As we enter our third full week of Rocktober, I'm going with some post-punk. Boston-based Mission of Burma was a short-lived, but critically acclaimed and influential post-punk band in the early '80s. I don't remember when I first heard their 1981 song "That's When I Reach for My Revolver," but rest assured, it was nearly two decades after the band's 1983 breakup (due to guitarist Roger Miller's unfortunate battle with tinnitus).
The song is a great little rock song, making good use of anticipation, going between relatively subdued verses and a more aggressive chorus, with some subtly delicious fills before the choruses. The song title is taken from an oft-mistranslated quote from a play written by German playwright Hanns Johst. The actual line (translated from German) is "whenever I hear [the word] 'culture,' I remove the safety from my Browning." It was essentially a line that summed up one of the many reasons the Nazis were dickheads.
The choruses of the song hit like a revolver (or a Browning), and it's too bad the band wasn't able to make more than a one studio album and one EP in the early '80s. They did gain a following later in the '80s and in the early '90s, and then they were one of the bands featured in Michael Azerrad's 2001 book about '80s punk and indie rock, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981–1991.
The song has been covered by multiple artists, including Moby and Blur's Graham Coxon.
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