Music About The Vietnam War

I regularly see on Vietnam gaming site threads about listening to music of the era while painting/modelling.  And some of OTB's threads on music from SE Asia have been exceptional.

How about music "about the era"?

I will start of with what I think is one of the best compendium of songs about warfare including this era:

https://itunes.apple.com/…/behind-the-lines-expa…/1183768390

John Schumann and the Vagabond Crew (mostly musicians from the old Redgum for the Aussie members) write a lot of songs about social issues from the 70's onwards.

Tracks 8, 10, 11 and 13 are specifically about the Vietnam era. John's brother in law is a Vietnam Vet, ex president of the Aussie Vietnam Vets Association who has now passed on and he gets a lot of his inspiration for this era from him.

All the other tracks are about Aussies in one war or another.

Track 8 is not the standard Cold Chisel, again Aussies will know who Cold Chisel are, version but with some subtle changes to lyrics like line one, "I owe my life to the choppers at Long Tan".

John is also well known for his fund raising for vet charities and track 17 is a song he was commissioned to write by the RSL (Returned Services League) about indigenous Australians, their service and their unacceptability in the early days to be allowed to join the RSL because of the colour of their skin.

I have no relationship to any member of the band, I am just a fan boy.

If you get the chance to listen I hope you enjoy the songs as much as I do.

WARNING: As with a lot of topics about this era, if you are a vet some of the lyrics in some of these songs may be confronting so please listen only if you feel comfortable knowing that it could be confronting.

Here are some links to some of the songs on Youtube:

Khe San (Long Tan version)
Safe Behind the Wire
Rachel's Coming Home (Original version, not the group above)
Battle of Long Tan (not the above group)
Battle of Coral (not the above group)
I was only nineteen

I listen to these songs as I have a lot of friends, some not with us any longer, who fought in SVN and this helps me remember what they went through back then and since.

If you like music on the heavier side, the German thrash band Sodom has done quite a few. The entire M-16 album is a concept record about nam, plus they have some Nam related songs scattered across their other records (Agent Orange in particular).

The Swedish power metal band Sabaton also did a Nam song called Into the Fire.

The Battle Hymn of Lt. Calley, can't recall ever hearing this at the time, but it was a Gold record and sold over 2 million copies.



When this one came out in 1982, I recall it got a lot of airtime on the radio station I listened to at the time,written by Dan Daley and performed by the Charlie Daniels Band