IN THE MAGAZINE

CLINT CONLEY (MISSION OF BURMA)

Photo by Kelly Davidson

Playing bass and writing half of the songs for Mission of Burma, Clint Conley is one of the select few in the early-80s who indirectly created your record collection. Clint wrote a little ditty called “That’s When I Reach For My Revolver.” There will always be a line of folks stretching around the corner, waiting for a chance to eviscerate it in cover form, yet the song will still be the most important four minutes in the history of American music, followed closely by the rest of the band’s output.

Vice: What was it like to play a festival like All Tomorrow’s Parties and, on a totally different level, SXSW, after having been musically inactive for some time? What was the culture shock like for you personally?

Clint: The culture shock was, well… some of these things were total mind-blowers.

In a positive sense?

Oh yeah. The usual trajectory of bands is, you work your way up from weeknights in a club to opening slots on the weekend to headlining weekend shows, you work your way up incrementally, and no particular step is that radical from the one that preceded it. Our experience wasn’t like that at all. We left the world as a fairly unknown entity, and 20 years later came back, and it was like Rip Van Winkle or something. Playing these festivals in front of young hipsters, I remember thinking, “Good God, this can’t possibly be true.” The jump from not thinking of yourself as a musician—at least in my case, kind of going on with life—to that is a pretty radical thing. It makes you want to throw up on your shoes, I’ll tell you that.

You had this fairly large built-in audience upon returning.

I remember ATP in England. It was the first time Burma had even played in England, we didn’t go over there the first time around, and they had us in what we thought was a ridiculously promising spot—we were thinking that someone had made a horrendous mistake—we were right before Cheap Trick or something. Then we go out and all of these photographers are jostling around, trying to take pictures. You just lower your head and charge forward.

Before playing ATP with Mission of Burma, when was the last time you attended a festival as a fan?

I guess the answer would be… 1969, the Atlantic City Pop Fest?

How would you say Burma was received at, say, Pitchfork Festival?

It seemed good, but in general, I don’t see us as a festival band. It’s not really our thing. We have a modest presentation, we don’t have big projections or giant bubbles that we run around in or any of the things that people fill stages up with. And it’s hard to connect with an audience at a festival, and we don’t engage them in patter, we’re not a spectacle at all.

I have conflicting views about bands playing their older records from start to finish, but with you guys, it was something that happened in the middle of putting out new records, touring, and part of my opinion depends on what a band does before and after. Mission of Burma isn’t a band that formed for that reason…

I can think of exceptions, but I’m personally not that interested in seeing bands play one of their records from start to finish. I’d like to see the Kinks do Village Green, but I don’t revere the album as a holistic statement about the band. That being said, it was an honor to be asked, and it corresponded with the rerelease on Matador, and it ended up being a lot of fun.

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