Vietnam War Song Project
Exhibitions
Gallery-style tours of the archive: records, picture sleeves and labels shown large, with short captions drawn from the project’s annotations. Each object links back to its full record.
Four Dead in Ohio
Records made in response to the Kent State and Jackson State shootings, from the rush releases of summer 1970 to East Berlin, Birmingham and a veterans’ band two decades on.
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Song My
Records about the My Lai Massacre and the trial of Lieutenant William Calley: the million-selling defences of Calley, the few American songs against him, the verdict from abroad, and the rock opera, metal bands and chamber opera that came after.
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The Whole World Is Watching
Records about the protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and the trial of the Chicago Eight, later Seven: the street recordings, Bobby Seale bound and gagged, the country singers who took sides, and the stage and screen versions that came after.
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Eve of Destruction
Barry McGuire’s number-one protest song and the flood of answer records it provoked: the patriotic replies sung to its own tune, the attacks on protest singers, “Day for Decision”, and the echoes that ran on into the 1980s.
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Dear Son, Dear Dad
Victor Lundberg’s spoken “An Open Letter to My Teenage Son”, with its threat to disown a draft-card burner, and the sons, a daughter, a comedian and Dick Clark who answered him on record, with the newspaper coverage of a generation war fought on 45s.
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Bring Them Home
Records about American prisoners of war and the missing in action: the families’ campaign of 1969–1972, the welcome-home songs and yellow ribbons of Operation Homecoming in 1973, and the 1980s records insisting that men had been left behind.
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The Long Black Wall
Songs about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington: veterans’ bands singing at the Wall in its first year, the homecoming it gave them, families finding one name among thousands, and the songs it still draws.
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Songs from the Ranks
Records written and sung by servicemen and veterans themselves: Barry Sadler and the soldier-songwriters of 1966–68, fighter pilots and paratroopers recording for their units, GIs who sang against the war in uniform, and the veterans of the 1980s writing about coming home.
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Another Vietnam
Records that use the Vietnam War as a yardstick: Chile, Ghana and Northern Ireland measured against it in the war years, the Iranian hostages, “No more Vietnams” in Central America, and the Gulf War that was promised would not be another Vietnam.
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Boats Without a Harbour
Records about Vietnamese refugees: charity singles for the war’s children, benefit records for the rescue ships in the South China Sea, refugee choirs, songs of exile, and the songs of their children.
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