The Wall
1996 · MM 001-2 · USA
- Artist
- Michael McCann
- Title
- The Wall
- Release
- Soldiers' Songs
- Year
- 1996
- Label
- MM # 001-2
- Language
- English
- Country
- USA
- Genre
- Singer Songwriter · Singer Songwriter
- Primary theme
- Post-War
Annotation
Michael McCann was born in 1945, Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA. He is currently based in New Haven, Connecticut, USA. He enlisted in the army in 1968 and became a Green Beret. He was wounded while serving as a combat medic on a Special Forces A-team in Vietnam, receiving a Purple Heart and Bronze Star for Valor. He left the army in 1971.1 He released this record in 1996, which contained the song "The Wall", composed by Tim Murphy, who received the Silver Star in Vietnam, a cross between singer/songwriter and Irish folk music. The song told the story of a man visiting the memorial, people watching, from the "tourists, and the querious" as well as "the veterans", all coming together at the same place for various reasons, but still a "common bond".Sources1soldierssongs.com↩
Annotation by Justin A. Brummer
Annotation — Veterans Memorial Wall Songs
Michael McCann was born in 1945, Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA. He is currently based in New Haven, Connecticut, USA. He enlisted in the army in 1968 and became a Green Beret. He was wounded while serving as a combat medic on a Special Forces A-team in Vietnam, receiving a Purple Heart and Bronze Star for Valor. He left the army in 1971.1 He released this record in 1996, which contained the song "The Wall", composed by Tim Murphy, who received the Silver Star in Vietnam, a cross between singer/songwriter and Irish folk music. The song told the story of a man visiting the memorial, people watching, from the "tourists, and the querious" as well as "the veterans", all coming together at the same place for various reasons, but still a "common bond". Sources1soldierssongs.com↩
Annotation by Justin A. Brummer
Lyrics
English: On a drizzly DC morning in the middle of July / My brother bought me downtown to the Wall / Past the watchful eyes were blinking beneath a weeping summer sky / We crossed the street to the little green, and visited the Wall / I remember I was nervous then, I guess a little scared / Cause I wasn't sure how I'd react at all / See the names of the servicemen who been recorded there / Who heard the final roll call, and assembled at the wall / And every name’s a father or a husband or a son / Or a daughter or a brother or a cousin to someone / Or a name might be a classmate or a friend you may recall / There’s nearly sixty thousand fallen names, still waiting at The Wall / Now the wall has many granite sections, solid gold and black / Visitors, they pause and touch a name / And it seems that in the dark reflections hands were reaching back / As if to reach, to touch and hold the hands... / Someone might leave a rose, a letter or a poem / A message to young man loved and lost / And to show they still remember those who never made it home / They built the wall so long and tall, and paid the bitter cost... / As I watched the minds of people walk by in slow parade / I read a different story in each face / But I couldn't help wonder in this pilgrimage we made / What common bond if any may have brought us to this place / There were tourists, and the querious, and some veterans who came / Some others who sought an answer to it all / But the only thing I'm sure of is we left not…
About the artist
Michael McCann (also credited as Michael J. McCann) was a Canadian folk singer working in the Celtic and military-song tradition, whose album 'Soldiers' Songs' collected war songs ranging from the American Civil War to the twentieth century, among them 'Christmas in the Trenches', 'The D-Day Dodgers', 'And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda' and 'The Green Fields of France'. "The Wall" appeared as the third track on that album, self-released without a label as MM-001-2 on CD in Canada in 1996. [Source: Discogs]