De gustibus non disputandum est. HiLo, if you were there during the 60s, and you gave him a fair chance, and you weren't impressed, while I was very impressed, that's just a difference between your taste and mine. You may even have been in the majority - I thought Ochs was one of the biggest stars (for want of a better term) at the time, but I was in New York City, and as I learned many years later from one of his biographies, he was much bigger on the East Coast than anywhere else.

Some criticism is surely justified. You didn't go to a Phil Ochs concert to be dazzled by his guitar work. There were lots of more impressive guitarists around - but Ochs was good enough. Similarly, there were lots of people with more pleasant voices, better-trained voices, etc., but his voice was good enough. I had reason recently to listen again to his recording of What's That I Hear - it sounds like a first take on a song that needed some thinking through and a few more rehearsals. But in the 60s I was happy to overlook that and see what a terrific song it was (and still is) even if the recording leaves something to be desired.

HiLo, I don't know what you're missing, I can only tell you what I liked - still like - about him. He had a sense of humor, even when writing about stuff like Vietnam. He had a sense of poetry. He wrote about things that were, and are, important, and he wrote well. He had great stage presence, and interacted well with audiences. He had his shortcomings & faults, but he left behind some fine music and some great memories.