Celebrity Review

An Unsung Hero

Shadows of snow-covered pines danced upon the rug under my feet, projected by the setting sun, as it beamed final shafts of golden light in the midst of its descent into a darkening amber sky. I lounged in a teetering rocking chair, as the roar of a wood fire added to the tranquil scene with a peaceful effect, and I concentrated on my host. Clint Conley – the former bassist for the band Mission of Burma – sat in his linen couch, next to me, with a warm smile, a restrained gaze, and an unperturbed demeanor. At this moment he did not embody the angst-ridden, chaotic, malaise sound of his post-punk band but instead he demonstrated a much more gentle persona. Conley had the semblance of his current role as a content father and husband with a steady job and a loving family rather than that of a hardcore “rock & roller” as his dog, Lily, napped upon his lap and the evening introduced itself to us very serenely in his living room.

Mission of Burma is a band that has recently come to reach great recognition over the last decade as one of the most important yet underrated bands that arose from the earliest days of post-punk rock. The band wasn’t well known at all during the 4 years that they originally played: Mission of Burma only gained a cult following in the underground scene of Boston during the punk explosion of the late 70’s and early 80’s. Their sound was peculiar and aggressive in comparison to other bands, as Clint explained, “we were interested in the artsier side of the underground punk scene.” They really only appealed to a very niche group of local punk enthusiasts who became die-hard fans, as Clint claims, “we had a pretty fervent but concentrated following. The people who were into us were really into us. At the time we didn’t expect anybody else to even know about us. We never fathomed we’d get the recognition we recently got.“

Mission of Burma, formed in 1979, played mostly within Boston (and occasionally in New York City and Washington DC) until they disbanded in 1983. Conley, the co-founder, humbly considers himself just another fan of the genre. Before starting Mission of Burma, Conley described himself as just another punk enthusiast who became “intoxicated” by the underground music scene after graduating from college; “I was swept up by it: it was basically unknown to the world, barely anyone knew of its existence. We were all intoxicated by it; I have a fans mentality: it’s surprising to me that I have fans of my own. Before I started Mission of Burma I thought about a real job, or even grad school, but 98% of my headspace had gotten taken up by musical obsession at the time.”

Conley became infatuated with the underground punk scene after college. Sitting in the quaint living room, as the amber sky began to dwindle into darkness like a slowly extinguishing candle, Conley spoke of how the location where he grew up during his childhood was a lot like the location he lives in now: upper-class suburbia. Before he came to Boston, Conley had always been fascinated with rock & roll, “As a boy I couldn’t get enough of rock. I was a big fan of The Beatles, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, The Animals, The Birds, etc.” Throughout high school Conley had played as a bassist in several bands and had developed an ardent desire to immerse himself in a more serious scene. He resonated immediately with the Boston underground music scene, after a friend of friends told him about a band that was forming, and so he came to the city in 1978. He met the other co-founder of MOB in this band: Roger Miller, who was the guitarist; “We vibed immediately and quickly decided that the band we were in wasn’t the sound that we wanted. We had a different vision of what we wanted to do. We auditioned for some drummers, came across Peter Prescott, and started to practice together.”

Currently living in Concord, Massachusetts, Conley grew up outside of New York in the suburbs of New Jersey before moving to the suburbs of Connecticut. He picked up a guitar at the age of 10, a Hagstrom II (that is purportedly up in his attic somewhere), and began to teach himself with a little help from his friends, “I was just obsessed. I didn’t have any interest in learning rules and lessons. I just wanted to play my favorite songs”. He still has a couple of guitars lying around his house, which he likes to pick up and play, particularly an old Rickenbacker he bought cheaply in his teens, “I’m still mad about music. I love it. I haven’t written a song in the last four or five years: I’m in a fallow period. These periods happen every now and then I suddenly transition into a period of writing more songs than I can handle. Writing music is a weird process. I don’t think anybody understands it. The more you think about it the worse the outcome will be. I just let it come to me.” Conley, credited as the writer of some of the bands most popular songs such as “That’s When I Reach For My Revolver” and “Academy Fight Song”, explains his approach to songwriting through an interesting analogy, “First I come up with an unusual chord pattern. Then I refine it for a span of time that could either be a few weeks or a few months before coming up with the words. It’s a mental ‘Rock Tumbler’. I throw in the big boulder of a chord progression, where it’ll sit in my head and tumble around, gradually breaking into smaller pieces until it ultimately becomes a polished stone. I could be talking to you, or working at my job, and still be 1000 miles away as I work a song out in my head.”

Conley now works at WCVB-TV as a producer for Chronicle. He has a wife named Debby and two daughters named Caroline and Brinna. When Mission of Burma reformed in 2002 he had to learn how to juggle gigs with his full-time job and his family. The band had been mentioned in a book by written by Jon Fine, Your Band Sucks: What I Saw at Indie Rock’s Failed Revolution (But Can No Longer Hear), and subsequently they decided to give it another shot. His daughter, Caroline – currently a 21-year-old Junior at University of Vermont – is a very proud fan of her rock-star dad. “Most kids were embarrassed by their parents as a kid. I wasn’t. It was awesome to come to school with an article by The New York Times or The Boston Globe that was about my dad being a rock-star. He’s really supportive of creativity and encourages me to be creative: he is constantly pushing me out of my comfort zone when I write music. I often get front row seats to his concerts or even backstage passes. A few summers ago I met Dave Grohl because my Dad’s band was opening up for his band.”

Clint remarks that he is very grateful to his employers for being so accommodating to him whenever he’s summoned away to go perform a concert somewhere. Since they reformed, in 2002, MOB has become more famous then they ever imagined. “The response was unexpectedly overwhelming, we were stunned: it was pretty remarkable”. Mission of Burma began getting offers to play in places like England where they never even released records. World-famous bands such as the Foo Fighters and REM talked of the Boston-based Post-Punk band as an inspiration for them in interviews. Recently they opened up for the Foo Fighters at Fenway Park in the summer of 2015, which is how his daughter met Dave Grohl. Unfortunately, Conley thinks that the band has permanently called it quits, “we’re in an indefinite hiatus. It’s safe to say we’ve played our last show.”

Conley, responsible for the name of the band (after seeing a Mission Of Burma poster during a stroll in NYC) and a writer of many of their most popular songs, is celebrated as a legendary pioneer amongst many old-school fans today. Mark Shanahan of The Boston Globe wrote, “Mission of Burma were pioneers of the post-punk era”. While they were not the most famous band during the punk explosion of the late 70’s and early 80’s, without them the music scene of today would be vastly different. Conley, a pioneer of a musical era, is an unsung hero: very few know about him albeit he has changed the music of today enormously.