Peachy Keen Memorial Day Music Thread

I’m doing a three-day music series on FB for the “holiday” and I’ll mirror it here.

I’m reflecting on exactly what we, the American people, have purchased with the blood of our children and the children of people who never threatened us.

First off:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JwmIBSMzSM

Second:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B_YEqQDEqc

Third:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo3q4-wICCc

1 Like

JB is gettin old, thought that guy was going to look like he was 25 forever.

1 Like

Slapping Daryl Hannah around is hard ass work, man. Puts some miles on a guy.

2 Likes

didn’t john “graveyard spiral” kennedy jr tap that?

Fourth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lALc4kJYdgA

@LouStuhlwadder Words and music by Eric Bogle, one of your own even though a Scot by birth

Fifth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwXG26UDSW4

Guy Van Duser, props on the guitar work.
@LouStuhlwadder, another gem by Bogle.

Oddly, he’s not well known in Australia.

Nor here, except in some circles.

We interrupt our music programming to bring you a topical poem from the inestimable Doug Anderson.

From THE MOON REFLECTED FIRE

NIGHT AMBUSH
By Doug Anderson

We are still, lips swollen with mosquito bites.
A tree line opens out onto paddies
quartered by dikes, a moon in each,
and in the center, the hedged island of a village
floats in its own time, ribboned with smoke.
Someone is cooking fish.
Whispers move across water.
Children and old people. Anyone between
is a target. It is so quiet
you can hear a safety clicked off
all the way on the other side.
Things live in my hair. I do not bathe.
I have thrown away my underwear.
I have forgotten the why of everything.
I sense an indifference larger than anything
I know. All that will remain of us
is rusting metal disappearing in vines.
Above the fog that clots the hill ahead
a red tracer arcs and dims.
A black snake slides off the paddy dike
into the water and makes the moon shiver.

One more from Doug, if you have the stomach for it.

EREBUS
By Doug Anderson

You have the dream again: monsoon season, jungle,
a muddy village road; you are naked,
stumbling along a paddy dike across an open field
toward the village where C.W. killed all the pigs
but once into the trees
there is only thickening jungle,
canopy hung with smoldering flares.
You stumble into an open field,
cupping your balls,
and from the next tree line
you hear music, Motown, Aretha,
who used to throb from the mortar pits
where the brothers slung round after round down the tubes,
a little respect,
and when you enter the village, ashamed,
you see men you tagged dead
and choppered out like sides of beef.,
grinning at you from around the fire,
and the old women, the children
who didn’t move quick enough, all the Cong,
they are there too,
and the ones from the day so many died
you tore up your own clothes for bandages;
all there and singing, lit amber by the fire.
What took you so long, Doc, they say.
They ask you where you’ve been and you can’t tell them.
Over twenty years since you got lost coming home,
and now you’re back here in the stinking silt and hedgerows,
shin deep in pigs, but this time
naked and without a weapon.
And so you sit down with the dead.
Reese with the white eyebrows
wraps a poncho around your shoulders,
tells you what it was like when he was dying,
tree line crackling with machinegun fire,
you pounding on his chest to start his heart
and him thinking, easy, it’s so quiet where I am,
quiet and fine, and Ballard,
blue black and thick shouldered, telling you
he watched you working on his body from above,
how you were white and sweat-soaked,
your chest heaving, trying to find the exit wound
and keep from being hit
and he wanted to tell you it was all right,
it was fine, and Price, arms so long
he could fold a sheet by himself,
whom you crawled down into the stream bed
to drag out by the heels, lived to go home,
killed in a dope deal two years later.
All of us are here, he says, sit down,
we’ll get you some clothes,
you’re home now, easy,
remember what you used to say?
You’re going to be fine, my man,
you’re going home,
just don’t fade out on me,
hey, what’s your mother’s maiden name?

From The Moon Reflected Fire, Alice James Books, 1994

We return now to our regular music programming.

Sixth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27x25sdW9wQ

Seventh:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ADrCw6LdLw

Eighth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svPDzNO6GQk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UogPgnYoJ0M

1 Like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5G3Ffta-ic&spfreload=10

Ninth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTYvV2JyJBA

Tenth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dATyZBEeDJ4

Eleventh:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jREUrbGGrgM