Mission of Burma were one of the best (and most abrasive) bands to emerge from post-punk Boston, and it’s a crying shame that their career was cut obscenely short in 1983 as a result of vocalist/ guitarist Roger Miller’s tinnitus. They left behind a 1981 EP and a 1982 full-length, and that would be all we’d have to remember their original incarnation by (they reunited in 2002) had they not, commencing in February 1982, done some moonlighting as the backing band for local berserker and future pioneer of the New Weird America movement Dredd Foole (aka Dan Ireton) under the name Dredd Foole & The Din.
If Mission of Burma tended towards chaos, they went right over the top as The Din. Lucky for us, especially given their singular lack of ambition—they never toured, and if you never lived near Boston you never heard ‘em—they left behind a number of recordings that constitute some of the most chaotic music of the era. And Dredd Foole & The Din’s output didn’t end when the Mission of Burma packed it in. No, Dredd Foole simply kept on going with the newly formed Volcano Suns, whose members included Mission of Burma drummer Peter Prescott, serving as the new Din.
My favorite of the Mission of Burma Din compilations is 2022’s Songs in Heat. The A side includes all of the songs they recorded at Radiobeat Studio on February 2, 1982, while the B side is made up of selected songs from a live show the band played at the Channel in South Boston on August 9, 1982. It’s a testament to the band’s commitment to the great unhinged that the studio recordings sound almost as Stooges-level feral as the live tracks. Foole and Mission of Burma obviously had their role models, including the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, and Pere Ubu, and they pay tribute to all three on the comp’s live tracks. They also, surprisingly enough, toss in a cover of the Animals’ 1967 classic “When I Was Young.”
Dredd Foole is not a polished vocalist. He’s a wild man with a hair up his ass and no particular interest in singing in tune. He sounds like a lot of people—my brother, who turned me on to them, gave me a laundry list that included “Nick Cave, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, the guy from the Cramps, Joy Division, maybe the Psychedelic Furs guy, and a few other people I can’t recall.” That sounds about right.
But Foole’s voice is less important than his, shall we say comportment. Basically the guy is an agent of chaos, and what he REALLY likes to do behind the microphone is go clinically, flamboyantly insane. He’s a screamer, a bellower, a moaner, a groaner, a hanger-onto-words for longer than anyone should and in general off-his-meds vocalist. He makes Darby Crash sound like a shrinking violet, Iggy Pop sound downright reticent. And he will not, cannot, no way in the world, be ignored. He’s the kind of guy who sets himself on fire before every song because he works best when he’s in agony. Can he be too much? I think so. Occasionally I find myself wishing he’d stop ululating or whatever he happens to be doing at the moment so I can appreciate what’s going on behind him. He does not, ever, afford one the luxury.
The Din themselves are Mission of Burma if Mission of Burma had been given a permission slip to go stark raving cannibal. This band sounds like it wants to eat people. And one of the things it did to achieve that chaotic sound was do some instrument swapping. Martin Swope does none of his trademark tape manipulation; instead he plays “prepared bass,” whatever that is. Meanwhile bassist Clint Conley takes over on lead guitar, while Roger Miller puts down his guitar and plays organ—an instrument that is never mentioned on his official resume. Playing an instrument you aren’t trained to play is freeing; it activates the anarchy centers of the frontal lobe. Had someone sat Jimi Hendrix down in front of an organ the results, I suspect, would have been astounding.
The studio side of Songs in Heat is revelatory. “So Tough” is a chiming, non-stop rave up. Conley lays into the guitar, drummer Peter Prescott is all bass drum thump and violent cymbal crash, and while Dredd Foole sounds positively restrained early on he ends things with a never-wracking scream that leaves the boys laughing. “Behind You” is a slow one, a dirge practically, and all primitive guitar strum and swirling, psychedelic Farfisa organ. Meanwhile, Foole slowly proceeds to lose his damned foole mind—he draws out his words until they snap, roars like a dangerous zoo animal, keens, whoops, and screams like a guy who’s in the midst of one very bad acid trip. It’s frighteningly impressive and ends with the song dying down while he goes totally bonkers, singing “And I’m still standing, I’m still standing here” like a guy you’d cross a busy city street to avoid until he finally tires and goes “aaaaaaah” like he’s run out of steam and is ready for the straitjacket.
“Greatest Band in Hell” is pure demented speedway boogie—Miller plays the Farfisa organ like Ray Manzarek on speed, producing crazy distorted carnival music while Prescott beats out a primal tattoo and Conley plays some dumb simple straight-ahead. Meanwhile Foole ululates, moans in pain and then, sounding really pained, sings “Nobody likes me, everybody hates me” before producing some very scary bird-like noises before groaning like Job and returning to bemoaning the fact that he’s singularly unpopular. And no wonder. He’s sounds psychotic, and nobody wants to hang around with a psychotic. It could all be shtick, but who wants to take chances?
The live “Sanctuary” would make for the best alarm clock in the world—it opens with Foole shouting “Sanctuary!” over and over, dragging the word out for a good six seconds or so while he’s at it. Then the band comes in playing a ramshackle garage rock drone that’s pure primitivism while Foole plays around with the word again and again, dragging it out again for what must be TEN seconds, then TWELVE seconds, and that’s when he isn’t raving and roaring over the sound of the band slowly letting it all disintegrate. And his a capella bout of primal scream therapy at the end has to be heard to be believed.
It’s a sign of Dredd Foole & The Din’s commitment to chaos that the Velvet Underground song they chose to cover is the epic room-clearer “Sister Ray.” Who does that? The original is a slow, teeth-grinding and remorseless drone, all bass and creaky guitar and out-of-tune organ over which a deadpan Lou Reed tells an amusing story about sex, drugs, debauchery and murder. His response to Miss Rayon’s shooting the sailor? “Oh, you shouldn’t do that/Don’t you know you’ll stain the carpet?” And that’s when he isn’t singing “Too busy sucking on a ding-dong” and “Whip it on me, Jim.”
The Din pick up the tempo, downsize the bass and basically speed it up, just as Jonathan Richman did with “Roadrunner.” Why, Conley even plays a frenetic solo, and later does some wild shredding, while Foole mostly bellows and emits long eerie moans and speaks in tongues. I’m not sure if he’s unfamiliar with the lyrics or is simply ignoring them, but for long periods of the song he abandons human speech altogether. His performance reminds me of the Lonesome Stardust Cowboy’s tour de force vocal performance on his classic “Paralyzed.” The song’s a stunner, no doubt about it, but I prefer the original—it’s funnier, more monolithic, and despite Foole’s over-the-top performance it’s more unhinged. It’s longer, too—the Velvets really want to drag you through the mud. But that’s just me.
Next up the band treats its audience to a cover of the Animals’ “When I Was Young.” It’s a surprising choice—Eric Burdon and the Animals are hardly what I would call post-punk influencers. It’s a slow to mid-tempo number and Miller really shines on organ. As for the rest of the band they seem to be making it up as they go along—I wouldn’t be shocked to learn they’d never played the song before that night.
Foole’s all over the place but he really puts heart and soul into it, repeating the title over and over until the band descends into pure chaos. Prescott raises the flag of anarchy on drums while Conley goes full-tilt dissonant and Miller paints crazy Day-Glo circles with the organ. Afterwards one of the band members says, “You know, this really is religion.” The question is whether it’s a religious that practices human sacrifice. The Din’s live version of “So Tough” is a pile-driver with gallop; Miller joins Foole on that “I’m so tough” while the song slowly degenerates into sheer mayhem. Foole sounds restrained by Foole standards, and I like it.
Next up is a cover of Pere Ubu’s “Final Solution.” It’s an oddly obvious choice—everybody and his sister was covering it back in the day, and even a band I was in back in the day covered it—but Dredd Foole & The Din give it their ramshackle all. Conley could have been charged with grievous bodily harm to his guitar, and in the Din’s hands the song’s soft-to-loud dynamic goes from loud-to-louder, and have I mentioned Conley’s guitar? Meanwhile Foole and Miller have lots of fun with the vocals, although by Foole standards he sounds outright restrained. Relatively speaking, of course. He basically sounds like David Thomas on DMT and amphetamines, or like he’s singing it WHILE getting electroconvulsive therapy.
It’s followed by a track called “Silence” that is basically thirty seconds or so of, well, silence, I guess that’s supposed to be a joke. Ha, ha, ahem. Which is in turn followed by the shocking closer, a cover of The Stooges’ “We Will Fall.” Talk about your polymorphous perversity—”We Will Fall” is the worst thing the Stooges ever did—a slice of droning hippie bullshit that could only have ended up on their first album because they’d run out of songs. But there’s no denying it’s hilarious—nobody can accuse these guys of lacking a sense of humor. The band plays it with a straight face, chanting away like monks or Volga boatmen, although they have the common decency to produce a restrained—by their standards—din behind it. And they also have the smarts to cut the song’s length by at least half. As things go on Foole becomes increasingly agitated, which just goes to show you the guy has taste. The damn song always agitates me too.
Dredd Foole & The Din didn’t make much of a mark, mainly because they didn’t seem to be interested in making much of a mark—they were having a lark, and having a larf while they were at it. But if its noise for noise’s sake and dementia for dementia’s sake you’re looking for they can’t be beat—I wouldn’t have wanted these guys opening for MY band because they’d have been an impossible act to follow. It’s a cliche to say “they went all out” but that’s just what they did—pushed the envelope of caterwaul to the breaking point and beyond. And they stand as one of the most uncompromising bands I’ve ever heard. They didn’t make music, they hurt it, and you can hear it in every one of Dredd Foole’s bloodcurdling screams.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
