Moderator: Commissar D, the Evil
I think i know what you are talking about. It is "Roads to Moscow" by Al Stewart, the man who sang "Year of the Cat". The song is from the "Past, Present, and Future" album, in my opinion his best. Yes he is way before my time, but the song is awesome.ghp95134 wrote:I cannot remember the title and artist .... but around 1985, when I was in Infantry Officer's Advanced Course, there was a popular long-playing song on the radio about the Battle of Kursk. The artist was someone like Gordon Lightfoot (not him, though), and the melody was reminiscent of "Edmund Fitzgerald" (but not that song). All I remember is that the song mentioned Tigers coming over the hills (or horizon?). The singer might even have mentioned Smollensk in the lyrics -- I think I recall him mentioning a couple of Russian place names which (??) represented the beginning and end. It was a nicely haunting song. I thought at first the song was about a panzer crew, but the more I listened I realized the song was sung from the Russian perspective.
Does my description ring any bells? I do not think the artist was Warren Zevon, Gordon Lightfoot, or Jimmy Buffett. Heck, it might even have been Led Zeppelin singing solo for all I know.
--Guy
Cunobelin83 wrote:http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=r ... l=en&emb=0#
Here is the song. Hope this is it.
Again, thanks for salvaging my sanity.Bill wrote:The song is the story of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who served in the Red Army artillery during the war. The narritive starts with the German invasion in the summer of 1941, describes the epic fighting retreat from Poland to Moscow, and then the slog back as the Russians learned how to beat what had been the best army in the world when it started. But, near the end, Solzhenitsyn wss captured by the Germans, held for a day, and then turned loose when they retreated. Winning the war hadn't helped Stalin's murderous paranoia, and anyone who had such experience, or any other contact with Westerners, Axis OR Allied, was considered likely to have become a spy. So Solzhenitsyn was jailed, tortured, tried, convicted and shipped off to the Gulag. He managed to survive, to outlive Stalin, and he was freed along with thousands of others in the later 1950s. Of course, millions had been sent to the Gulag, and many had died. His ground-breaking fiction, "A Day In The Life Of Ivan Dennisovich" told what the Gulag had been like. Later he produced the 3 volume, non-fiction, "The Gulag Archipelago". Richard Overy's "Why The Allies Won" has a quick and to-the-point analysis of how the Axis, the Nazis, the Facists and the Japanese Army had appeard to be unbeatable when the war started in 1937, but were halted by the fall of 1942, and completely lost strategic initiative by the middle of 1943. Wirth's "Russia At War" tells the military story from the Russian side effectivly, and "Enemy At The Gates", about Stalingrad, captures the exact moment of what Churchill called "The Hinge Of Fate". (Along with El Alamien in North Africa and Midway/Guadalcanal in the Pacific). I've seen Al Stewart perform this song several times and he introduced it as the story of Mr. Solzhenitsyn, with slides while he played, once or twice. Its a great song.
- Bill, Oakland, CA
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=8680
OUCH! (as I dig out my bifocals to read this) I just now caught your comment.Cunobelin83 wrote:...Yes he is way before my time,...
LOL! Sorry, no offense intended. Just pointing out that, yes, even people my age (24) can recognize the difference between music and noise. I'm glad I was able to help you on this. I know what it is like to not be able to not only remember the song name, but also the artist, and yes, madness often ensues.ghp95134 wrote:OUCH! (as I dig out my bifocals to read this) I just now caught your comment.Cunobelin83 wrote:...Yes he is way before my time,...
