Starship Troopers: An Attempt at Persuasion

Lost in deep cover
"Dear John," said his lover's last letter
Emptied a full clip to feel better
Slipped a rung on Jacob's ladder
Desert boot camp deserter got stung by death adder
Don't get mad get even madder
A10 tank killer fodder
Interrogate? Why bother...
My brother for a last cigarette, no please not yet
One last dance, lest we regret
Look me in the eye, GI, and tell me you're not tired
I'm tired to death sir, I'm tired till it hurts
But when you thought it couldn't get much worse
Well it may...
We march at the break of day
Come what may, rules of engagement say
We will stand to the very last, shrapnel blast
A casket goes home...
Sons and daughters wrapped in stars and stripes to keep 'em warm

("Give peace a chance... that doesn't mean anything"
"It's like give peace a chance")

Under an orange dawn we draw the line
And those on the other side must stand and fight
Tracers like fourth of July in the night
Lighting up like Hiroshima
The perfect sight

I'm a Starship Trooper
This is my letter to dad, transferred from Saigon to Baghdad
And now I'm dead
An allied soldier, with skin boils from Ebola
I'll bring you back a souvenir of what we stole

I was only nineteen
Joined for the pay packet
Now my full metal jacket won't take one more hit
I don't give two shits about oil interests
But depleted uranium, just gave Joe a fit
Captain Kurtz said, "fight till the hurt stops"
Yet all I can see is burned crops
And mates shell-shocked
Morphine under lock and key
Their AK's talking to my M16
Pray for friendly fire
Haven't seen a priest, but plenty of funeral pyres
Triage nurse is dying
My name in the paper
Next to a faceless dictator
And another flag to drape
Here's the commanding officer
A total mess again
Crying in the mess tent
How to make mice or mince meat of his men

I'm a Starship Trooper
This is my letter to dad
Transferred from Saigon to Baghdad
And now I'm dead
An allied soldier with skin boils from ebola
I'll bring you back a souvenir of what we stole

I'm a Starship Trooper
This is my letter to dad
Transferred from Saigon to Baghdad
And now I'm dead
An allied soldier...

Those are the lyrics to 'Starship Troopers', a bleak, eerie song by The Herd that lays an impassioned image of the futility of modern war. I have always loved this song – I feel it has, along with Apocalypta from the same album (The Sun Never Sets), much more replay value and deep passion to be had than many of the other songs on the album, despite it being far less accessible a topic than, for example, a young man's relationship with his grandma (Under Pressure) or even their more popular war song, the cover of Redgum's 'I Was Only 19'.

When I was in high school – now that I try and remember I think it was year twelve, so I was seventeen – I wrote out the lyrics to this song, along with Apocalypta, and put them in an email which I sent to my English teacher at the time. I don't know what I was trying to accomplish at this point; we'd been studying poetry and I think I just wanted to show someone who I vaguely looked up to that I really was interested in what he was teaching, while at the same time also showing off a bit of my own knowledge coloured with the contemporary style of 'poetry' (hip hop) that I was familiar with. I don't know whether he received the email, although he must have, the teachers' email accounts were assigned by some formula or another and I was seventeen, sure, but I wasn't a fucking moron... but I always kind of wondered whether something had gone astray, because he never replied. Isn't that strange, that I still remember that even, and not only did he never reply, but he never even spoke of it to me... I found that really weird because he was the kind of dude that I thought would be completely stoked about having a kid in his class send him some shit that was kind of to do with what he was teaching, completely of his own volition. Apparently not though. The email went unread and I never got to share the song with anyone.

This was by no means the first time that I had tried to share a song that I loved with someone, and it definitely would not be the last. I have a long and proud history of being extremely forceful and single-minded when I get the idea in my head that so-and-so would like to listen to such-and-such song. I obsess over it. As soon as I see the person next, I'll have my phone ready with headphones and ambush them like a music rapist, before making them sit in complete silence while my anticipatory stares burn holes in the side of their head... appreciate or die, I can't help it guys, I just really want you to listen.

So anyway, I thought of all this today, because I started the afternoon off by listening to some Urthboy and reminiscing of the ethereal spring of 2009, and then, once I remembered how Urthboy is the best lyricist in Aussie hip hop, I moved on to a quick revisit of The Sun Never Sets, (easily top three Australian albums EVER by the way... cheers) and without fail, whenever this album makes it into my headphones Starship Troopers is always the standout. Every time. This song... fuck man, this song is like... I was listening to it on the tram home not fourty-five minutes ago, slowly building up the idea of writing this blog in my head, and thinking of what it is that I can say about it. What do I like about the song? What makes it good? What makes it stand out from the rest of the album? I don't know, it just fits together so brilliantly, and Urthboy's lyrics, especially the fifth line “desert boot camp deserter got stung by death adder”... I mean that's fucking brilliant. Seriously. The image of the desert and the allusion to operation desert storm. The alliteration on the three strongest words of the line; 'desert', 'deserter', 'death'. The rhyme of adder with ladder – Jacob's ladder, an allusion to the bible story where Jacob ascends a ladder to heaven in his dream. The deserter slipped though, he didn't make it to heaven, he was stung. Dead. Fucked. Fuck. Fuck. AAAAAAAAGH. I was listening to this song and walking down the darkened streets out of the gritty Asian streets of North Richmond and I wanted to scream out at the top of my lungs. Not anything, no words, just scream. Just to release some energy – thins song makes me edgy and stirs up turmoil within my body's walls. Please listen to it. Please. I don't know what else to say.

I can't force you physically, but fuck. If anyone can persuade a bunch of internet readers to listen to some song off of an eight-year-old Aussie hip hop album with only furious words and lot of swearing, it's me.
Because I'm fucking brilliant.

Peace, Taco.