This week's Cold War Music Box selection is a Canadian classic (at least in Canada) and has been moved up a day to Tuesday July 1 for Canada Day. More on the track later but first few words from our sponsors.
So What is This Cold War Music Box Thing You've Been Annoying Us With?
It started with my game of Funny Cold Wars with Tim Gow of Megablitz fame back in the first week of May. In particular Tim made references to Top of The Ops circa 1979. Coincidentally, I spent much time both during and after my trip to the UK on airplanes with my iPod ear buds in and of course being a child of the 60s, a teenager of the 70s and a university student of the 80s, a lot of my play list came from the cold war era. The game plus the music plus sleep deprivation led to Cold War Music Box. Basically I come up with tunes from the Cold War Era and with Cold War related themes and load up videos onto the blog to torture my few readers. This is likely a violation of the Geneva Convention, but heck the US got away with playing the theme from Barney 24-7 at Gitmo?
So Other Than Torturing Us With Your Taste in Music, What Else Have You Been Up To.
Travel mostly, and most of it work related. Five days in Boston, five more in Portland Maine and three in Vancouver. It was supposed to be three days in Portland but United Airlines decided to keep me there for two more due to thunder storms. When you are flying from one regional airport (Portland) to another (Regina), it takes 2-3 legs and any delays mess your connections up. I eventually took at 5am bus from Portland to Boston to get home. When not traveling I have been either recovering from travel or catching up on stuff that got added to my list while travelling.
And yes when you're stuck in Portland Maine and it's piling rain you can do things like cue up several weeks post with annoying music videos. On the plus side the seafood was excellent!
So Not Much Game Related Stuff Recently?
Reading yes, and a bit of reorg and a couple of board games here and there. When I've been home often my gamer circle hasn't been. Early July looks good for a couple of games and I'm due to do an El Cid game.
Ok Enoght BLather What is This Weeks Tune
Burce Cockburn's If I Had a Rocket Launcher a song that had the most ardent lefties (due to content) and the most ardent right wingers(due to wanting to use a rocket launcher) singing along. During the Cold War era, the US and USSR didn't fight each other directly but rather through proxies in dirty little wars all over the world. And if anyone can tell me which side's "Freedom Fighters" were worth supporting I'm a Dutchman (Sadam being the most obvious example). Social activist super-hero Cockburn was in Central America doing aid work and saw the effects up close and wrote this decidedly non-peaceable anthem.
A favorite since it came out but despite the veneer of anti communism there's not really much of the Cold War about the US support for right wing dictators in Latin America which is more of a continuation of 19thC policies and smacks more of profiteering than politics.
ReplyDeleteGot any songs about nukes and US vs USSR? I finally remembered 1. Al Stewart Russians and Americans
http://alstewart.com/publicfiles/LYRICS_russiansandamericans.htm
But I still maintain that by 72 the Cold War in Canada was more about hockey than nukes.
Ah, good one, a great song indeed. Cockburn's 'Humans' (1980) remains one of my all-time favourite albums ('Tokyo' and 'Rumours of 'Glory' are epic songs).
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