Playing a classic rock album front-to-back in concert should be a gambit for nostalgia-milking dinosaur bands: Certainly Roger Waters owes most of his 21st century fortune to the practice. But it isn’t Rush with “2112” or Yes with “Fragile” spearheading the trend.
Rock’s leading indie, underground and cult bands are fueling the fad. Artists from Mission of Burma and Built to Spill to the Lemonheads and Camper Van Beethoven are playing their milestone releases live in 2008.
Thursday night, Boston’s Mission of Burma performs 1981’s “Signals, Calls and Marches” at the Paradise. Friday the quartet returns to do 1982’s “Vs.” Thorny, brutal slices of post-punk, the albums were recently reissued by Matador. Burma figured doing them live would be good promotion.
“In some skewed way it seemed to make sense,” Burma guitarist/vocalist Roger Miller said. “When we were touring for (2006’s) ‘The Obliterati,’ we kind of nuked all the old stuff from the set list. Partly because we suspected we might be doing the old stuff when the reissues came out.”
Many in the indie rock crowd like the idea because no one thought they’d like the idea.
“This is all very un-Mission of Burma,” Miller said. “We have only done the same set twice. It was in 1979 and it was a disaster.”
The whole-album concert is becoming incredibly chic among Burma’s peers. New York’s All Tomorrow’s Parties has sponsored a series of entire-album events called “Don’t Look Back” since 2005; the inaugural show featured Western Massachusetts rockers Dinosaur Jr. doing “You’re Living All Over Me” and Boston’s Lemonheads doing “It’s a Shame About Ray.” When the deluxe CD of “Ray” was released two months ago, the Lemonheads celebrated by playing it in full at the Paradise.
“ATP set the precedent, but now there’s a tradition for doing this,” Miller said. “This summer we’re playing at the Pitchfork festival doing ‘Vs.’ After us comes Sebedoh doing ‘Bubble and Scrape’ and then Public Enemy doing ‘It Takes a Nation of Millions (to Hold Us Back).’ ”
The practice will likely continue to grow as more bands get hip to the notion of reliving their not-so-distant heyday.
“As far back as I can remember I liked the idea of hearing my favorite bands doing my favorite albums,” said Built to Spill leader Doug Martsch, who will perform 1997’s “Perfect from Now On” at the Orpheum on Sept. 27.
“The idea of going to a show knowing exactly what to expect is really interesting to me,” Martsch said. “But it seemed like a lot of work to do just one show. We’re going to bring along John McMahon, who played cello on the album. To take the time to integrate John and work out the sound kinks and add keyboards, it made sense to do a whole big tour.”
For the first time in many of these indie bands’ histories, they’ll be paying attention to details their messy, unrehearsed genre usually ignores. No Waters-esque lasers or smoke or flying pigs, but plenty of chord changes to remember.
“We’ve had to learn 12 new songs,” said Miller. “Not new songs but resuscitated songs, some that we haven’t played since 1980. Relearning them can be kind of dizzying.”
Mission of Burma, at the Paradise, Thursday night with Cul de Sac, Friday with A.K.A.C.O.D. Tickets: $20; 617-562-8800.
