Burma plays weekend SW tour

It's been awhile since I've mentioned 'em and last we heard they had gone on hiatus again. But this weekend Austin and Denver get to hear their fine sounds once more so maybe there's hope of another show down our way:

07.15.05 Emo's
Austin, Texas

07.16.05 Ogden Theater
<> Denver, Colorado

Let's hope these aren't the last shows but that's all that's listed on the website

UT-Austin's newspaper writes:

Conley was once quoted as saying the best move Burma ever made was to lay the band to rest with its dignity intact, which is perhaps one of the best theories no one ever follows. Ultimately, neither did Mission of Burma. However, just because they've reunited doesn't mean they've sacrificed their dignity. They're not trying to recapture the fame and fortune of their youth. They never had either. At least for Miller, even now Burma isn't what pays most of the bills. They're playing because it seems right, and it could all end at any time. Catch them while you can.

And EQ Mag has an interview with the band on the differences between making thier last album and Vs. - not really so much about the band but about the changes in studio technology, it's still a great read. Miller explains how he got that uniquely fuzzy guitar sound in Vs.:

Roger Miller: Two Fender Lead I guitars, 50-watt Marshall combo amp. Vacu-Fuzz and Vacu-Trem. Cornet, Piano.

“I started off using a Big Muff Pi,” says Roger Miller, “but, as is often common with Electro-Harmonix, their units’ quality varies with time. Its volume didn’t work for me around 1980, so (producer) Lou Giordano was recruited to build a better fuzztone mousetrap. He took apart the Big Muff Pi and proceeded to obliterate it with the “Vacu-Fuzz” (titled because Lou had played in a band called the Vacuum Heads). I also had been using a terrible Peavey Guitar amp (it’s used on the first 45) that had tremelo. When Clint wrote “Tremelo” while I had that amp, the tremelo effect became a major part of the song. So when I bought the Marshall 50-watt and it didn’t have tremelo, Lou was recruited again for the Vacu-Trem. He cranked that baby up to the max also — at slow tremelo it almost sounds like a delay (“Trem Two”). At all knobs on 11 it does a weird amplitude modulation that sounds like six or seven guitars all playing microtones apart. Truly bizarre. (When I was in No Man, I had Bob Weston modify the “speed” pot so that it could be run by a volume pedal — I use that effect on the Burma song “Max Ernst’s Dream”).

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