Mission Of Burma - Peking Spring | Текст песни

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Peking Spring
Written: February 1979 (Clint Conley)
Debuted: April 1, 1979
Recorded: July 1979 (radio tape, Taang! Mission of Burma)
October 1980 (Electro-Acoustic Sessions, unreleased)
March 12, 1983 (The Horrible Truth About Burma, Live at the Bradford)

China’s repressive “Cultural Revolution” ended in autumn 1976 with the death of Chairman Mao and the arrest of the Gang of Four. Deng Xiaoping returned formally to power in 1978 with a relatively liberal agenda known as “The Four Modernizations”. This liberalizing trend was firmly established by the November 15th announcement that 100,000 past political enemies had been declared rehabilitated, and the 1976 “April Fifth Movement” protest retroactively endorsed.

Chinese intellectuals across the nation immediately responded to this green light by putting up huge wall posters filled with serious discussion and even critique of government policy. In Peking, the activity centered around a long, low gray brick wall just west of Tiananmen Square. The wall became known as “Democracy Wall”; the movement was “Peking Spring”.

One of the Beijing residents reading the posters was a 29 year-old electrician at the Beijing Zoo with a history of protest involvement named Wei Jingsheng. On December 5, 1978, Wei posted a long argument entitled “The Fifth Modernization” Democracy? which went far beyond previous posters in its willingness to question and even attack the Communist regime. Wei quickly became viewed as the leader of the movement.

The “Peking Spring” movement was very much alive when Clint, for his first-ever song lyric, imagined himself as one of the protesters. (Although Clint had earlier composed the opening riff for “All World Cowboy Romance”, Roger’s recollection that Peking was the first song Clint ever wrote, as told in Not a Photograph, is essentially accurate.)

Three days before the song was debuted, the movement was crushed when Wei was arrested by the Peking Public Security Bureau. Wei became China’s most famous dissident and political prisoner. He was freed from jail briefly in 1993 but soon re-arrested. After further pressure from Amnesty International, the Clinton Administration, etc., the Chinese government finally announced Wei’s release from prison for good on November 16, 1997, 18 years, 8 months, and 18 days after his initial arrest.

Mission of Burma announced that reunion tickets would go on sale on October 30, 2000, 18 years, 8 months, and 18 days from the day they recorded “Peking Spring” for The Horrible Truth About Burma. Ironically, if you now do a Google search on “Peking Spring” you first get links to the Burma song, not to the movement whose name it borrowed.

“Peking Spring” (the song) was an early concert favorite and an obvious choice for Burma’s first demo tape designed for airplay on college radio. The nominal producer was Peter Dayton, who had been lead singer, guitarist, and primary lyricist for hugely hip local band LaPeste?, and had just left them to pursue a solo (and ultimately much less edgy) career. Dayton producing Burma’s first demo was thus a good career move for all parties. The irony is that LaPeste’s? own studio work (produced by Ric Ocasek of the Cars) completely failed to capture the band’s live power, and its failure to land them a major-label deal led directly to Dayton’s decision to leave the group.

The chorus to the “Peking Spring” demo features an overdubbed guitar part ”presumably played by Clint” with a completely different chord progression from the part played by Roger. This was Clint’s first draft for the chorus.

In early days Clint used to play the opening bass riff through a phase shifter you can hear this quite clearly in the original demo. He may not have used the effect anywhere else in their set. When the phase shifter was stolen, he never bothered buying a new one.

The “Peking Spring” demo was a massive hit on local college radio, #1 for the year on MIT’s WTBS (now WMBR). You can see its impact on the quality of Burma gigs later in the summer and in the falls opening for Gang of Four? at the Rat in mid-August, and their first weekend headlining gig there in mid-October.

\"Peking Spring\" is the one classic Burma song that has never been given a proper studio recording, and it remains a crowd-pleasing occasional treat in Burma Mk. 2 sets.

Note: 'Peking Spring' is also the alternate title for Taang's EP of demos, simply called Mission Of Burma.

Created by: EricVan last modification: Saturday 20 of May, 2006 [20:07:45 UTC] by patrickamory

From http://www.missionofburma.com/

Peking Spring
The very first song that Clint ever wrote. I always
thought of it as being like Athena being born, full-sized, out of Zeus' thigh. I
mean, where did this come from? He'd written nothing at all for the previous
band, Moving Parts.

With its rousing punk-anthem chorus, this was played EVERY SINGLE DAY after
its release (via tape) on WMBR in 1979, becoming the most played song of the
year. However, we were still a very poor draw at that point.

This song also gave the impression that we were overtly political - but
as Clint pointed out, the anti-communist, pro-democracy aspect of the Chinese
movement (Peking Spring was a paper for that movement) was in some ways almost
reactionary. When the Gang of Four came out (another Chinese reference), we were
immediately tied w/them (playing, happilly, many gigs with them!). An
interesting note on the Gang/Burma connection: on the first Gang album one song
ends with Andy Gill scratching furiously away at the guitar. And, a few months
before we'd even heard of Gang of Four, Clint and I ended Peking Spring the same
way.

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