I think that theme comes up in "Generation Kill" as well...the whole soundtrack thing, I mean.
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Each to his own I guess. There's just something I find unappealing about listening to music that makes me dispeptic and possibly suicidal, particularly after an operation.
Personally, myself and few others also listened electronic (techno to the uninitiated heathens) pre-op. I didn't often get much chance to listen to music post-op, too much to do. It tends to have similar physiological effects to metal. Punk also has that effect but also tends to have leftist ideologies all through it which isn't neccessarily condusive to preparing for war.
SFC W
I keep picturing Ken humming the latest hits by the Andrews Sisters and Vera Lynn as he prepared for war. :D
SFC W
You mean you didn't know :eek::D? Ken is famous!
Say, you didn't tell us Ken could dance :eek: I mean I understand where he learned to bust a good tune on the bugle...Corporal Randolph Agarn at F Troop :D
And to think I thought he was "On Top of the World"... Carpenters that is :)
Glad to see you cite the most accurate TV show ever about the Army....;)I was -- and am. Mortals beware...Quote:
I notice that you are too modest to mention that you were the technical adviser on this one...
Good question, and interestingly enough, there's a song reminiscent of gunfire (sorry, they weren't weapon specific in the early 70s).
Machine Gun (Commodores album)
Quote:
The lead song features Milan Williams on clavinet, which led Motown executive Berry Gordy to the song "Machine Gun" as the clavinet work reminded him of gunfire.
Interesting. The 70's and 80's seems somehat devoid of particular songs, except for a few classics that didn't get much mainstream play (I'm sutre and Tom remember this one!).
Fantastic blast from the past, Marc ! I listened to that several times at the Belgian military attache's house (despite the fact he had never seen a real Thompson (Zaire was mysteriously equipped with M3 greaseguns :cool:).
BTW, Tom was our team's Warren Zevon fanatic :D
I'll assume you recall this famous song as well:
Machine Gun (Jimi Hendrix song) which debuted in 69 as a protest song to the Vietnam War
Hence the Geneva convention against using .50 cal on humans (forget that one).Quote:
Machine gun
Tearin' my body all apart
Evil man make me kill you
Evil man make you kill me
Even though we're only families apart.
Well, I pick up my axe and fight like a farmer,
You know what I mean?
Hey, and your bullets keep knockin' me down..."
I can believe that -it's so "in character" :D!
Yup. Growing up in the '60's in Toronto (with a radical feminist for a mother) exposed me to a lot of the anti-war songs. By the time I was 12, I had Hair memorized :eek:.
One thing that has been floating around in my back brain is that therejust don't seem to be any major civilian songs about the current wars either pro or con. Okay, a few Dixie Chicks ones, but nothing like the 60's anti-war songs or the WW II songs (hey, unlike Ken, I do like Vera Lynn). I find that somehat indicative of a social disconnect, but I'm not sure what to make of it.
Hmmm, don't tell Tom just yet !
I spent a few years in NE D.C. as a kid in the 60s.... only seems fair :D
There's a few sites like this one Updates Anti-War Songs (ahem) Most Recent Major New Material. By no means hitting the Top 40's (whatsoever). Seems our Actors however are spending far too much time 'acting' and taking advantage of the current situation.
Top 10 Anti-War Movies
I guess -- by default -- the song writer could be considered a war monger or protester :rolleyes:
Jimi is always worth a look. He looks high as a kite, but he doesn't look like he'd be dead in three weeks.
Marc, don't forget Green Day. Here's a potential cause for the difference: no draft.
Hardly the power house that was running around in the '60's :wry:!
Well, folk songs especially have always played a pretty heavy role in that (despite Lehrer's jabs at them :D). But even if we go back to Gulf War I, there was still a some songs that were heavily associated with the war in the civilian world that became icons, and we don't see that with these wars which makes me wonder.
MarcT,
I think your point here needs a lot of support. I could probably list many metal hits from the 70's and early 80's--let's just start with Machine Gun, Hendrix, '70; Iron Man, Black Sabbath, '71 Smoke on the Water, Deep Purple '72, Edgar Winter, Frankenstein, 1973; Golden Earring, Radar Love (not head-banging metal I admit), '74;Walk this Way, Aerosmith, '75(another iffy metal call, but metal in the 70's was not the same as metal in the 90's or the new millenium).
I was OCONUS 77-80 and forced to listen mostly to what AFRTS jammed into my ears or AAFES had in the PX as music so I am a little short off the top of my head for cutting edge metal for that time period.
The music industry, like the media itself, is corporatized to a far greater extent than during the 1960s. At the same time it is also contracting with the advent of new distribution technologies and thus far more timid and risk-averse, without any particularly large influx of new content providers as in other new media.
Also society today is not undergoing anything like the social convulsions that wracked it back then, when the upheaval was generational and involved a variety of social change movements. The advent of feminism and the civil rights movement, either of which alone would count as a major social trend, were both ongoing at the time. The draft, as RA pointed out, also involved a far larger segment of the American youth population than the current war, which as has been tirelessly stated on this site and others involves a voluntary few compared to the conscripted many.
American popular society as a whole is disengaged from the ongoing wars. The music and film industries are no different.
Hi RA,
Could be... I've been wracking my brain to try and list out some of the social differences and, in the US, the draft/no-draft is probably one, although that wouldn't effect Canada. What does strike me, however, is the political differences in the popular theorlogy. In the 1960's the popular theorlogy was Liberation Theology which gave a major moral boost to the anti-war movement, but today, the popular theology tends to be a variant of evangelical or charismatic Christianity which, as a political grouping, tends to be pro-war.
Hi WM,
Sorry, I should have made that comment clearer - it was meant in the context of popular pro/anti-war songs. I'll certainly grant you Hendrix and Black Sabbath, although I'd query Smoke on the Water. Definitely agree with you on the differences in metal - I may not listen to it, but one of my students is a freakin' expert and I have to read his papers (and he plays it for me too, especially Burzum).