as far as i can find, no thread.
i only have no man is hurting me. when i found it 7-8 years ago i liked it, then set it aside. listened yesterday and it is awesome! well, the "king of the road" cover doesn't make me want to hear it too many times, but the rest is very cool. and the second side's treated piano and frippertronic style echo and rhythmic workouts is great and dare i say it, edit worthy.
other solo stuff if i'm digging this one?
― andrew m., Thursday, 7 August 2008 20:08 (seventeen years ago)
the Oh... album of Forced Exposure is v v good if you can track it down.
there are a couple on SST/New Alliance. Damage The Enemy I like a lot, Whamon Express not so much.
a little bit of Miller chat on here:
CoD/S&D: Mission of Burma affiliated groups (Volcano Suns, Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, Space Negros)
but not much.
there's also a Birdsongs Of The Mesozoic thread, I have always found them rough going.
I saw him back in the 80's at least once, he passed out flyers about his crazy hearing protection getup.
― sleeve, Thursday, 7 August 2008 20:22 (seventeen years ago)
sixteen years pass...
three weeks pass...
A belated you're welcome!
I'm really glad he was invited to play with Gang of Four because until then it hadn't occurred to me to see what he was doing. (For some reason, I thought Miller had retired from touring altogether and not just Mission of Burma.) I saw him tonight at the Francis Kite Club, which is what you'd expect from a LES bar that hosts cultural events - an old space with exposed brick, pretty small in size, but beautifully and stylishly designed. As I was walking up, I saw Miller hanging out on a neighboring step, enjoying the cool and sunny weather, and he couldn't have been more cordial. He went on to play for about 50 minutes, pretty much like the video above but up close it was really impressive to see him work the array of gear and instruments around him.
I know he's done silent film scoring, and there were moments where I felt like someone should hire him to score a movie currently in production. At one point, he displayed an Eraserhead drink coaster (see here!) and it reminded me that David Lynch (as well as a few other indie filmmakers of note) had also recorded albums in a similar vein, with one crucial difference - they didn't have Miller's technical mastery, which is fine, those albums weren't done with that in mind, but you can see what else Miller can bring to this kind of music with his level of skill and dexterity. (Given that he's using sheet music the whole time, I'm not sure if there was much that was improvised, but it didn't exactly feel like he was playing a note-for-note composition.)
He also brought along some nice merch - I picked up CD's of his last two solo albums which can be tough to find (I think most of the setlist was drawn from them), but he also had vinyl, WRCM T-shirts, etc. which were a bit cheaper than what you'd pay online and you could just Venmo him direct. He was also more than happy to sign the Mission of Burma record I brought with a very nice inscription.
FWIW, here's the rest of this year's schedule:
Sun., June 1: House Concert, Hamden, CT
July 25: Brattleboro Art Museum, Brattleboro, VT
Aug.29: Dromedary Festival, Catskill, NY
Sept.6: Newfane, VT
Oct., middle of: Midwest tour likely.
― birdistheword, Sunday, 1 June 2025 07:43 (seven months ago)