The long, long trail

Over the Memorial Day weekend, I got to thinking about how historic events can be evoked by popular culture. In particular, I’m talking music here.

Back in the 90s, I traveled around Northern France in what I referred to as my “700 Years of Wine and War” trip. From Alsace to Normandy I covered pretty much everything from the Hundred Years War to World War II.

I took with me mix tapes that included some Renaissance lute work, but a lot of music from the First and Second World Wars. I have a liberal arts education; I believe it’s all connected, and I like to surround myself with context.

Anyhow—a lot of things like “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary”, Glenn Miller, Edith Piaf and the like. You really have to hear “We’re Going to Hang Out Our Washing on the Siegfried Line” some time. It'll give you an idea of how much the British and French were spitting into the wind during the 1939-1940 period known as "The Phoney War". Especially when you consider that they'd watched Blitzkrieg in action in September 1939.

But the first war of my actual consciousness—you know, that I saw on the evening news—was Vietnam, and I’ve been thinking about music from that time. There are a lot of bands that were going strong during those years (you’ll recall that we had a presence in Vietnam from the 50s through the mid-70s). But for some reason, I’ve been hearing this iconic performance in my head.