America: a nation on vinyl, part 1

With America in the grips of another bout of patriotism, the Bad Music Foundation has pulled together a series of records with a level of flag-waving that borders on the obscene. Put on your flag costume, cuz it's patriotism time!

One of the classic patriotic LPs is Victor Lundberg's "An Open Letter". The title track, a letter to the narrator's son, explains why Lundberg's son should start looking for someplace else to live, should he voice any opposition to the then currently raging Vietnam war.

"An Open Letter To My Teenage Son"
MP3 audio, 1.75 Mb

Victor was a spokesman for the Libertarian party, and as this line portrait from the back of the album shows, he was one of the more attractive members of that party, as well.

Sort of a low-rent Victor Lundberg (if such a thing can exist), John Salisbury was a Portland, OR radio personality who put out his "messages for America" album in the mid-60s, after a book of his messages did well. He also includes a message to his children, but it runs more along the lines of "come to your mother and me if you have any problems," rather than Lundberg's "I have no son" rhetoric.

A really great and easy way to quickly produce a patriotic LP is to take recordings of a politician's speeches and add something, anything, to make it something different. A fairly typical example is the Spiro Agnew album "Spiro Agnew Speaks Out", which offers a less-than-charitable message to the youth of the nation. Certainly no Vice-President today, in this era of political correctness and extreme sensitivity to every public utterance by anyone in a position of power, would ever consider telling the kids of America to "shut up!"

"Challenge To The Hippies"
MP3 audio, 495 Kb

Let's round out this patriotic vinyl session with possibly the ultimate American patriot, John Wayne. His album "America, Why I Love Her" gives you all the patriotism you need, and then some. Just listen as The Duke explains why we shouldn't pay attention to all the bad stuff going on in the world, and we should instead seek out little kids in candy stores, and give them a couple extra pennies for some soda-pop!

"The Good Things"
MP3 audio, 1.07 Mb

There's plenty more to be discussed, but we'll close out this article right here. Enjoy the patriotic selections contained herein, and remember.... don't burn your draft card.

:: :: ::

[back to index]