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!
I don't know...it's hard to beat "I'll Be Seeing You".
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.
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...
Yeah, Barry. I guess that's it.
? (to the exchange, not the post topic).
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
All wars are pretty much the same, repetition of a theme as old as Babylon.
Only the music changes.
Bet ya the music of Babylon would feel oddly similar too. ;)
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.
Oh, and Vietnam wins hands down. Hands down.
"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 . . .
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.
"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.
Whoops: briefly forgot The Deer Hunter, but then . . .
--and I saw it just once.
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.
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.
Did anyone ever prepare video accompaniment to Country Joe McDonald's evocative "Untitled Protest"?
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.
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.
On yet another hand: reliance and over-reliance on non-diegetic music in film is worthy of stern rebuke . . .
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...