Vietnam War Music

OTB wrote:They are smoking hot - there are still women in Saigon who look and dress like this...

All right!!! Now I know why you like Saigon so much. Makes perfect sense to me.

Tom

"G.I. Joe" by Salvation, a San Francisco band, off their only album, released in 1968.

I wondered why this was over 4 mins long and then I heard the obligatory 2 min organ solo which was standard practice in '68.

Happily the trash can lid sound drummer is not from the Ginger Baker school of drumming or it would have been way too long.

You know, the most interesting thing to me about a lot of these songs is how the sound and singing style has changed so much over the years. So many bands of this era sound so much alike, and that seems to occur every 8-10 years or so.

And ya know, that is quite a good bass line!

A song about the moral dilemmas of modern warfare, by a group of demobbed US servicemen who made a name for themselves in West Germany in the 1960s. The group broke up in 1968 when their management decided it would be a great idea for them to do a tour of South-East Asia, including South Vietnam, and one of the members walked out, convinced they would probably all get fragged.

Their Vietnam War anthem:

I liked this album by them in the early 80's:

Different group I think...

Courtesy of the Vietnam War Song Project, a playlist of 66 Vietnam War Christmas songs.

Looking above a few posts, I saw The Monks. Not sure I ever heard of them. The Monk I was listening to (and still do) was Thelonious Monk.

Tom

There's a Vietnam War song on the latest Neil Young Archives Vol. 2 release but it's not on-line yet, so here's his live acoustic version of Ohio from Vol. 1:



This is from the Live at Massey Hall 1971 album, which originally was a bootleg (I found one on vinyl in Toronto), but the sound quality here is waay better.

And here he is doing a set for a Vietnam Veterans Benefit in 1986, the last song of which is Ohio:

A song about getting drafted, from the Ultimate Spinach's first album, released in 1968:

The Fugs made a VIDEO? Who knew?

"Kill For Peace" was released in 1966 on their album "The Fugs" but this video appears to be from two or three years later, judging from the fashions.



An interesting side note is that, at the time of this recording, they were being investigated by the FBI as a possible threat to American society: The FBI report concluded the following:

"The Fugs is a group of musicians who perform in NYC. They are considered to be beatniks and free thinkers, i.e., free love, free use of narcotics, etc. .... it is recommended that this case be placed in a closed status since the recording is not considered to be obscene."

Ed Sanders, a member of the group, joked that "If we'd only known about this, we could have put a disclaimer on the record, 'Ruled NOT obscene by the FBI!'"

Source: Wikipedia

OTB wrote:Ed Sanders, a member of the group, joked that "If we'd only known about this, we could have put a disclaimer on the record, 'Ruled NOT obscene by the FBI!'"

I've been going over the songs of the Fugs from that LP, which feature titles like "Group Grope" and "Couldn't Get High", not to mention their live album, which features an account of a jello orgy with lesbian dwarfs, and am perplexed the FBi didn't find the Fugs obscene.

OTB wrote:......which features an account of a jello orgy with lesbian dwarfs, and am perplexed the FBi didn't find the Fugs obscene

That is HILARIOUS! That was back when stuff like that was socially acceptable and we weren't such a politically correct cult culture.

Saigon Bride by Joan Baez, with a striking video of period photos.

That is some really nice footage in that clip. I've never even heard of this track before. Though to be fair, I was never a Joan Baez fan anyway.

Good find OTB.

I used to be the same - I collect the 60s folkie stuff but avoided her, mainly because of her turgid performance at Woodstock. Now I've got most of her 60s albums. The double LP "Any Day Now - Songs of Bob Dylan" is a good starting point.

"Black Soldier" by the Last Poets, from their 1973 album, "Chastisement":



Some people cite these guys as the starting point of rap music.

"Back To The World" by Curtis Mayfield, 1973:



My first Curtis Mayfield album and still my favourite.

Love Curtis Mayfield. "Move On Up" is my favourite track since first hearing it in the 1973 film "The Groove Tube" and has been on my multitudes of playlists ever since.