By Jeremy Azevedo

“Body of War: Sounds That Inspire an Iraq Veteran” is the soundtrack to last year’s award winning documentary of Thomas Young, an Iraq War veteran paralyzed from the chest down by a bullet to the spine. The documentary follows Thomas’s struggle to cope with his newfound disability, as he emerges as a powerful voice in the anti-war movement.

The soundtrack serves as a collection of music that he and his friends listened to before, during and after their service, to help them understand and cope with their situation as best they could. Because they have access to so little comfort on tour in Iraq, these young men take their music very seriously, and you may be surprised by many of the choices that they have made to represent them. If you’re looking for boneheaded “ass-kicking” rock in the vein of Saliva and Disturbed, you won’t find it here.


Thomas Young

However, this isn’t the Vietnam War we’re talking about here, and there’s no draft to really whip every man, woman and child into a bonafide anti-war frenzy. As a result, the legitimacy of some of the artist’s sentiment is at times questionable. Protest music from this decade is mostly relegated to shallow sloganeering and anti-corporation dogma, rather than, you know, a personal account of experience or perhaps even some thought being given to the actual people involved. This goes double for rap, such that the struggle to rhyme every other sentence seems of takes precedence over the coherency of the message. Compared to what most people consider to be “protest music”, i.e. the music of the 60s, today’s stuff is like a paper tiger, fierce is appearance when viewed broadly, but ultimately 2-dimensional when scrutinized more closely.

That having been said, it doesn’t really matter what I think about the disingenuousness of politically motivated artists, or whether or not John Lennon has any business being on a compilation album with System of a Down. Nor does it really matter if “Body of War” fulfills the needs of all the smug hipsters happily pouring themselves into ass-tight American Apparel jeans and bragging about their encyclopedic knowledge of music no one’s ever heard of or ever will while men their own age suffer to eat their guts in the asshole of the earth for no other reason than that they come from different economic backgrounds. Body of War is relevant not because it’s hip or cool, but because it reflects the life of a real soldier, Thomas Young, who has experienced real horror and has proceeded to turn his negative experience into a positive one. Thomas has helped to give a voice to the voiceless legion of young men being put into the meat grinder of a war without end based not on oil or terrorism, but on a conflict of belief and culture.


Body of War co-director, Phil Donahue (!), Thomas Young, Eddie Vedder.

All of the songs on “Body of War: Songs that Inspired an Iraq Veteran” were personally selected by Thomas Young. All of the proceeds for the sale of Body of War go to benefit the non-profit “Iraq Veterans Against the War” organization. Sire records, the label distributing the soundtrack, has even donated $100,000 to Iraq Veterans Against War on the behalf of Young (no small amount of change for a record company these days). If you have any interest in having some insight into the music that represents the sentiment of many of our soldiers today, I strongly recommend that you listen to Body of War, and watch the corresponding documentary, which will be showing theatrically throughout 2008.