Vietnam War Music

Thanh Lan's rerecording of Sonny & Cher's "Bang Bang":



"Bang Bang" is still a standard in Saigon karaoke bars and has been covered multiple times. Here's the cheesiest version of it ever:

That second one is OOOOZING with cheese. Yikes.

It has a real gangster ending though.

Rhinoceros, an LA band, with a song off their last LP, Better Times Are Coming", released in 1970:



Rhinoceros were signed to Elektra and featured an ex-member of Iron Butterfly, a guy who was in the Daily Flash and Buffalo Springfield and the drummer was from the Mothers of Invention.

John Prine, singing Sam Stone live on TV at the time he released his first LP in 1971, preceded by a backgrounder on him:



The marijuana plant in the background during the excerpt from "Illegal Smile" is a nice touch

Mid 80s Country Joe MacDonald released an album called Viet Nam Experience. Little known at the time but I was surprised that its content was very different from his reputation with the Counter Culture and "Fixin' to Die". He did actually see Navy service in Japan, is proud of it and has been involved in veterans' affairs for decades. Not quite the image from Woodstock

Nice pick! I have vague memories of that being released in the 80s but never heard it for some reason - at the time I was still tracking down his early stuff on vinyl, including the first EPs compilation. Well, here it is after all these years:

Recorded during lockdown, 2020...

A cover of the Redgum classic, "I Was Only 19":

http://www.venetic.co/Venetic%20-%20I%20Was%20Only%20Nineteen.mp3

And a classic Elvis song, Kho Tàng Của Chúng Ta:

http://www.venetic.co/Venetic%20-%20Kho%20Tang%20Cua%20Chung%20Ta.mp3

That Rhino tune was pretty damn good.
I hadn't heard most of those Country Joe tunes, pretty wild!
And Sam Brown... man that's a rough one. Too true to too many veterans, even recent ones.

The Country Joe album astonished me. I assumed he was totally anti-military from his appearance at Woodstock but no, he was just against the war in Nam. That we have to allow. He thought it was a mistake, but he was proud of his limited non combatant service in the US Armed forces. Bit like Jimi Hendrix I guess.

There are more than a couple of really good songs on that disk but also a couple that really belong in the film "The Green Berets", which is puzzling. Bless him, he survived the late 60s and the 70s, but his earliest albums were the best. I have them all (on CD not vinyl, my sons laugh at my CD collection which fills my garage. They tell me that even one old memory stick, from the 90s, 00s,could store the lot)

A song about dogfighting over North Vietnam: Battle Hymn of the Red River Rats by Dick Jonas:

A ballad satirizing the anti-war movement: Poor Left Winger, by Janet Greene:

So lots and lots of references above to an Aussie Vietnam war song titled "I was only 19"

Hear is the main behind the words:



Francis "Frankie" John Hunt with his family onstage at the Welcome Home Concert in The Domain, Sydney. On 8 May 1969, Hunt enlisted with the 6th Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment (6RAR), as a Private (service number 39701) and served as a forward scout with the battalion in the Vietnam War. On 21 July 1969, he was on patrol with 3 Platoon, A Company, 6RAR, when Lieutenant Peter Hines stepped on a mine, which activated and killed the latter. The explosion injured several others, including Hunt, who was standing closest to Hines. Hunt was air-lifted to the military hospital in Vung Tau and then evacuated to Australia for further surgery at Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital to amputate his severely injured legs. He spent 19 months in rehabilitation in Australia. In 1983, musician John Schuman wrote and released the song "I Was Only 19" which was performed by his band, Redgum. The song references Hunt and the mine explosion: "Frankie kicked a mine the day that mankind kicked the moon" and was performed onstage in The Domain for the Welcome Home Concert.

What an amazing photo. I didn't know the story behind those lines in the song.

Not really a Vietnam War song, but a great video:

And a great photomontage:

Good find! Shows that this platoon, at least at some point and maybe not the whole war, had orange elevator tops.

Rod McKuen, performing "Soldiers Who Want To Be Heroes" in the Netherlands, 1971:

I Never Promised You A Rose Garden, by Lynn Anderson:



US Marines recruiting poster, 1973:



Us Marines recruiting ad:

Dory Previn, with a medley of The Veterans Big Parade/Play It Again Sam, from her 1973 live album:

Marlene Dietrich, Paff der Zauberdrachen:

Your 1974 Bang Bang video above is now private.

Fixed - I loaded a more recent version.

Tim Buckley: No Man Can Find The War, from his second album "Hello And Goodbye", 1967:



Tim Buckley US Army Reserve advertisement:



Video of Tim Buckley performing the song, with a bit of narrative from Leonard Bernstein, from his 1967 documentary "Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution":



Photographs of guns and flame
Scarlet skull and distant game
Bayonet and jungle grin
Nightmares dreamed by bleeding men
Lookouts tremble on the shore
But no man can find the war
Tape recorders echo scream
Orders fly like bullet stream
Drums and cannons laugh aloud
Whistles come from ashen shroud
Leaders damn the world and roar
But no man can find the war
Is the war across the sea?
Is the war behind the sky?
Have you each and all gone blind:
Is the war inside your mind?
Humans weep at human death
All the talkers lose their breath
Movies paint a chaos tale
Singers see and poets wail
All the world knows the score
But no man can find the war

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Larry Beckett / Tim Buckley
No Man Can Find the War lyrics BMG Rights Management