PHIL OCHS

What can you say about Phil Ochs? That he was a genius who saw all too clearly what America was about, and wrote beautiful, sometimes frightening songs about it. That he was silenced far too young, when he was still at the height of his writing talents by forces we still don't fully understand.

Phil was one of the great voices of the 20th century, with songs like William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed, I Ain't Marching Anymore, Pleasures of the Harbor, The World Began in Eden and Ended in Los Angeles, Cops of the World and Crucifixion, Phil captured the ugly underbelly of American life, while extolling her flawed beauty. His comments on life, loyalty, politics and the future of humanity still ring as true as his chords.

I was introduced to Phil Ochs at the age of 13 during the Persian Gulf war, when the popular radio stations started doing specialty hours of "music of peace and social consciousness". It was two years before I discovered the range of Phil's talent. My father bought the Rhino release "There and Now, Phil Ochs, Live in Vancouver" which was taped in 1968. It's a rare look into Phil's psyche, as he talks to the audience with a truly candid eye inward, and as always, outward. My father has rarely seen it since the purchase, my sisters and I passed it between us all through our high school and college years. I think he must have replaced it by now.

In the introduction to Here and Now Billy Bragg wrote: "Phil Ochs never sold his soul -- he wagered it, betting that he could save the world through the power of truth and popular culture. After Chicago he felt he'd lost that bet and, bewildered and disillusioned, he lost the will to be a hero too."

I have to partially disagree with this statement, living after the fact, because this was the album of Phil's that lit the fire under me to find more of his music, and if the fire had truly gone out of him, I would never have felt its spark. I still find that album (through nostalgia of my own, or its own merit) to be one of Phil's most powerful, and it was recorded well after Chicago. I've heard many of Phil's other recordings and of all of them I still enjoy "There and Now" the most. Though I acknowledge what Billy Bragg must have seen; the fire was banked much lower by then. Phil was no longer the firebrand he had been. The most interesting factoid I picked up from the liner notes is that Phil was on a double bill with beat poet Allen Ginsburg, who apparently backed Phil up on The Bells on the recording.

Phil's albums include:

All The News That's Fit To Sing

Broadside Tapes 1

Farewells & Fantasies: Phil Ochs

Greatest Hits

I Ain't Marching Anymore

Phil Ochs in Concert

Live At Newport

There & Now-Live In Vancouver

There But For Fortune

Toast To Those Who Are Gone

War Is Over: Best Of Phil Ochs

Gunfight at Carnegie Hall now part of a double CD with Rehearsals for Retirement.

Letter from California (ironically re-released on CD as Tape From California).

Those are all the ones I can think of at the moment, I'm sure more of them will jump out of my memory soon.

When I acquired The Broadside Tapes and I was walking around humming That's the Way it's Going to Be, which planted a horrible song virus in my friend's head, since he knew the song from a version on a Chad Mitchell Trio album which had different verses. We walked almost the enire Boston Freedom Trail singing the song, and finally blended the two versions to create a "definitive" version, which I think my friend now performs. Complete with the half Ochs-half Chad merged-version of the last verse.