I was pleasantly surprised last Friday to see a release from Roger Miller (Alloy/Anvil Orchestra, Mission of Burma) pop up in my Bandcamp feed. It turned out to be a reissue of an album I wasn’t familiar with, Roger Miller? Oh., originally released in 1988. Scrolling down I noticed that he had just re-released a different album only a day prior, 1986’s No Man Is Hurting Me. That one I’ve got on vinyl, though I can’t remember for the life of me where I picked it up. I haven’t revisited it in a while but I’m certain that there’s a dramatic saxophone on it.
[checks Bandcamp]
Ahahaha that’s right: the dramatic saxophone is on his interpretation of the other Roger Miller’s King of The Road. That’s fucking great.
I reached out to Roger and learned that there was a third(!) reissue slated for the following week and yes sure, he’d be happy to answer a few questions so I could write about it here. I wasn’t quite fast enough to get this posted in time for Bandcamp Friday, which was July 5th and saw the re-release of M-3, a 1993 album Roger made with his brothers Laurence and Benjamin Miller. Of M-3, Roger tells me:
It was called "one of the richest guitar albums to emerge this year" by Guitar Player Magazine in 1994, so it's likely to be at least interesting. It was great working with my brothers who were the core of Sproton Layer in 1969/1970. The collective improvisation piece on the album, "The Basement" really captures the intuitive actions of brothers who grew up together.
That one I own on CD (also of mysterious origin like the No Man vinyl) and it’s a lot of fun. While I generally wouldn’t bother to give you any “sounds like” comparisons for these records, the opening track Roasting the Salamander has always given me some *Catupecu Machu vibes.
These three reissues are all quite distinct from each other and I enjoyed digging into “Oh.” for the first time as the most experimental-feeling of the three. The tracks on this record range from rearranged improvisations to an increasingly sped-up Mission of Burma track (absolute nightmare fuel for my anxiety and oversensitive hearing but not without whimsy) to an acoustic track that features a subconsciously-sourced language and which only came to exist because the record label demanded more.
Despite my failure to sort out time travel (so far) and get this out two days ago, we’re here now, so please enjoy my conversation with Roger and then head over to Bandcamp and give him all your money.
[RCM = Roger Clark Miller, as he often appears online.]
HPF: You're well known in large part for your experimental, avant-garde work. On pieces like this [the ones on "Roger Miller? Oh."] what is the relationship for you between intentional arrangement and pure improv? The quotation marks around "written" (Chinatown Samba) and "composed/arranged" (Firetruck) are not lost on me. Is that your way of saying you're not quite sure yourself?
RCM: Well, "China-Town Samba" is not a Samba... That was that one reason to use quotation marks. As for "written" the only thing actually written down was the made-up words so I could remember them, but it was organized into a song. Sometimes people call a song written even if there is no real score. I am parodying that.
As for Firetruck, it was 100% improvisation to start with. Every raw material at hand indeed. So it wasn't "composed" in the normal sense - I just wrestled the sprawling improv. into shape. By using quotes I am making fun of the situation mostly.
Regarding improvisation, "China-Town Samba" was pretty organized, with sections of improvisation (slide guitar riffs; bass guitar solo; sampled keyboard work) over the main acoustic guitar/toy piano themes. And "Firetruck" was 100% improvisation between Pete [Prescott] and I, but I organized/wrangled it into a piece of music. So those are two very different uses of improvisation.
I was pretty sure of myself on that album... I really didn't give a flying fuck what anybody would think. Yet it got a great review in the NY Times, and I even got paid!
HPF: One thing I enjoy about your solo records is that I never know what instruments to expect next and many of them are quite unconventional. It was via one of your performances at Tufts years ago that I learned what a "prepared piano" is. Do you find yourself weirding up instruments to fit the music in your head, or are you more often weirding up the music to fit the instruments you've created/found/repurposed/dramatically broken?
RCM: I rarely do weird stuff just to be weird - I do it because it's required to make the specific music come to life. Sometimes I find an unusual way of approaching an instrument that I really like, such as prepared piano or my 4-guitar set-up in my "Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble". In those cases, the type of sounds were first, then they steered the music. Like, what do I do now that I've found sounds I love? In other cases, a composition might call for something "not regular" to complete it, and then I see what I have around, what I can access. So it's a 2-way street really.
The guitar I found on the street in China-town that I used on "China-Town Samba" had hardly any frets on it. But it appealed to me because I found it for free on the street. So I worked out how to make it a useful instrument, and that led to it being used on "Oh."
On "The Basement", the M-3 album track, I used entirely samples (played on a keyboard) of things around my house. I recorded those samples because I thought the sounds were interesting. And they were perfect for interacting with the trio, especially with Laurence's drumming, because of their deep metallic percussiveness. Another sound I had used was a metal pipe being dropped, then delay added, then reversing and looping the sound. It had a "doppler effect" on that piece, adding a new dimension to things. Those sounds I found first, because I liked them - I knew they would be useful some day. And they made sense for the M-3 situation.
HPF: I'm very interested in the liner notes on the last track, Kalgastak, which say that the language used in the song was "derived from subconscious diggings." When considered along with your recent Dream Interpretation releases, I'm certainly getting the picture that you're someone very in touch with that subconscious. Tell me a little more about the digging that brought those words about, preferably in English. Did you understand the message or were you but a humble conduit?
RCM: That was an interesting track, because Feeding Tube wasn't happy with one of the pieces I submitted - even though they told me I could do anything I wanted! So I had to make another piece. It turned out to be my favorite piece on the album - so Feeding Tube was right.
I have always liked language, and starting in 1969, improvising with my brothers at the start of Sproton Layer, I would sometimes sing "in tongues", i.e., making up words/ language as I went along. Usually these "tongues" were a combination of languages I had studied: French, Russian, Latin, and Elvish (Lord of the Rings). The name "Kalgastak" has a very Russian sound to it. Oddly, my composition teacher in 1974 thought a piece that had made-up language sounded very Celtic - I never studied that language, and have no or very little Celtic blood in my family tree.
But I find when I speak or write in this manner, a type of speaking in tongues, the way the words SOUND is key to the speaker's intent/meaning. So even if there is no real language, a subliminal feel is created. I often make up words during the day, sometimes calm and soothing, sometimes with pissed off aggression, depending on the situation. The song "Kuchkah Tay Zod," my side of an obscure 45 with Clint Conley writing the other side, also used made up words created specifically for the song. In some way it addresses the complaint some folks, like Burroughs for instance, have about words - that they come so loaded with associations that they limit our thought. Here the only association the words have, to me anyways, is how they sound. And that might trigger a response in the listener.
There is some English on Kalgastak, actually, but it's all backwards... It is me complaining about Feeding Tube telling me I could do whatever I wanted then telling me what to do! [HPF interjection: HAH!!!] As mentioned, they were correct, but the backwards vocals of me complaining about it makes a nice sonic side-show to the rest of the piece. I'm talking about the song as part of the song. Convoluted, but it fits the album.
HPF: The release of M-3 makes triptych of recent reissues for you. Are the three connected in any specific thematic way?
RCM: There is no distinct tie-in between the three except being latter 1980's into early 1990's. I did listen to all three while preparing for Bandcamp, and there are definitely threads that occur in all of them. Use of unorthodox instrumentation, irregular structures, a sense of humor on occasion. But otherwise, there was no intention for them to be perceived as an actual trilogy. They probably will be though, since they are presented together.
HPF: If you were a bird, what kind of bird would you be and why?
RCM: Archaeopteryx - a fairly famous proto-bird from the late Jurassic Period: Half dinosaur - half bird. At the very beginning of birddom...
[HPF interjection: Perfect. Glad I asked.]
HPF: Anything else in the works you'd like to let The People know about?
RCM: 2025 looks to be an interesting year for RCM releases: My next use of dream interpretations, "Curiosity for Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble", will come out on February 28th. And the second Trinary System full-length will come out later that year. [HPF interjection: OOOOH! I’m gonna be spamming your email inbox trying to book a show together.] Both will be on Cuneiform Records. Cuneiform put out my "Eight Dream Interpretations for Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble" and "The Fourth World Quartet: 1975" which, like the M-3 album, features all three Miller brothers (from 1975 of course). The label is really good, honest, and does what it claims to do.
Here's an interesting story about the "Oh." album:
When I played my first "Dream Interpretation for Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble" concert in fall 2022 in Brattleboro VT, a friend brought her 9-year old daughter to the show. They liked the show a lot and afterwards she asked her daughter to pick out an LP of mine to buy. She picked "Roger Miller? Oh.", certainly my most difficult, most obtuse album. I tried to steer her to something like "But this is the music from tonight!" or "This is an actual rock band with melody (Trinary System)!" But no, she only wanted "Oh." Somewhat concerned, but beyond my control, I sold it to her.
Later I saw my friend and asked if her daughter liked the album and she said she really liked it! I was kinda amazed and glad... But on thinking about it, her 9-year old daughter had so little baggage: she didn't think "This isn't rock music!" or "This is not proper harmony!" or anything like that. She probably enjoyed it because it was fun and even sometimes funny. If she first heard it ten years later, when she was 19, who knows what she would have thought? Those rigid rules might have kicked in. (And quite possibly at 19 she might still like it, who knows?). At any rate, thinking from a child's attitude is under-rated.
Ahhhhh and I’m so pleased to be ending on what has to be the best story I’ve heard lately. I hope this child has been set on a strange and winding musical path. Judging by the fact that her mom is bringing her to Roger’s shows to begin with, she has. I mean, also? Vermont. IYKYK.
~RMSC
*Funny story (not really) about this Catupecu Machu song. I once had an absolute panic attack to it at about 1 AM while driving along route 190 in central Massachusetts. I had zoned out for a bit and this was way back when I didn’t drive a lot or venture far from my Lancaster, Massachusetts home. I suddenly just had no clue where I was along 190 or if I’d been driving for five minutes or an hour. The name of the song means “ants” in Spanish and the music feels to me exactly like a line of ants marching along. So now every time I hear it I picture a little trail of booty-shaking ants and feel vaguely like I’m driving to nowhere from nowhere and god knows if or when I’ll get there. The ants go marching one by one by one by one by one by one by one…