Pophistory: music, movies, history, and life.
The new video for Coldplay’s song “All My Friends” uses archival video footage from World War I. The song is from the band’s CD, Ghost Stories. Check it out.
The video will appear on a CD/DVD package Ghost Stories Live 2014, which will be released on November 24, 2014.
What do you think of the video for “All My Friends”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)
A recent article in the New Yorker recounted how during World War I, U.S. Army doctors doing medical inspections discovered a high incidence of goitre. Because of a lump on their necks from a swelling of a thyroid gland, a number of men could not button the top button of their uniforms. Eventually, doctors also noticed that the recruits were more likely to have the problem if they lived far from the ocean. (Malcolm Gladwell, “Man and Superman,” New Yorker 16 (9 Sept. 2013).)
Eventually, they determined that an iodine deficiency caused the goitre, as well as deficiencies in intelligence. Those who lived nearer the ocean were getting more iodine in their diet while those elsewhere were not getting enough of it because oceans maintain iodine levels better than soil. Because iodine is not present in a lot of food, the government convinced the Morton Salt Company to start adding iodine to its salt in 1924. And IQ’s rose and incidences of goitre dropped. Iodine supplements have similarly increased IQ’s around the world.
One of the best songs with “salt” in its title is “Rock Salt and Nails,” written by Utah Phillips. Although YouTube does not have a video of Phillips singing his song, in this video, Tony Norris plays part of the song and tells how Phillips came to write it.
A number of artists have covered the song, including Joan Baez, Flatt & Scruggs, and Waylon Jennings. The song is not really about iodized salt, and the reference to salt in the title does not appear in the song until the final shocking line. In the song, the singer reveals his sorrow because a lover has betrayed him. The song reflects both his anger and his sadness. Regarding the latter, he cannot help thinking back on happier times: “Now I lie on my bed and I see your sweet face / The past I remember time cannot erase.” But at the end of the song, he exclaims that if ladies were squirrels, he would “fill up his shotgun with rock salt and nails.”
Steve Young recorded what many consider a landmark outlaw country album in 1969 that used Phillips’s song for the title track. The album featured guest musicians like Gram Parsons.
My favorite version, though, is the one by Buddy and Julie Miller from their 2001 album Buddy & Julie Miller. I am a fan of anything by Buddy and Julie, and here Buddy’s powerful voice captures the anger and sadness in the song perfectly.
So today’s lesson is eat a little salt for your thyroid and to get smarter. But try to get through your day without loading some salt and nails in your shotgun.
What is your favorite version of “Rock Salt and Nails”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)
Consider the movie poster on the right as well as the name of the movie. You can tell that a horse is going to play a big part in the movie, as is a war. Animal movies and war movies usually mean one thing: this movie is designed to tug at your heartstrings and maybe make you cry. Throw in that the movie was directed by Steven Spielberg, and you already know whether or not you are going to like this movie without me saying anything. So, if you think you will like a movie about a horse with war scenes, then go buy your ticket.
That said, for those of you still reading, I will add a little more to say that I enjoyed the movie and it lived up to my expectations as someone who likes both animal movies and war movies. Although the film seems a little formulaic and predictable at times, the film gradually draws you into the story.
It is difficult to build a story around an animal where the animal changes hands among different owners. The people we care about continue to change, and that we do not have two hours with any character besides the horse. But War Horse does a good job of keeping your interest as the horse travels through different owners in different situations, and it is all tied together as we also periodically follow the original owner (Jeremy Irvine in his first film role) through the movie’s conclusion. The structure of the film reminded me of Anthony Mann’s excellent western, Winchester ’73 (1950), a Jimmy Stewart movie that followed a rifle through various hands. That movie used the device effectively, and Spielberg does so here too.
If I had one complaint about the movie it would be that it is hard to believe that in a war where more than 8 million horses died there were so many decent people appearing as often as they did throughout the movie. Such portrayals may reflect that War Horse started off as a children’s novel by Michael Morpurgo, who unlike the film told the story from the horse’s point of view. At the same time, I do not mind that Spielberg often comes along with a film to challenge my cynical view of the world.
Finally, I also enjoyed the film because there are too few movies about World War I. The paltry pickings may be because World War I is so far in the past without a clear storyline (unlike World War II) and because American audiences may be less interested in a war that occurred off American shores (as compared to the Civil War). It is a shame that movie makers have not delved more into the Great War. Spielberg does a good job with the war scenes to capture the horrors of trench warfare and the horrendous battle conditions of this war that straddled old and new technologies, using both horses and tanks. The film also works in a nod to one of the most amazing stories of the real war.
Still, there are some good DVDs to rent if you wish to watch more about World War I. There are a few good documentaries on World War I available on DVD, including The Complete Story: World War I
The story is also a play on Broadway, which Saturday Night Live re-imagined (but unfortunately the video is no long available).
Bonus Reviews Because Why Should You Listen to Me? Currently, Rotten Tomatoes has a critic rating and audience rating both at 77% for War Horse. Film & Felt did not like the film, concluding that the movie “hammers you over the head with sap.” By contrast, QNetwork.com liked the film, giving it 3.5 stars and calling War Horse, “an ambitious, anthological portrait of both the devastation of war and the potential for human decency.”
What did you think of War Horse? Leave your two cents in the comments.
(Some Related Chimesfreedom Posts)
Dixie Chicks – Travelin’ Soldier Live
{Travelin’ Soldier (live) – Dixie Chicks }
Frank Buckles — the last surviving U.S. veteran of the World War I forces — passed away Sunday at the age of 110. He enlisted in 1917 at the age of 16, lying about his age so he could serve his country. He later told a reporter, “I thought, well, ‘I want to get over there and see what it’s about.'”
The WWI time period is a fascinating time and is not often covered in popular culture these days. Movies and popular culture pay little attention to WWI partly because that war was so long ago and partly because it does not have the heroic triumph over evil theme that World War II has. But there are several lessons to be learned from World War I and its time, and we hope to revisit the topic in the future on Chimesfreedom, especially because I just started reading Robert Graves’s memoir of the time period, Good-Bye to All That. For today, we wanted to make sure to note the death of Frank Buckles so it is not lost in less important news like the Oscars.
Today, we remember Frank Buckles and all of the other soldiers who served in “the Great War.” The above Dixie Chicks song, “Travelin’ Soldier” is off their 2003 Top Of The World Tour Live
CD. The song was written and originally recorded by Bruce Robison, and The Dixie Chicks’s studio version of the song is on their 2002 Home
I cried
Never gonna hold the hand of another guy
Too young for him they told her
Waitin’ for the love of a travelin’ soldier
Our love will never end
Waitin’ for the soldier to come back again
Never more to be alone when the letter said
A soldier’s coming home.
They exchange letters and she falls in love. But then she attends a football game where they read the names of the fallen. “And one name read but nobody really cared / But a pretty little girl with a bow in her hair.”
It is ironic that this beautiful song about a woman supporting a man off to war was the victim of a campaign in the name of some sort of “patriotism.” The studio version “Travelin’ Soldier” was number one on the country charts as the U.S. was preparing to invade Iraq eight years ago this month on March 12, 2003. Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines told an audience in London: “Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence. And we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.” A number of country radio stations stopped playing “Travelin’ Soldier,” and the song dropped off the charts.
Many, like Merle Haggard defended Maines and her right to speak her mind. But as of today, “Travelin’ Soldier” is their last number one country song. The three made one more album together and went on hiatus. The 2006 documentary Dixie Chicks: Shut Up & Sing
covers the reaction to the Bush quote and the impact on the group.
Fortunately, unlike the soldier in the song and so many others, Frank Buckles returned home from World War I and lived a long life, outliving the almost five million Americans who served in the war. Only one Australian man and one British woman survive Buckles of all of the 65 million people from around the world who served in the war. Not only did he live through WWI, but he saw more than a century’s worth of history, even serving as a civilian prisoner for 38 months when Japanese soldiers captured him in 1941 while he was traveling around the world. In his later years, he campaigned to get the government to refurbish a neglected World War I monument in D.C. and rededicate it as a national memorial. You may donate to the cause at the World War I Memorial Foundation website.
The West Virginia Congressional delegation from Buckles’s home state is proposing a plan for his body to lie in the U.S. Capitol. Buckles already had special government approval to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. It is good that he is so honored, because this honor is really about respecting all of the people who served in World War I, and hopefully the honor will continue to the WWI monument in DC. As for Frank Buckles, he is already home.
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The truce created by common soldiers during one World War I Christmas has inspired artists such as Paul McCartney and Garth Brooks.
On Christmas day in 1914, peace broke out on the battlefield among common soldiers. Several artists have interpreted the World War I Christmas Truce, including folksinger John McCutcheon (“Christmas in the Trenches“). Two of the biggest recording artists in history — Paul McCartney and Garth Brooks — have also incorporated the historical event into their work.
Although the songs about the truce ignore some of the nuances of the historical record, there is only so much one may do in a three-minute song. But many artists have used the historical event to create powerful art.
On Christmas morning in 1914 at several places along the trenches, an informal peace broke out among the troops. At some places, German troops started singing carols, and then the British joined in. Soon, some of the soldiers began showing themselves, and the enemies met in no-man’s land to exchange food and cigarettes, and in some places they played soccer.
The truce occurred spontaneously at different locations with different men. And it is estimated that more than 100,000 British, French, and German soldiers participated.
But the World War I leaders on both sides did not appreciate the common soldiers’ truce. Many days later, after word spread about the Christmas Truce, officers ordered that soldiers who possessed gifts from the enemy would be punished. At many places along the lines, the leadership broke up groups who participated in the truce and transferred the men elsewhere along the front lines.
The following year, there would again be some informal truces, but due to pressure from the officers and due to the increasing brutality of the war, the 1915 truces were not nearly as widespread as the 1914 truces. The moment of peace had passed.
The video to Paul McCartney’s 1983 song, “Pipes of Peace” — from the album of the same name — shows a dramatization of the truce. In the video, we see English Paul and German Paul meeting on the battlefield. (Fortunately, none of the Pauls from the “Coming Up” video appear).
The lyrics of “Pipes of Peace” do not describe the Christmas Truce and are vague enough to be used either as an anti-war song or a love song. It is sort of like “Love is All You Need.”
In “Pipes of Peace,” Paul sings: “All round the world little children being born to the world/ Got to give them all we can till the war is won / Then will the work be done.”
By contrast, in Garth Brooks’s 1997 “Bellau Wood” — from one of his last pre-retirement albums, Sevens (1997) — the lyrics directly describe the Christmas Truce. The story is a fictionalized version of the truce set at the location of a later 1918 World War I battle.
Brooks describes the peace starting with someone singing “Silent Night”: “As we lay there in our trenches / The silence broke in two/ By a German soldier singing / A song that we all knew.” But in the end, the message is similar to the message of the McCartney song:
But for just one fleeting moment
The answer seemed so clear
Heaven’s not beyond the clouds
It’s just beyond the fear
No, heaven’s not beyond the clouds
It’s for us to find it here
Brooks has talked about how emotional it is for him to sing the song, so much so that often when he is asked to perform it in concert he performs a shorter version of the song so he can get through it without tearing up. I recall an official video of the Garth Brooks song “Bellau Wood,” but it does not seem to be available on the Internet. You may hear the song with a fan video below.
Not surprisingly, others have written about the truce in books. An excellent 2005 French movie is based on the truce, Joyeux Noel (Merry Christmas). Also, a nonfiction book by Stanley Weintraub called Silent Night tells the real story in more detail.
Although the movie Joyeux Noel is a fictionalized account of the truce, it does a good job of portraying the reaction to the truce, something that is often overlooked in the sweet versions of the story.
In Weintraub’s book, he described how the High Command on both sides were not happy, but “many troops had discovered through the truce that the enemy, despite the best efforts as propagandists, were not monsters. Each side had encountered men much like themselves, drawn from the same walks of life — and led, alas, by professionals who saw the world through different lenses.”
At the end of his book, the author wonders what the world would be like today had the informal truce led to an immediate end of the war that was just beginning.
Although the leaders’ reactions against the truce show the darker and realistic side of war, the fact that the truce took place at all is somewhat hopeful for our species. When France dedicated a WWI Christmas Truce memorial in 2008, German and French soldiers played a game of football (soccer) where their predecessors had played in 1914. This time, the peace endured.
Finally, here is one more song that incorporates the WWI truce, featuring someone more famous than Paul McCartney and Garth Brooks: Snoopy.
In this holiday season and in the upcoming year, may you understand that your enemies are not so different from you. Peace to all the world and good will to men and women. Happy holidays.
[November 2014 Update: The grocery store chain Sainsbury incorporated the Christmas truce story into a commercial.] Which song do you prefer? Leave a comment.
(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)
