I bumped into something very strange last night. I was mucking around on Youtube watching a couple of very recent episodes of ‘8 out of 10 cats does countdown’ which I believe is one of the funniest shows on television. While there, a couple of videos popped up in the list at the side of the video being played. They included Americans watching the video and listening to the Redgum song ‘I was only Nineteen’1 which is a song written by John Schumann2, and was based on the story of a relative of Schumann’s who served in Vietnam. It is a superb, powerful, antiwar song (which is on the playlist on my phone) and deals with the subsequent psychological and medical effects of serving in the Australian forces in Vietnam. There are many versions of it on Youtube. One is the ‘official’ video1, while another is of the band playing in the Don Lane show in 19833.
The surprising thing to me, was that these North Americans had even heard of the song. Some were veterans of the Vietnam war themselves and their reactions are amazing and, in some cases, very emotional4-7.
As I looked at a couple of others, another few rolled up with the reaction to another superb antiwar song. This one was by Eric Bogle8 and is named ‘And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda’9,10. It is also on my playlist.
The reactions11,12 to this song are similar to those to Schumann’s song.
These reaction videos surprised me, both with their existence, something of which I was completely unaware, and by the emotional nature of the some of the reactions. If you get a chance, listen to the songs, if not the reaction videos.
Sources
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXaczfR_lo0
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Schumann
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGDhzVi1bqU
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zWQ4HOrV-Q
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-mtNYpx17k
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrnB7P7K28Y
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHaddJAs7xM
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Bogle
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_the_Band_Played_Waltzing_Matilda
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnFzCmAyOp8
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rM8GgpsGw0
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBlrdSZ_IRo
I bought Redgum’s first album ‘Caught in the Act’ in 1983 primarily because of “Only 19”. Truly great song and a super little “leftie” album . I also have Eric Bogle’s “Now I’m Easy” on vinyl – another great album.
Reactions are certainly a thing, and obviously lucrative for some youtube channels. The USA couple who do music reactions I enjoy are called the Wolf HunterZ. I stumbled on them only a couple of years ago while searching for some old Aussie music clips. eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VaYxlbm73U They did one on ‘I Was Only 19’ : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEsvw9wCjdk There’s plenty more of their reactions to Aussie classics if you like them and have time to spare.
If you want to know the background to ‘Only 19’ then two videos I recommend are:
https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/blog/i-was-only-19 and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfz_SS9pxnk
Jon,
Yeah, one of the videos I saw was prefaced by quite a long explanation by Schumann on the origin of the song.