WENDY JAMES. FREE DOWNLOAD: SCHNEIDERS RIDE. One off track. Recorded in Tokyo. This song was caused by my reading Michael Herrs seminal journalistic reporting on the Vietnam War in his book Dispatches. Throughout his embedding with different troops in the war he reported back many Dispatches and this particular tale is from a company and a soldier in that company called Schneider, who with a battered up old bicycle dared to ride down the one hill they were stationed on, into enemy territory and up to the safe ground of the opposing hill. The tale was known as Schneiders Ride. By this time in my reading of the book I had become so sympathetic to and emotional about the desolation the soldiers felt in their daily lives of either high adrenalin, combat and possible death versus the ennui, the days of listless nothingness, waiting for their next battle orders. All set against a general undercurrent of not really being OK with what their mission was in the first place… to kill strangers in a strange land and for what? They were dying plenty, and the North Vietnamese were being decimated. A lot of blood on everyones hands. Alongside all the real politik of the situation was of course the dark humor and camaraderie that the soldiers naturally embodied and needed for their own mental well being. Schneiders Ride would be a terrific ride anywhere it might happen… a dare, a schoolboy prank, the kind of thing that causes a thrill in any environment, but starkly happening in the real jungle with the real threat of death makes it all the more dynamic and scary and gratifying when it is completed without injury or disaster! I wrote the song quickly, it was heartfelt and immediate. Some weeks later I was scheduled for a trip to Tokyo and during this 10 day stay it so happened that the Japanese rock star Hotei Tomoyasu (Kill Bill) offered his private recording studio to be at my disposal and indeed he would overdub anything I needed. So the delicate touch of bass and guitar are added by Hotei Tomoyasu. This song has not been mastered until now, but while my mastering engineer Fred Kevorkian was doing his work on my upcoming new album The Price Of The Ticket, I added Schneiders Ride into the lot for him to take care of. The song remains very touching and beautiful and timeless I think and testament to the courage people find within themselves and extend to each other, the generosity and humanism too, when under extreme, unjust and brutal circumstances. Copyright Wendy James 2014
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 13:08:05 +0000