Volcano Suns
The Bright Orange Years / All Night Lotus Party
Merge Records
By Jose Fritz
Hagiographers have already written the history of Mission of Burma. They’ve ended up somewhere ahead of the Meatmen and somewhere behind the Replacements. Jazz aficionados have already decided on the place of Roger Miller, relegating him and the band to the rimshot at the end of his career. Where does all this leave The Volcano Suns?
The band had a volatile line-up really starting and ending with former Mission of Burma drummer Peter Prescott. Gary Waleik and Steve Michener didn’t hang around long enough to see the release of The Bright Orange Years. In 1987 they picked up Bob Weston who seemed to have a somewhat calming effect —dare I say polishing their later albums. But these two The Bright Orange Years & All Night Lotus Party, found the band at their most bombastic and raw.
I feel fortunate that Merge has been dutifully re-releasing some of these lost alt-rock gems. This year they’re re-releasing these two Volcano Suns albums, remastered with extra tracks. Last year they put out the 3-CD anthology of Big Dipper, a band started by Waleik and Michener, and while strange that it preceded this one, that pop project served to shed some light on the clockwork behind the early Volcano Suns material. They share those Flipper-like muddy midrange guitars that connect everything, even things that don’t belong connected.
Despite the era, it is entirely wrong to compare them to contemporaries like the Vaselines, Meat Puppets, and Husker Du. Broad era-based comparisons to underground bands aren’t fair. Yes, certain similarities just plainly come from the limited fidelity of the era. What best encapsulates the Volcano Suns is their cover of the MC5’s “Kick Out the Jams.” It’s a fast, messy, and noisy interpretation that manages to still sound a little like Mission of Burma, but also keep those rough edges that betray their connections to hardcore punk.
On the wooden puzzle maps of the last century, Massachusetts didn’t garner its own piece. It was glommed together with Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. It was a big unwieldy Idaho-sized piece that could have been named “Yankee-land.”
Nonetheless, it was destined to become the epicenter of the alternative rock movement. In 1985 the word “alternative” had yet to be applied to music. In that time, before the rise of alt rock, Mission of Burma was a very obscure cassette purchase. In comparison, the Volcano Suns bordered on pure apocrypha. The Bay State was better known for the Dinosaur Jr., Sam Black Church, The Lemonheads, Gang Green, Scream Feeder, and of course the Pixies.
The etymology of the Volcano Suns positions them as a dead end on the evolutionary tree of rock, a missing link if you will. But in a city named Boston for a few strong years, this was a band that really mattered and really influenced other bands. Listening to them isn’t about some M.O.B. side project. This was probably the first band that when you look back stands out as a post-punk band. They had exceeded the few boundaries of punk in that day and not embraced pop to do so. So, here lies a line in the dirt. It’s as important that we count them, as we count those that crossed it.
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