This song is a darkly funny ghost story, and has, to me, one of the most grim and funny lines in music – which is high praise given the hilarious satire that Weird Al Yankovic can bring forth. The song tells the story of a Mercenary named Roland, hired to fight in the Congo war. Eventually, he’s toogood, and the CIA decides they want him dead, having one of his teammates knock him off. Roland’s ghost searches throughout the continent of Africa, looking for his murderer, and finds him: > Rolan…
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Background: In 1296 the wars for Scottish independence from England had begun, and in 1304, the English had apparently won. But in 1306 Robert the Bruce ascended the Scottish throne, and re-opened the conflict. In 1314 Edward Bruce, Robert’s brother, besieged the strategically critical Stirling Castle, controlling the route north into Scotland. To relieve the fort, and preserve their strategic position, the English assembled a force of 17000 men, two thousand of them cavalry, to crush the Scotti…
On October 7th of 1915 a Major named Dragutin Gavrilović [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragutin_Gavrilovi%C4%87]addressed his troops. The battalion and small group of volunteers was ragged and battered, having fought for hours against the German and Austro-Hungarian troops in the defense of Belgrade. Shot to hell by artillery, ground down by the Austro-Hungarian reinforcements, they’d fought back close and hard. Putting flowers from a local flower shop on their uniforms and guns,they were prepa…
The next track I stumbled into off of Ethernaut was also one recommended of of one of John Ringo’s book inspiration playlists – Citadel. Another danceable, synth-heavy, driving song. In it, you can see the inspiration for the battlestation developed in the Troy Rising books. Lyrically it is one of their shorter and more repetitive songs. The first verse sets the scene, with cold winds, storm, and rain arriving as an omen of the human storm arriving to besiege the title fortress. Then we shift v…
In the fall of 480 BC, Xerxes, avenging his fathers loss to the greeks at Marathon, invaded the greek peninsula again. Various political factors left the city-states unable to field their main armies in a timely manner, so Leonidas, one of two Spartan Kings, took his personal guard of 300 men, their supply train, and in conjunction with some other forces, arrived at, and began fortifying the narrow pass between the cliffs and the sea. Roughly 7000 men faced an army often described in the million…