Day: June 24, 2017

We Gotta Get Out of This Place

Almost no sooner than I had come upon the previously-discussed Smithsonian history upon my last library visit, this morning I ran across this one. And proceeded to read the first twenty pages (but didn’t check it out; the print was dreadfully small!).

This thing is a fascinating sort of historical account of the music that came to be the anthem for the war. And other music that was heard by combatants and civilians at the time, with comments often in their own words, serving to mark those times even more strongly in our memories.

Never will I forget hearing Filipino and South Korean rock bands, often in go-go attire, perform the Animal’s “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” as well as Los Bravos’ “Black is Black” and Dylan’s cover of  “Fixin’ To Die” and many other 60s hits, in Saigon bars and officers club venues. Particularly vivid is the recall of an open-air hotel rooftop setting with this music, bar girls, black market beer, all with a backdrop of  the fireworks of the war in the distance from the city at nightfall. This book brings it all back.