Zoot Suit Riot by Cherry Poppin’ Daddies. No, really. That’s the first time I’d ever heard of the riots.
Zombie by The Cranberries
Lots of Randy Newman’s songs.
Snoopy and the Red Baron, recreates the greatest aerial battle in history!!! 
Hurricane
I Shot the Sheriff
And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda
No Man’s Land (The Green Fields of France)
IIRC, I Don’t Like Mondays is also based on real events
sorry, i just have to pick these particular nits.
gitfiddle: you should use ‘e.g.’ when you give an example, not ‘i.e.’
telcontarStorm: I think you missed the point of the song.
now back to your regularly scheduled useful replies…
my favorite teaching songs are the schoolhouse rock tunes. I especially like ‘No More Kings’, ‘Interjection’, ‘I’m just a Bill’, and ‘Adjectives’.
should also mention the Monte Python Galaxy Song from The Meaning of Life.
-Luckie
I love that song…it helps that the person who taught us the words also gave us a history leason on it at the same time; I really like that guy(TJ Wheeler) he was a lot of fun to work with and is wonderful with kids. If you’re not from the NH seascoast, the name probably means nothing to you, right?
Um…Paper Lace’s “The Night Chicago Died”(Al Capone), a song which everyone but me hates, apparently. Other songs that teach history leasons include “Ohio” by Neil Young (Kent State); "100 Million Little Bombs " by Buddy Miller (land-mines still in the ground around the world- if you’ve never heard this, you must listen to it); “Seminole Wind” by John Anderson(the tole “progress” has taken on both land and people); "Paper Dolls by Tuscadero (soci-commentary on media’s effects on young girls)…
I’ll go with The Ten Commandments of Love, for all you lovers out there.
And don’t forget The Hokey Pokey. Lots of learning going on in this one!
Paradise, by John Prine was a true story about his childhood home being taken over by a coal company.
In Warren Zevon’s “Run Straight Down” the choruses are the chemical names of known environmental poisons.
Paradise, by John Prine was a true story about his childhood home being taken over by a coal company.
In Warren Zevon’s “Run Straight Down” the choruses are the chemical names of known environmental poisons.
I’ll second Tom Lehrer, including everything from That Was The Year That Was and The Elements.
I have to point out that TMBG didn’t write that second song. According to http://www.acme.com/jef/science_songs/, it was written around 1960 by Hy Zaret (lyricist of Unchained Melody and Lou Singer.
“Olivers army” Elvis Costello, about high unemployment and joining the armed forces to escape one sort of hell, only to end up somewhere worse.
“Home at last” Steely Dan, not historic but rather an extraction of a differant meaning from Homers Illiad, which after a couple of thousand years where folk have been analysing his work all that time is quite an amazing feat.
“My white bicycle” by Tomorrow, its about a student Amsterdam provo anarchist group and their attempt to provide free cycle transport (doesn’t sound all that subversive nowdays)
“Afternoons & Coffeespoons” by The Crash Test Dummies is a take on T.S. Eliot’s “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”
Lets go with some Rush tunes, shall we?
Manhattan Project
Beneath, Between, Behind
Natural Science
Red Tide
Nobody’s Hero
Totem
And Metallica?
…And justice for All
Eye of the Beholder
Disposable Heroes
Don’t Tread on Me
“Pride” by U2–Monday morning, April 4, a shot rings out in the Memphis sky… That helps me remember where and when MLK Jr. was shot.
Tons of Warren Zevon songs have historical bits and pieces in them. “Run Straight Down” was mentioned. I like “Frank and Jesse James.” Also “Turmoil–”
I was talking to the Muhajedeen,
Down in Afghanistan.
Comrade Gorbachev,
Get me back to Vladivostok, man!"
It may not recount actual historical events, but it familiarized me with a lot of late Cold War concepts and terms. Plus, I bothered to look on a map and see where Vladivostok is. (Way in the East part of Siberia, near Mongolia) Come to think of it, I learned a heck of a lot from ol’ Roland, the Headless Thompson Gunner:
In '66 and '7, they fought the Congo War,
Fingers on their triggers, knee deep in gore.
For days and nights they battled the Bantu to their knees,
They killed to earn their living, and to help out the Congolese.
Also, “Boom Boom Mancini:”
*From Youngstown, Ohio, came Boom Boom Mancini.
A lightweight contender, like father like son.
He fought for the title, with Frias in Vegas,
And put him away in round number one."
I could go on with this Zevon stuff for hours…
You may wish to look further into Vladivostok - it was the overflight of this closed military city that got Korean flight 007 shot down.
What it had to do with Afghanistan is inconceivable, but a song is a song…
I like the country song I Hope You Dance. It’s a nice song about all the hopes parents have for their children. Always makes me tear up a bit.
Frank Zappa – “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow”
happyheathen–I think the song is written from the perspective of a Soviet soldier stationed in Afghanistan. He doesn’t see why it’s necessary for him to be there. He wants to go home to Vladivostok. (The chorus of the song is “Turmoil down in Moscow put this turbulence down on me…”)
Vladivostok was closed to non-Soviets until 1991, but recently has become a rather international city, lots of foreign businesses, high cost of living, also a lot of problems with organized crime. I was considering using it as a setting for part of a near-future SF story I was writing a couple of years ago. Interesting place.
BTW, if anybody is interested in Vladivostok an interesting site to visit is http://vn.vladnews.ru/
elfkin477 I love The Night Chicago Died, I even have the sheet music.
how about Biko by Peter Gabriel
& I suppose they aren’t ‘popular’ songs, but there’s lots of good ones done on the Animaniacs. So long Magellan!