After watching BOB MOULD play a set at Penn’s Landing earlier in the day, I headed over to the First Unitarian Church to catch MISSION OF BURMA play. When I saw them earlier in the year at Bowery Ballroom, they played a bunch of then-unreleased songs that would surface on their excellent new album The Obliterati.
Unlike that show back in February, all of the material was familiar to me, aside from one new song, which they introduced as a “world premiere” to the rapturous applause of the audience. The live versions of new songs like “2wice,” “Careening with Conviction” and “Let Yourself Go” compared favorably to classics from their first run in the early ‘80s, like the incomparable “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver” and “Academy Fight Song,” alongside other similar material like “The Ballad of Johnny Burma,” “That’s When I Escaped My Certain Fate” and “Secrets.”
2004’s comeback album OnOffOn was represented by its excellent opening track “The Setup” as well as “Wounded World” and “Dirt,” a great CLINT CONLEY-sung track from the early ‘80s that was reprised on that album. For the encore, soundman and tape manipulator extraordinaire BOB WESTON got up on stage to play bass with them on a rousing version of “Fame and Fortune.” Unfortunately, they didn’t play their excellent cover of WIRE’s “Dot Dash” with Weston singing, like they did in February, but that’s my only complaint about this show, and it’s quite a minor one.
All in all, it was worth sweating bullets in the insufferable heat of the First Unitarian Church basement to witness another great Mission of Burma show.
