ether and through my fingers and I thought "wow, that's kind of cool!" So I kept hammering at it and pretty soon I was just in full flow. The pump had been primed or something. It was just this big gusher, just floating up and I was just sort of a manic, writing, waking up early in the morning to write before the family woke up, before coming into work. I was trying to not intrude too much on real life and it was very exciting. It was really cool, so I had all this new stuff, so I went back to all this material I had worked with in the year after Burma and it still sounded good to me too! So I thought "wow!" and I worked these out and the next thing I knew I was enlisting friends and saying "Hey, I don't know what's going on, but do you want to kick this stuff around with me?"
dnl.) So, that's pretty much how it happened with Consonant?
cc.) Yeah, so between February of 2001 and May I had Chris and Matt and Winston working with me and I teamed up with Holly for some lyrics, because that was always the slow thing with my writing, particularly with that year after Burma. I had good music and I couldn't find any words that I could even remotely stand. So that was a contributor to my finishing anything. So I called Holly, who had co-written one song that was written in Burma "Mica." She's a poet, and she said yeah, she'd be interested. We started working together.
dnl.) So were these people that you had met over the years?
cc.) I knew Chris, we both lived in Cambridge, and we just crossed paths a lot.
dnl.) I know he's from Boston, or lived there…because he was with Thalia (Zadek, in Come)…
cc.) Yeah his base has always been Boston, even if he's played in some NY bands and lived over in Germany for awhile, I think. He was the first one I approached. He was going on tour with the New Year and took this tape with him and I guess Matt listened to a little bit of it and so he said he'd like to play drums. Matt plays guitar usually. He's very versatile. He plays keyboards in Silkworm too. He's a busy guy. I wasn't that familiar with Bedhead. I had heard their things and thought it was pretty beautiful, but only since Matt's been in the band have I really gone back and plumbed the depths of it, and it's really gorgeous stuff. I like the New Year as well. To get back, Chris also enlisted Winston because Winston had played in a later version of Come. They're a great band, these guys are fine, good players.
dnl.) And you're kind of flung (geographically) all over the place?
cc.) Well, not really, because Matt's up here, he teaches at Harvard. He's actually working on his doctorate at Brown. So in between all his punk rock duties…right now he's over in Italy with the New Year, and he comes back and we're gearing up for a handful of Consonant shows on the west coast.
dnl.) That's got to be another aspect of this group that's difficult is lining up all of this stuff when you guys have other lives as well.
cc.) Right, and Chris in particular is very busy, very in demand. He's been doing a lot of work with Evan Dando, and he's got his solo album that he's been working, he's over in Stockholm, and god knows where.
dnl.) He's always popping up on something and it's usually something good.
cc.) Yeah, he's really a very talented, versatile player. People love to play with him, so that's a big drag for me, "So when can we…? No, November's not good for me, and December's not good for me…" and so it is a challenge, trying to get everybody together. It's taken me a while to learn that if we want to do something we have to plan it four or five months ahead.
dnl.) That's an aspect of the band that kind of makes it more under pressure, because you'd know that you would have to make the most of that time you do have together.
cc.) Yeah, I know. It's frustrating sometimes, looking at going "we're not going to be able to do anything for three months." But in some ways it's not bad because I, especially with these occasional Burma outbreaks, I have a pretty full life as it is. So having a kind of external regulator on our activities is not a bad thing. We do things at a pace that doesn't overload everybody.
dnl.) To what degree, with Consonant, is there mutual input? Because it didn't seem to me that it was just your thing.
cc.) Basically, I bring in the songs fairly finished and arranged, in terms of their structure, but they really do change personally when I bring them in. Matt is always looking for interesting, unusual, drum parts. I say, "well hear a umph-pa-umph-umph-pa" and he goes "Yeah, as fallback maybe we'll try that, but let's try this!" So he has very often changed the personality of the songs, altered them. It's a funny thing, he and Chris often take my ideas and say "let's try it this way, and if you don't like it we can go back." It's an interesting process, and as the writer of the song you pretty much have a preset idea, but I'm all for mutual collaboration. So I sometimes go against my initial instinct of "well, I don't like that as much as my original idea" but I suspend that just to sort of encourage group effort, and more often than not I come back to their way of thinking. That's been fun. It's been interesting. It's not that different from Burma where we bring in songs fairly finished and Peter and Roger would have their way with it. It would always come out quite a bit different from how I heard it.
dnl.) Well, it seems like this group of people wouldn't be content to just back somebody up.
cc.) Yeah, no, right. All of these guys are bona-fide bandleaders in their own right, so I love that about it. There's a high degree of intelligence in this band that it's not just "yes-men" or session people, not that I've ever worked with anyone that was. It's very challenging. It's fun. I'm so proud! I feel honored to be playing with these guys.
dnl.) Listening to the album a lot, it seems kind of obvious what your contribution to Burma was … a really strong sense of melodicism, real tuneful songs.
cc.) Yeah, I was always sort of the decadent melodicist.
dnl.) There's one song, which one was it? I was almost certain it was a Simon & Garfunkel cover…
cc.) You're not the first person to say that; maybe I did rip off a Simon & Garfunkel song.
dnl.) "I'm Still Waiting"… which one is that?
cc.) That would be "The Kiss."
dnl.) That's it, that's the one I've been putting on tapes. I couldn't tell you which song it reminds me of, but it's just so familiar to me.
cc.) That one actually has a bunch of sort of mindful quotations in it. Rolling Stones, "I hear every mother say."
dnl.) Yeah, I got that one too!
cc.) MC5 "aa-aahh-ahh" from "Rambling Rose." There's another one in there too.
dnl.) Well, now you have Simon & Garfunkel in there too!
cc.) Yeah, I guess. Sometimes I come bumping up against melodies I've heard before, and actively try to work away from it, but sometimes I just say, "fuck it!" and I use that line.
dnl.) Well, I have to fess up and say that I copped a lot off of "Trem 2"! And I can't even remember how many tapes I've made for others and put that song on it.
cc.) I love that song! That's one of my favorites.
dnl.) It kind of goes full circle. I think there were other bands that you quoted, back in Burma, if not intentionally...
cc.) I think back in Burma I would avoid quoting at any cost. It was so important for me to not copy, to really make my own thing. This time around I think I just had a different attitude. There were times where I thought it was cool putting these modified quotations into songs, if people pick up on it, great, if they don't…
dnl.) It's a lot more acceptable now. Culture is feeding off of itself in such a way now that's its much more comfortable now.
cc.) Yeah, appropriationism is in, in general now.
dnl.) Part of the whole movement back then was that we were really trying not to be any of these things.
cc.) Right, trying to create our own individual thing.
dnl.) The only way that I ever accomplished anything by doing it was by drawing things from all of these other bands that hopefully nobody else had ever heard of. So, do you guys have any new stuff?
cc.) Uh, yeah, we've got a bunch of new stuff and we're aiming at getting into the studio in January. We probably don't quite have an album's worth of material, but I have some songs cooking.
dnl.) Is it just the three of you guys, or is Martin involved?
cc.) Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were talking about Consonant. Uh, Burma, um, there's no hard plans to record. We've talked about the idea, because there are some new songs, so we're trying to figure out just exactly what are we doing. What is this thing? We haven't quite decided what it is yet.
dnl.) Are all four of you involved in it or is it just the three of you?
cc.) Well, it's pretty much just the three of us, and then Bob Weston has been our sound / tape man on our shows so far. We'd probably invite him in to do our sessions with us.
dnl.) I don't know what became of Martin.
cc.) He's in Hawaii. He's off in the jungle, kind of slipped off the face of the…
dnl.) Well, he seems like the person that was most likely uncomfortable with any kind of public life.
cc.) Yeah. He was the most unusual of the four of us. He was really a mysterious, complex and fascinating character. I love Martin to death, but it doesn't surprise me at all that he's off in the jungles and has just given us little terse, cryptic e-mails back that he can't do it. But he wished us luck and we were worried that he might not approve but he's given us his approval.
dnl.) Well that's good! There's not a great history of successful reunions. On the one hand you have Pere Ubu and Wire, who kind of went at the same time and they came back and they did good and bad stuff, but then some bad examples would be, like, Gang of Four and X, which just kind of didn't happen.
cc.) I'm not really sure about either of those. One thing that inspired me was I did see Wire at one of the gigs I signed on with Peter Prescott maybe three years ago. We opened for Wire in the Peer Group and Wire was magnificent. Somewhere in my head that was lodged that "wow, they came back and they weren't trying to be teenagers, they were really trying to be …they were just awesome!"
dnl.) I like that they can do that. They can come back pretty much whenever they want and it's not like nostalgia, it's coming back and doing something new and relevant. They never really did anything to diminish their legendary status.
cc.) Yeah, they've really held up. When we were considering the Burma thing, I was the biggest doubting Thomas. I just figured we were…maybe people would think we were something that we weren't. I already thought that we had gotten a fair shake at it in history. Let's just leave it at that and let sleeping dogs lie! Where can we go from there but down? But the other guys prevailed and so, up until right before the gigs I was so…"I couldn't sleep last night thinking about this big disaster coming up!" Being on a stage in front of all these people there, not knowing what the fuck I'm doing and a typical nightmare kind of thing. Being in front of the class with no pants on.
dnl.) Yeah, you know, it's weird. I have these dreams where all of a sudden I meet these guys that are already a band and, even if I haven't played in so long…it's like that beer commercial where the band is playing and their bass player doesn't show up and they ask if there's a bass player in the house and this cook comes out from the kitchen and straps on the bass…it's like if I found my way up there with a bass in my hand I'd know what to do with it!
cc.) Well, fortunately, that did happen, and I think we've really risen to the challenge. I think we've played really well. I think we're playing better now than we did back then. I know I am! I'm singing better too. We really have worked hard, especially for those first gigs. We were really deep in the woodshed for the first few months trying to get muscles back that I didn't have. I feel really proud of what we've done, I really do. We'll see if it continues.
dnl.) Is Roger still having a lot of problems with his ears?
cc.) He is, he says these shows have…it's when they're clustered together and he has a few in a row that it really starts having an affect on him. It's something he that watches, it's sort of a tradeoff and he's been willing to do it up to this point, but I wouldn't be surprised if he says it's been fun, I can't see this happening forever. That wouldn't break my heart either. It's really been great so far and the new material is really good so maybe it'll end up being a record or something.
dnl.) I hope so! But I was thinking, when I first saw Roger play, he was just playing piano and what press there was about it at the time was like "Oh, I would never do a band like that (M-o-B) again." The next time I saw him was with No-Man, which was kind of a lot more like Burma than his piano playing stuff was…out the window. I guess he's kind of in the same boat as like, Bob Mould, and I can understand that. My hearing isn't what it used to be either. Dealing with the physical things is…
cc.) It's an element! He's pretty active with the Alloy Orchestra. They play music to silent films. It's a trio. They're really very well established they play all of the festivals and travel around Europe.
dnl.) I saw Tom Verlaine do that kind of thing a few years ago!
cc.) Did he? Yo la Tengo did something like that in the past year. The Alloy's have been doing it for a number of years and they were invited to Telluride every year and they go over to the London Film Festival, they're treated like kings! It's really a good gig, and they're beautiful… You know what, David, I have to jump back to work.
dnl.) Thanks Cint, It's been great!

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