Where's My Vietnam
1983 · Toxic Shock TOXLP 01 · USA
- Artist
- Knockabouts
- Title
- Where's My Vietnam
- Release
- Barricaded Suspects
- Year
- 1983
- Label
- Toxic Shock # TOXLP 01
- Format
- LP · Compilation
- Language
- English
- Country
- USA
- Genre
- Punk · Punk
- Primary theme
- Post-War
Annotation
Knockabouts, Hardcore Punk band from Huntsville, Alabama, formed in 1982, featuring Greg Sklaka (drums), Donnie Sharp (vocals), Randy Sanders (bass), Rusty Jackson (guitars), and Steve Tallyn (bass). (1) The song "Where's My Vietnam?" featured on this various artist compilation (Toxic Shock Records # TOXLP 01). It also originally appeared on the group's 1983 demo cassette Angry Young Men, and then on the 1995 EP On Suffering Remembered (Prank Records # PRANK 02). This song lamented the apathy and lack of social action in the narrator's generation, as the "kids today...play video games, watch TV, smoke pot". The narrator looked back to the Vietnam War generaton: "hippies demanded their rights". The narrator was "looking for my Vietnam". Thus, this is a good example of an artist using the Vietnam protest movement as a historical case study to compare to the lack of contemporary protest.
Annotation by Justin A. Brummer
About the artist
The Knockabouts were a punk rock band from Huntsville, Alabama, active during the 1980s, whose membership comprised Donnie Sharp, Greg Skalka, Randy Sanders and Rusty Jackson. Their material went largely unreleased in their own lifetime as a band and surfaced only decades later through archival issues. "Where's My Vietnam?" was recorded at Sound Cell Studios on 18 June 1983 and was eventually issued on the retrospective album 'Angry Young Men' (Music Has A Meaning MHAM02, 2025), which carries the song twice - once in the 1983 studio version and once in a live 'Boombox Nightmare' recording.…