Alright, let's go balls to the wall here and discuss the one time I actually proposed marriage and why it is forever linked to Mission Of Burma's album, OnOffOn.
The first Mission of Burma song I ever heard was "Max Ernst". A strange slightly older eclectic to the point of ridiculousness dude made me a artsy-punk mix. All the usual suspects, Gang of Four, the Fall, Huggy Bear (!!!), possibly even something as wacky as Joy Division. The other day in my endlessly irritating Historiography class somehow people started talking about Max Ernst and dada, and I was almost about to join in, but as usual I kept to myself, and thereby maintained my well deserved reputation as a weird dude who shows up to class to glower, chuckle occasionally, and be the first to leave. Even though I was more taken by some of the other songs on the mix, for whatever reason, Mission of Burma was the band I chose to most assiduously research. My best guess is that I really liked their name. This was probably around Junior Year, a year which was basically the most High School of High School years, all algebra, first loves, second loves, getting punched in the face, fire alarms, new friends, soda machine shenanigans. My musical palette ranged from Epitaph/Fat bands, to Weezer's Pinkerton. Oh, I also remember getting into Kid A! But as a early teen I was a little hostile towards this post-punk stuff. The primary reason punk appealed to me at the time may have been because it was fast. That's still definitely part of it. Fast is good. Everyone likes fast. Anyway, I started buying their albums, and bizarrely enough, began to actually like this band. There were some easy hits (Academy Fight Song), a song I later learned Moby covered (That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate), and basically just a lot of dense tape-looped weird cacophony. Sitting on a beach in Hawaii, getting sunburned, while listening to "All World Cowboy Romance" and it suddenly CLICKING for me would have to be my second most profound Mission of Burma moment.
On May 4, 2004, Mission of Burma, after like twenty years of not being a band, suddenly, a mere 24 months or so after I discover them, decide to get back together, record a new album, burn down their mansions and take to the streets with that Boston prole turned super-star moxie. I was at De Anza at this time. I had just gotten my Driver's License after years of being too damn scared to get behind a wheel. I worked at the Internet Lab with my accomplice, Beef Nathan. I drove him to work, eschewing freeways because they terrified me at the time, driving all the way down Steven's Creek in the gray morning, forcing Nate to listen to "Career Opportunities" by the Clash several thousand times. To this day I cannot hear that song without thinking of overcast spring days and Nate nodding off in the passenger seat. Back then I obviously spent a lot of time in Cupertino but I had no real conception of it. Hadn't met anyone from De Anza yet really, didn't know the cool spots to throw rocks at or drink a Mad Dog at, only slightly aware of the crazy Area 51 quarry in the hills. My Head's Up Device, or whatever the heck, was all fogged up still. Anyway, it was on one of these days, me and Nate hanging out in the early morn of a super non busy Internet Lab, that I had planned to go to Streetlight after class to acquire for myself the vaunted comeback album. I had already read some reviews, and they were mostly positive, and I was ready for the best and the worst. Anyway, I get it, and it is good. I like it a lot. A few of the songs I am already familiar with, and most of the new stuff sounds just like the old stuff, like they haven't really skipped a dissonant (and I ain't talking minor seconds, tritonus, and major sevenths {no idea what I am saying}) beat. That night I am driving around with my lady friend of the time. Obviously I am listening to it. The first song, a pretty rollicking rocker (which now that I think about I had already downloaded from the Matador Records website!) is playing when we start to get into it. And some past sins come to light, as usual shit not lied about, rather omitted from my narrative I constructed earlier on in the relationship. I feel like a shithead. We get out of the car and walk around Yerba Buena high school, hypothetical situations thrown at each other, and I grow sick with my endless dimwit rationalizations for the careless dumb things I had done. The day had started with such brilliant promise, and now I was spitting harsh words and hearing terrible thing after terrible thing. The night was t-shirt warm, and I was hit in the face a few times I think. At the time it was my wont to scream and kick the ground and basically throw righteous fits. I did some of that. But I felt some crazy panic too. We sat next to my car, on the curb. She was wearing Pumas, as was I. We were both wearing blue dickies. She wasn't looking at me. I stared at my car, in all it's haunted Integra glory. I picked up a roly-poly and in retrospect, rather stupidly asked if she would marry me. I had just turned 20. I was a young 20 at that. Through befuddled tears she quite accurately and soberly pointed out why that was a retarded idea, using some kind of duh logic that wasn't hitting me at the moment. She later reneged on her own smarts, and accepted my roly-poly, in lieu of an official ring. So in effect, I was "engaged" for two months, until July 4th, 2003. That was the beginning of the great unraveling, but that all seems so small, distant, and also really fucking weird now. Obviously to this day, shit like that imprints itself on you by sounds and scents and all those other senses. I remember kicking the dirt, and I remember the fourth and fifth songs on OnOffOn, "Falling" and "What We Really Were". It is downright fucking IMPOSSIBLE to hear those songs and not think of kicking the dirt and picking up an insect (not harmed, but surely dead by now) to propose. What I'm basically saying that without music we are nothing, and every album or song I have ever really loved probably has just as much to do with the shit surrounding it than gnarly riffs or radical choruses. That's probably why I have an affinity for so many bad songs. I don't genuinely enjoy Lil Wayne and Snow SOLEY based on their musical genius. It's one of those it's not what we do but why we do it thangs. Anyway, Propagahndi's new album, possibly worthy of a MacArthur Genius Grant, will remind me in years to come of staying up for two days in a row, and of other secret hilarious shit that would probably somehow be even more boring and gay than my Mission Of Burma story. It will basically remind me of pushing me over the edge into the realm of doing something honestly, no schemes, no ploys, just being straight up and saying what you gotta say and dealing with the nuclear fallout. I've got seven hours to go to sleep, then two hours after that to become well acquainted with post structuralism. This shouldn't be the case, but life is much better with cigarettes. I'm doing my best here, my dawgs. I'll see you around the campfires, the battlements, and the gallows!
