For me, it’s a
track that never ages – despite its surface aesthetic and reliance on old
technology making it an almost-certain-to-become-dated type of tune.
And of course, how
could it possibly age when its anti-war message remains unheeded and just as
relevant all these years on?
No, we haven’t
learned the lessons of history. Yes, we still send boys to war.
Only these days
the enemy we fight is harder to define, harder to locate, and hides behind the facade
of religion. It sits stagnant for long periods, in our cities, and in our communities,
just waiting to pounce. It is almost impossible to detect. And the truth is, it
has very little to do with religion. It remains an indiscriminate killer.
Worst of all, how
can you fight against an enemy who values death and martyrdom above all other
things?
Well, it’s simple.
You can’t fight that enemy. Certainly not in the way we’ve been fighting it so
far. It’s clear we (a collective “we”, and I think I’m referring to “the west”,
although I’m not entirely sure anymore) need a change of tack. The traditional “bomb
the living bejaysus out of everything that moves” approach clearly hasn’t
worked. And it will never work.
Just as it didn’t
work in Vietnam.
(The Festive Dozen is a fairly randomly selected year-end collection of clips featuring the tunes which featured most prominently on the (generally pop-loving) iPod playlists of everythingsgonegreen at various stages throughout 2015) ...
The 30th
anniversary of Paul Hardcastle’s seminal electro single ‘19’ was celebrated last
month with the release of a pretty special deluxe edition. The package comes in
the form of 14 tracks, and it includes remasters of the single’s original three
mixes - ‘Extended’, ‘Destruction’, and ‘The Final Story’ - plus eleven newer
and/or brand new remix versions.
A year-defining tune, in
1985 ‘19’ reached No.1 in at least a dozen countries. It topped the local (NZ)
charts for four weeks. As an anti-war statement it did much to expose the perils
of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to a wider public who otherwise wouldn’t have
had much of a clue. It was also a standalone groundbreaking piece of music; something
akin to the full horror of Apocolypse Now gate-crashing the global pop charts, its
bleak “futility of war” documentary narrative given extra weight by the cut and
paste feel of the sample-based electro underpinning it.
14 versions of one track
may seem like an awful lot of very little, but a cross pollination of styles means
that very little often goes an awfully long way. It’s a no-skip deal, from
unrepentantly hard-edged electro remixes, to softer more reflective mixes like
the very soulful ‘Inner Changes’ remix. The best thing here is the sublime ‘Nua’
remix, which mashes up Hardcastle’s work with Marvin Gaye’s 1971 anti-war
anthem ‘What’s Going On’. The spit and polish job applied to the ever popular ‘Destruction
Mix’ is another obvious highlight, while perhaps the biggest curiosity in the
set is Hardcastle’s earliest home-produced demo version.
Despite having had a
long career as a musician and producer, as a master of all things “chill”, and
a big-selling purveyor of smooth jazz albums, Hardcastle hasn’t always been
given enough credit for just how much of a game-changer ‘19’ was. While it’s
never been talked about in the hushed tones of a ‘Blue Monday’, or a ‘Planet
Rock’, or given chops for its wider sonic influence, ‘19’ remains an important artefact
for innovative sample-based music simply because of the worldwide reach it
achieved at the time.
The samples on ‘19’ are
taken from an ABC television documentary called Vietnam Requiem, which was
narrated by one Peter Thomas, who eventually received his fair share of the
track’s royalties. I doubt the same can be said for the returned Vietnam vets
whose interview dialogue was sequenced out of context. It’s great to see that proceeds
from the sale of this latest release have been pledged to PTSD charity
Talking2Minds.
