Sunday: Songs From my Vietnam Year(1969-70)

'I usually don't post on Sundays...but sitting here watching the sun bounce off the snow, I figured, what the heck?  This Sunday is certainly much calmer that last weekend, when the left wing loons were doing their full court "Blame Palin, Fox News, and Right Wing Radio" for the Arizona Shooting.  That turd didn't float, no matter how hard the far left bloggers, and the space cadets on MSNBC and in the NY Times tried...and despite the Obama Cheerleaders at the Tucson Memorial Service, most Americans are not buying it.  So politics be damn...life moves on.

Of late I have been posting much about Arizona and the leftist nuts, both here and on Facebook...I figured it was time for a change.  After working 3 basketball games yesterday, as well as 2 on Thursday, and a rough and tumble JV game on Friday night, the rest for the knees, back, and legs are appreciated...10 games(including 3 double headers) await me this week, with my season, which ends in late February, half over, I can say I am looking forward to some late winter rest, before the Baseball season, and a large umpiring schedule, begins in mid March.

The Music of my Life______

I posted some songs on FB the past few days, mostly from the late 60s and early 70s.  Those songs got me to thinking about my year in Vietnam, and how much that music was a large part of our lives during that time.  Of course later on I would become a radio DJ and music would continue to influence my daily activity.  So if I appear to be stuck, at least musically, in the 60s and 70s, so be it....while some of the newer stuff has merit, I just don't enjoy much of it.

When I arrived at Nha Trang Air Base on July 2, 1969...I was a Top 40 contemporary music and radio fan, by the time I left Tan Son Nhut AB on June 29th a year later, I still liked Top 40, but also had gotten into the newer "country rock" and what we called "Head Music" by the likes of Led Zepplin, Cream, and others.  That time between "The Summer of Love(1967)" when I graduated from Celina(Ohio) High School and time after my Air Force days were completed, in May of 1972, were some IMO of the best times for music.  The period between the old rock of Elvis, the newer, but tame stuff, by the Beatles, and the time before,  in the later 70s that the garbage knows as "Disco" appeared on the scene.  Of course Disco was nowhere as bad as the crap known as "Rap" that still infests the music world today, or worse yet, the trash that so-called performers like Lady Gag-Me, and others put out as "music"....anyway, back to the Summer of 69 and some of the songs that were on AFVN(Armed Forces Radio in Vietnam) when I stepped off that C-130 at Nha Trang, that sunny, hot, and humid day, in early July.

Here are a few of the songs in their original forms:

David Clayton and Blood, Sweat, and Tears, had several hits in a short time:  "Spinning Wheel" was one I remember from my early days at Nha Trang:
http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=kK62tfoCmuQ&feature=related 

Kenny Rogers, before he was country icon, performed with "The First Edition" group...the song about a returning disabled Vietnam Veteran was still being played on AFVN when I arrived in-country:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EJGZt3X6uU

And one of my favorite artists, as hokey as it sometimes sounds today, back in 1969 was Glenn Campbell, who followed up his "Wichita Lineman" with the Jim Webb classic about a solider in Vietnam singing about his town and girl back in Texas..."Galveston":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIUPCfIihQ4 

And finally "Galveston", a more poignant version by the song writer/singer himself Jimmy Webb, on a salute to Vietnam Veterans on you tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaMf6ydI-YI&feature=related 

Damn, that wasn't hard....enjoy the remainder of the weekend, back later>>>>>

Photos/Pictures~PRH a couple of months after arriving at Nha Trang on the South China Sea, playing "Sky Cop" with the 14th SPS...day shift Law Enforcement was pretty easy duty in a "war zone"...and the album and .45 covers of BS&T, The First Edition, and Glenn Campbell back in the Summer of 1969