Forum / And the award for best soundtrack in a war goes to...

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    James Lloyd Davis
    Sep 22, 07:35pm

    Vietnam!

    Dig it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGm_vWuzlig

    With all due respect to my Dad, whose Greatest Generation probably saved the entire world from Fascist tyranny, the soundtrack from my war beats Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters by an in-country mile.

    The Youtube video contains newsreel footage and movie clips. Movie clips!

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    J.A. Pak
    Sep 22, 08:38pm

    I don't know...it's hard to beat "I'll Be Seeing You".

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    James Lloyd Davis
    Sep 22, 09:04pm

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0Go8Xep9fY

    Always best when served with George Clooney's aunt Rosemary, but difficult to compare in parallel with CCR. It was a different age, to be sure.

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    Barry Basden
    Sep 22, 09:35pm

    James, James, James. Maybe you had to be there...

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHcunREYzNY

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZQXMgUA5c8

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkIszER1tn4

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GGutxam8Qc

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wbct9OHYemA

    ...and so forth...

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    James Lloyd Davis
    Sep 22, 10:23pm

    Yeah, Barry. I guess that's it.

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    Henry Standing Bear
    Sep 22, 11:35pm

    ? (to the exchange, not the post topic).

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    J.A. Pak
    Sep 22, 11:45pm

    Different age, different political agenda, different heartbreaks. I suppose in many ways, the Vietnam war was more similar to WWI than WWII.

    I love Rosemary Clooney, but I have a soft spot for the Anne Shelton version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU0umVyUJYM

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    James Lloyd Davis
    Sep 23, 03:15am

    All wars are pretty much the same, repetition of a theme as old as Babylon.

    Only the music changes.

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    J.A. Pak
    Sep 23, 03:47am

    Bet ya the music of Babylon would feel oddly similar too. ;)

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    James Lloyd Davis
    Sep 23, 02:05pm

    If there is a lineage to music, I would imagine the music of Babylon would have borne some resemblance to the odd, but interesting strains of rhythms you could hear in Baghdad, intoxicating but hardly similar.

    Though I will grant that Paint it Black by the Rolling Stones has a curious rhythm that may be somehow related, but who's to know? We can only guess. The purpose and the soul of fiction resides in that speculation.

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    Henry Standing Bear
    Sep 23, 04:45pm

    Oh, and Vietnam wins hands down. Hands down.

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    strannikov
    Sep 23, 04:51pm

    "Garry Owen" was a hit in both the Crimean War and the US War of Northern Aggression.
    Brave General Custer was fond of its ability to lend rhythm to the killing of Plains Indians, so as a military "hit" (pun intended because unavoidable), it enjoyed a good run of over twenty years. (For all I know the US 7th Cavalry still plays it.)

    I've seen only four of the five more memorable Vietnam films (Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, and Good Morning, Vietnam--never caught Born on the Fourth of July). The only one I found compelling and memorable throughout was AN, and arguably it's more famous for its Wagner Valkyrie sequence than even the prominence given to the Doors' "The End".

    I don't subscribe to Brokaw's WWII "greatest generation" verdict, it's come to sound like rank flattery to my tender ears. Maybe if he'd offered his assessment ten or twenty years earlier . . .

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    James Lloyd Davis
    Sep 23, 04:57pm

    Sheldon, I have to agree, but I'm biased for sure. There are many more examples I could personally add to the list, but I'm done with remembrance for now. Thanks for the vote.

    I will say that I don't remember the Beatles being all that popular over there, but the Stones and CCR? Definitely.

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    strannikov
    Sep 23, 05:25pm

    "Paint It Black" still sounds like camel-riding music, though the camels might agree that it sounds edgy. (Its rhythms came of the Stones' sojourns in Morocco, no?)

    Surely, it could add nothing to Pontecorvo's Battle of Algiers, although a gripping video for "PIB" could be made of assembled edits of BA footage.

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    strannikov
    Sep 23, 05:50pm

    Whoops: briefly forgot The Deer Hunter, but then . . .

    --and I saw it just once.

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    Chris Okum
    Sep 23, 05:58pm

    I'd like to see a Vietnam War movie that doesn't use the usual suspects - Stones, CCR, Jimi, Doors - and instead opts to use to some other bands from the 60s whose music would play just as well against the beautiful/horrible tableu of the war, i.e., maybe some Velvet Underground, Silver Apples, Pink Floyd, Stooges, etc. I'd just like to see another Vietnam movie, period. As if we only had to revisit the war one time. As if there are no others stories from that War. I don't get it.

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    strannikov
    Sep 23, 06:07pm

    Or for that matter why rely on popular music of the period? What a smash-up 'twould be to feature Vietnam footage paired with the WWII-era tunes, or with Tin Pan Alley-WWI vintage tunes.

    J. P. Sousa? Orchestral/symphonic works from the 19th century? Et cet.

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    strannikov
    Sep 23, 06:13pm

    Did anyone ever prepare video accompaniment to Country Joe McDonald's evocative "Untitled Protest"?

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    Chris Okum
    Sep 23, 06:21pm

    Strannikov:

    You ever see 'All This and World War II?' Mashu-up of WW II footage and hits by: The Beatles, Elton John, Rod Stewart, Bryan Ferry, Ambrosia, Bee Gees, Roy Wood, Status Quo, and Leo Sayer, amongst others. I dare anyone to watch it. I dare them.

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    James Lloyd Davis
    Sep 23, 06:37pm

    There's always another story coming down the pike. No doubt there will be more. I grew up with stories from WWII and John Wayne movies. How many years later did Saving Private Ryan bring it all back home for those guys?

    I remember coming back and mustering out to San Francisco from Treasure Island. 1966. The whole world had more or less changed in the two years I was away and music? A whole 'nuther smoke. Things changed quickly then, but the 'usual suspects' are guaranteed to make you remember and to miss the rush. Yes, war is terrible, but it has its beauty. We are strange animals on the earth with our history of hunting one another.

    There will always be another war and the old ones pass away with the people who fought them, each with his or her memories to the grave.

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    strannikov
    Sep 23, 06:57pm

    On yet another hand: reliance and over-reliance on non-diegetic music in film is worthy of stern rebuke . . .

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    Barry Basden
    Sep 23, 09:04pm

    All This and World War II:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddtDTy_UuDA

    Dare taken apparently by very few. Disappeared from distribution after a couple of weeks. As a Beatles fan, I have to say the covers pretty much sucked.

    Still, it's there on good ol' You Tube if anyone wants to slog thru it.

    JMO. We all have one about most things...

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