Pitchfork

As the legendary Mission of Burma make their way down the West Coast on a week-long trek, guitarist Roger Miller shares his tour diary with Pitchfork. Stay tuned for daily entries ("Of course, it depends a bit on free WiFi," Miller says.)

Here's part nine, in which Burma are surprised by L. A.

Read part eight here.
Read part six here.
Read part five here.
Read part four here.
Read part three here.
Read part two here.
Read part one here.

After a grueling night's sleep, we hit the hotel's free breakfast nook. There was a pick in the L.A. Times for our show tonight, ending with "the live show is simply mind-altering." Wow. People are so nice to us these days.

A bit of residual time before we hit the road, so some of us soaked in the outdoor hot tub. Me, I'd seen some clompy big-tired "no-speed" bikes, thoughtfully provided by the hotel, so I took a few spins. We hit the road at the ungodly hour of 11:15 am.

Wasn't Bugs Bunny always trying to get to Pismo Beach?

More driving, humorous interpersonal bantering, sporadic food and coffee consumption, etc.

The first thing you notice when you walk into the Troubadour (tonight's venue in L.A.) is the smell-- very distinctive. Expectations were not high for tonight's show, but they were confounded by reality. More people showed up here than in S.F.! That's a first.

The show was odd-- I broke two strings in the first set, then Clint broke a string in the second set just before our last song, and then he couldn't get the new string on. So we instructed the audience that we'd be back after repairs and that at that time they were to cheer loudly as if encouraging us to do an encore. The whole neo-fiasco didn't dampen anyone's spirits, though-- it kind of humanized the whole thing (unlike our typical Slick Rock Showmanship Act). After we did our fake encore of "Max"/"Revolver", we really did come back for an encore-- "Johnny"/"Learn". When the crowd still wouldn't let us stop, we came back again and informed them that we were going to depress them into submission with "Dead Pool".

A really fun, if slightly peculiar, night. After S.F. I wrote, "L.A. is gonna have to tweak itself up big time to come close to S.F.", and it did. Despite being one of the most twisted cities in the U.S. (or perhaps because of that), the crowd was really into it and it was a blast.

The Crowd at the Troubadour

We all watched X-Flies before konking out. Certainly the best thing on at that hour...