Roger Miller (rock musician)
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Roger Miller is an American singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist best known for co-founding the group Mission of Burma.
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[edit] Biography
Miller was raised Ann Arbor, Michigan. Inspired by Detroit-area bands like the Stooges and the MC5, Miller formed several garage bands in his teens. With brothers Benjamin (Ben) Miller and Laurence (Larry) Miller, he formed Sproton Layer; their recordings were collected and released in 1992 as With Magnetic Fields Disrupted. Miller played bass guitar and was the primary singer and songwriter, and the ongoing collaboration M3.
Attending CalArts in 1976, majoring in composition, Miller also studied piano and tuba, and studied music by 20th century experimental composers like John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen. He would eventually drop out of college in favor of punk rock.
[edit] Mission of Burma years
Relocating to Boston, Massachusetts, Miller was a member of the short-lived Moving Parts before co-founding Mission of Burma in 1979. The group was popular in and aroud Boston, but was unable to expand their audience. Miller played guitar and sang, and slightly edged out bassist/singer Clint Conley as the more productive songwriter. It was also Miller's idea to invite Martin Swope to join the group and add tape loop effects, giving the group an unusual, experimental sound.
Mission of Burma disbanded in 1983 due in large part to Miller's worsening tinnitus, attributed in large part to their notoriously loud live performances. In subsequent years, Mission of Burma's small body of recordings grew to be regarded as important and influential.
During the Burma years and afterwards, Miller worked as a freelance piano tuner.[1]
[edit] Other musical projects
After Burma broke up, Miller turned his attention to playing piano the more experimental, instrumental group Birdsongs Of The Mesozoic, which he left in 1987.
Afterwards, Miller had several collaborations, solo efforts and film scores; many of these post-Burma albums were released by SST Records:
- Alloy Orchestra, a trio with Miller on keyboards that composes new scores for silent films. The group's name refers to the many metal objects (hubcaps, springs and pots) used by percussionists Ken Winokur and Terry Donohue;
- Exquisite Corpse, an instrumental group with Miller on guitar, piano and sampler; violinist; percussionist; and a shawm/sackbutt player;
- Binary System, an instrumental piano/drums duo with percussionist Larry Dersch;
- Hooker/Miller/Ranaldo, a free improvisation group comprised of William Hooker (percussion), Lee Ranaldo (guitar), and Miller (bass);
- and M3, an ongoing musical collaboration with Benjamin Miller and Laurence Miller;
- Maximum Electric Piano (solo prepared piano with loops);
- No Man (rock-oriented project with with Russell Smith on bass and Ken Winokur or Malcolm Travis on drums);
- Elemental Guitar (solo prepared guitar with loops).
[edit] Mission of Burma reform
Mission of Burma would reunite in 2002, with Bob Weston replacing Swope. Because of his issues with tinnitus, he now wears firing-range headphones in order to protect his ears while keeping the volume level on his amplifier high, and onstage also has his Marshall amplifier set up at the edge of the stage on his right, with the speakers facing away from him (as seen in the reunion footage in the M0B documentary Not A Photograph).
[edit] References
- ^ Azerrad, Michael. Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991. Little Brown and Company, 2001. ISBN 0-316-78753-1
