Cold War Music Box From the Other Side of the Iron Curtain

OK so I figured I ought to find a video that took a harder look at the "good guys" in the Cold War and thought immediately about one Billy Bragg, punk/socialist/folk singer.

Mr Bragg lets the US have it with both barrels and truth be told he scores a lot of hits with his shot gun splatter.   I figure a little introspection and self criticism never hurt anybody, but lets face it  I'd have taken the West over the East any day.  A lot of the points made in the 80s still hold true in 2014 - for instance with in the last 2 years PBS had a special on efforts to replace Evolution with Creationism in school biology texts.  So yes it may be land of opportunity but there's still a monkey trail on TV!

This video was filmed in the USSR in 1987 (well before the USSR ceased to exist)!  There's cool shots of Billy in neat looking hats and T-shirts, interacting with regular Ruskies and a steam train with a genuine Commie Red Star on it (how cool is that).  And my god Billy looks young and innocent.

And for all those young kids who wanna be rock'n'rollers:

1. Forget about overproducing and never underestimate the impact of one guy on a rhythm guitar.
2. Passionate singing trumps auto tune every time.

Now here's the song


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTneVU-E7Jo

There's a great interview with Billy on Q here.  He ranks on the list of rockers that I would like to chat with over tea in this case!.

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

Cold War Music Box Canada Day Edition

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7vCww3j2-w

Cold War Music Box "Oliver's Army"

Lot's of Cold War references here.  Elvis Costello was the alpha geek before being a nerd was cool (I was born too early to catch that wave).  I'll confess that I didn't catch that Oliver's Army can be a reference to the British Army (as in Oliver Cromwell) until my wife mentioned it to me much later on.  At the time it was released I thought that this song referenced mercenaries not the British Army.  Apparently Costello meant it to refer to any poor young man given a gun and sent into ugly situations, which could cover either interpretation.  It was written after his first visit to Belfast.

The video is from there "Top of the Pops" or Top of the Flops as my dad called it.  They are lip-syncing but such is the case with most videos and both the picture quality the syncing here is pretty good compared to some.  Plus he's playing a cool hollow body guitar!.

Oliver's Army

Cold War Music Box - "Radio Free Europe"

How to best describe the state of the world in 1983…hmmmm…

Yeah this about covers it.

Yep - the early 80s a happy free wheeling partying time was had by all.  The USA initiated the Star Wars missile system, launched the Space Shuttle to get it there, invaded Grenada and has its Beirut embassy blown up. The USSR was under the Andropov leadership (Gorby was just a gleam in Yuri's eye), shot down a Korean civilian airliner and nearly launched a nuclear war by accident (Oooops!).  The UK had a relatively quiet year following the Falklands War in 1982 and given the upcoming Coal Strike and IRA campaigns in 1984.  But in 1983 even Canada felt scary given the global politics.

Just in case we weren't getting the point, US Network TV had not one but two made-for-TV movies featuring fake newscasts of nuclear events - Special Bulletin based on homegrown American nuclear terrorism and The Day After based on the good old fashioned WWIII scenario.  I remember watching Special Bulletin and thinking it was well done.

Music from this era was often either boppy no braincell required stuff or edgy and tense.  From the edgy and tense school we have REM's first album featuring the single "Radio Free Europe".  The song's title is a definite Cold War reference but don't try to get much from the lyrics, Michael Stipe meant them to be "complete babbling" and one critic commented that the album's was aptly titled "Murmer".  However, if it had jangling guitars, a punchy beat and indecipherable lyrics I was all over it in 1983.  This is essentially ground zero for indy rock and college radio.

I love this video taken from Letterman - his original late night show following Johnny Carson's show when Dave was young and edgy himself.  Note that REM are unheard of and that Stipe actually has hair (and a lot of it too)!

Radio Free Europe

Cold War Music Box "Heroes"

I should apologize for inflicting my music on you.  However, I will take the adult way out and blame Tim Gow and his Funny Cold Wars project, specifically his references to 1979 era Top of the Pops.

The music of one's youth is supposed to bring you back to the good times, but I'm never sure the good old times were ever so good.  This spring while in the UK I had a number of people ask why I had not moved back to the UK at some point.  My stock answer is the most likely time to do so would have been my early 20s, but the UK didn't look like a place anyone would want to go at that time.  I got to know Britain during regular (annual or semiannual) visits with my dad between ages 16 and 24.  This was between 1978 and 1986 probably the one of the worst periods to view the UK.  My first visit came during Christmas of the Winter of Discontent and from them I got the full gamut of IRA terror campaigns, the Miner's Strike the Falkland's War and Thatcherism in its full glory.  To an impressionable liberal minded Canuck, Trudeau's Canada looked a hell of a lot better than Thatcher's Britain.

Anyway for me the music of my youth reminds me of what a scary time the Cold War was both politically and economically.  And if I were to pick a single thing to represent the Cold War it would be the Berlin Wall (wikipedia it you youngsters).  And the song that comes to mind is of course David Bowie's Heroes.  To my generation it's song about young lovers trapped on the wrong side of a wall by  nasty global politics.  To a younger generation it's a love song from a bad Godzilla movie!   Or it's part of an actually pretty good medley sung by Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman in "Moulin Rouge".

I first heard this on the 1977 Bing Crosby Christmas Special, the odd pop culture mash up that gave us the much loved "Little Drummer Boy" duet.  Incidently the video of the equally desiccated octogenarian crooner and the heroin addicted glam rocker was judged severely creepy by my daughter on first encounter as a preteen.

There are of course more versions of Heroes than can be easily counted, so I give you three You Tube videos to choose from.

1.  The official video from 1977 (so predating MTV)

2. The Live Aid Performance with Thomas Dolby on Keyboards.  Some say this is the best.

3.  The performance on Der Bingle's Christmas Special, which is actually pretty darn creepy!