Join the Veterans Breakfast Club for a conversation with Vietnam veteran, writer, and longtime veterans advocate Doug Bradley, whose new book The Tracks of My Years: A Music-Based Memoir uses popular music to trace his own life story from first loves and hometown restlessness to Vietnam and coming home. Wisconsin Public Radio describes the book as a memoir in which Bradley lets music guide memory “like a playlist.”
Bradley is also one of the best-known writers on the soundtrack of the Vietnam War. In his widely read co-authored book We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War, he argues that music was a lifeline and a bridge back to the world at home
In this livestream, we’ll talk with Doug about:
-
How a “music-based memoir” works and why songs can unlock memory more honestly than chronology ever can
-
Vietnam and the long coming-home. Bradley served as an Army combat correspondent in Vietnam (Long Binh) in 1970–71, then helped build veteran community support after the war
-
What Vietnam-era music meant in country vs. what it meant back home and how those meanings still collide today
-
The difference between nostalgia and memory, and why certain songs can still hit like a flashback
-
Why Doug keeps returning to music as a way to talk across divisions of class, politics, generation
If like music or are someone for whom songs are tied to life chapters, this program is for you!
