Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?

Subject: Phil Ochs
From: GUEST,Ann Dover
Date: 20 Feb 05 - 06:16 PM

Did any of you ever see Phil Ochs perform live? My neighbor gave me some of his 60's albums a few days ago. Can't stop listening to them.

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Feb 05 - 06:51 PM

yes.Keep listening. Pass it on.

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs
From: Peace
Date: 20 Feb 05 - 06:52 PM

Yes also.

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs
From: Margret RoadKnight
Date: 20 Feb 05 - 06:56 PM

Opened for him in Melbourne (early '70s)
Great that folk still discovering him.

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs
From: GUEST,John T.
Date: 20 Feb 05 - 07:16 PM

Margret,

What was Phil like in those days? Had he started changing his sound by then?

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Feb 05 - 07:20 PM

His sound? What does that matter...it was his words and his attitude.

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs
From: GUEST,John T.
Date: 20 Feb 05 - 07:26 PM

It seemed in the 70's his music (not his voice) took on a different sound.

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 20 Feb 05 - 07:44 PM

I don't think that he was ever about the sound---he was about the message.   What happened later was tragic and does not reflect on his songs or their messages. He also wrote some beautiful ---for want of a better word for something like Changes---ballads.


Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs
From: Arkie
Date: 20 Feb 05 - 10:35 PM

I have several of Phil Ochs albums and have listened to them a lot over the years. My favorite is "Pleasures Of The Harbor". But there were good songs on other albums as well.   I was less enchanted by his country phase, but even that had its moments. It is nice that he is being rediscovered.

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs
From: Peace
Date: 20 Feb 05 - 11:22 PM

Sites that might be of interest to folks.

http://www.sonnyochs.com/

http://www.sonnyochs.com/remembering.html

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: goodbar
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 02:42 AM

died 10 or 15 years before i was born. i wish all my heroes weren't old farts who are either dead or pooping in dipers.

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: GUEST,Greycap
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 03:06 AM

Yep - I saw him at Manchester, England-Free Trades Hall with Doc Watson & Ralph Rinzler, I think it was. Be about '66 or '67. He appeared drunk, couldn't tune worth a damn - keep with his recordings,they are better.
Still love his songs and I've been drunk myself, this isn't critism, just a description of one performance.

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: GUEST,Philippa
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 05:57 AM

My comment would be similar to Greycaps. I still listen to Phil Ochs records, sing a few of his songs. But when I saw him on stage about 1968 - he was in a dress live Elvis phase - he was drunk and did not give a good performance. I'm not sure if I remember or am embellishing (thinking of "Love Me I'm a Liberal") but the concert was at a large high school in a well-to-do suburb of NY I think he was rather sarcastic and abusive towards the audience who were mostly teenagers.

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: GUEST,Philippa
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 08:18 AM

I remember reading an article once which suggested that biographers belittle Ochs and his political committment when discussing him as a manic-depressive; it blamed Ochs' mental problems on the FBI and CIA pursuit of the artist. I can't find anything quite on those lines on the web, though this line rings a bell: ""He gradually lost his creativity and then much of his voice after an assault in Africa." - a comment about Phil in an article about Michael Och's photo collection.

http://www.cs.pdx.edu/~trent/ochs/ contains loads of Phil Ochs links, including information on his performances, and many Ochs' lyrics.

I daresay some of this links have been mentioned on other Phil Ochs threads on Mudcat. The following webpages have biographic information:
www.musicforamerica.org/node/70661 Phil Ochs blog [which quotes Hunter Thompson; I just read his obit on the 'cat]

Peter Werbe interview with Michael Schumacher, author of "There But For Fortune: The Life of Phil Ochs" (Hyperion), about Ochs' creative, but troubled life ...

http://www.cosmicbaseball.com/ochs8.html and www.cosmicbaseball.com/pomom9.html contain info about Ochs' youth

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 08:30 AM

have a look at the second thread in the blue list at the top of the page; it includes messages from people who saw Ochs perform, and people who knew him personally

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 02:27 PM

A very badly judged evening at tthe Boat Pavilion Nottingham university. late 60s Was to be half folksinger, half disco. I was the disco. I did NO organising. Very embarrassing when drunken rugby players were yelling for Ochs to get off and let the disco start.

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 02:31 PM

Yeah. Heard him at the Gaslight Cafe in the early 60's near the beginning of his career.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 03:58 PM

I saw Phil in Manchester 1965 ( on same bill as Doc Watson). Thought he was great. Not drunk, very witty, played guitar well.

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: Santa
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 04:23 PM

Saw him at Bristol University Folk Club late 65 or early 66. Liked him a lot, loved some of his songs.

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 05:22 PM

I saw him in May of 1973 at the Earl of Old Town in Chicago. He did a great show in my opinion. I was a minor at the time and talked a high school English teacher in to taking me in. The show was a 4:00 pm afternoon matinee. He opened with "The Bells" and did a show of his best known songs (I Ain't Marching Anymore, Outside of a small Circle of Friends, Changes, Flower Lady and more). He ended his set with "The Highwayman."

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: Jeremiah McCaw
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 04:11 AM

'68, I think. Massey Hall in Toronto. Before the gold lame phase. A good show, as I recall, but I was so deep in hero worship I wouldn't have noticed the difference. I recall him asking people to refrain from using flash cameras because "they're distracting and basically counter-revolutionary".

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: Folkie101
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 02:43 PM

how did critics respond to his gold lame image change?

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 05:44 PM

The live concert album shows. The audience rejected him and the point he was trying (badly) to make. Same as Dylan being booed for going electric. Audiences don't own artists, but artists that try to expand their own horizons often fall foul of the very people they appeal to.
However, those that don't try to make their journey can also fail and fall into the abyss. Pity the poor artist.

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: Rasta
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 06:05 PM

--Always liked his stuff , and pleasures of the harbour of course what a song--when i was 17 or 18 i was walking down mcdougal st one cold veery snowy evening with quite a buzz on and we passed each other and he bobbed his head too me ,i was very touched ,imm still talking bout it ,seemed like a nice guy (i guess ill have to sing it while im here) sorry he left us so soon be well all--rastaaaaa

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: Mark Ross
Date: 23 Feb 05 - 05:31 PM

I was on Phil's guest list for that disastrous Carnegie Hall concert when the audience was so rude and disrespectful the 1st show, that the hall refused to open the doors for the 2nd. I was standing 10 feet away when Phil pounding on the glass to get them to open up jammed his hand through the glass and cut his thumb, so badly it was bandaged up, yet he insisted on going through with the show. The audience was just as rude because he didn't want to do his old material. I think that was the beginning of the end for him. A talented, and tortured soul. May he Rest In Peace.

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: sixtieschick
Date: 23 Feb 05 - 06:33 PM

I saw him perform at a Berkeley Folk Festival in the early or mid-sixties. He was wonderful.

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: GUEST,Ira Wechsler
Date: 10 Mar 07 - 10:27 PM

I went to 3 of his concerts. He performed october , 1967 at Stony Brook just before the march on the Pentagon during the Vietnam War. He was my early hero in expressing my hatred toward the war. Later I moved far to the left as
together with a group of a half dozen others led our SDS chapter at Stony Brook into sharp conflict with the school administration and their friends in the "Defense" research establishment. More than Half a dozen of us became communists, joining the Progressive Labor Party.
I have to say that the culture of the US is self-indulging drek, mostly racist and sexist, and grossly critical of the lives of working class people. Phil Ochs validated my feelings of anger and alienation from capitalist society. I was very sorry to hear when he had taken his life. The decline of the movement after Vietnam, the loss of some of his vocal range after he was attacked in Africa, his he lost his perspective. There will be others to pick up where he left off.

   here are some lyrics I added to an old song called " If I ever be a soldier" originally written by Joe Hill in 1915.

They send thousands more to the Baghdad street
To secure their fields of oil.
Let's turn the soldiers guns and feet
To end their deadly toil.

While Clinton and the Congress state
The vote is their solution
The working class wont take the bait
What we need is revolution!

(the original song kicks in)

If I ever be a soldier
'neath the Red Flag I will fight.
If a gun I ever shoulder
It's to crush the bosses might !
etc etc.

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: GUEST,Mike B.
Date: 11 Mar 07 - 12:35 AM

I'd never heard of him until around 1990 when I purchased an anthology tape that included "There But For Fortune". Up to then, I'd simply assumed that Dylan was the only significant protest singer/songwriter of the 60s.

The folk duo Magpie (Greg Artzner and Terry Leonino) invariably include at least one Ochs song in their concerts.

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 11 Mar 07 - 04:35 AM

To all those who knock Phil [ for any reason ] he wrote, " There But For Fortune Go You Or I. "   get it ?

eric

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: 30button
Date: 11 Mar 07 - 09:24 AM

I held one of the speakers when he sang during the antiwar demonstrations in front of the Conrad Hilton Hotel in Chicago in 1968. An amazing experience; he was a great singer and songwriter, but what you had to experience to understand was his ability to galvanize a crowd. A rabble rouser in the most positive sense of the term.

Can't remember if he sang "I Ain't Marching" or "The War is Over," but I do remember the electric surge that went through that crowd.

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: GUEST,TomNelligan
Date: 11 Mar 07 - 12:54 PM

I saw him perform twice, both shows in the years after the gold lame phase, and in spite of the fact that his drinking and mental health issues were taking their toll by that time he was in fine form on both occasions. The first was a small club gig in Boston in 1973 when he did just about all of his familiar songs from the 60s. I remember walking up to him at the bar after the show and wishing him well, and he was polite and gracious. The other was the Peoples Bicentennial Committee rally in Concord, Mass., on April 19, 1975 (the 200th anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord) where he appeared with Arlo Guthrie, Holly Near, and others, and sang "I Ain't Marching Anymore" and a few other songs. He did few if any shows after that and died in April 1976.

In his prime he was a brilliant songwriter and the end of his life was a tragedy.

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: mrdux
Date: 11 Mar 07 - 06:46 PM

I first saw Phil in 1968 at Orchestra Hall in Chicago, the night after Martin Luther King was murdered. There was some not insubstantial civil unrest going on, so the crowd at the show was small and highly partisan -- he was, as noted above, galvanizing and inspiring. I saw and photographed him later that summer at a Gene McCarthy rally at someone's home in, I think, Winnetka, Illinois. Actually chatted with him a bit -- he was relaxed, friendly and very funny.

michael

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform? Many Times
From: GUEST,philzone
Date: 07 Jul 07 - 11:01 PM

I saw Phil at numerous antiwar rallies (I think he played the 67 March on Washington and Pentagon levitation. Pretty sure he sang at the eclipse, the main rally spot. I know I heard him a number of times in Chicago (all week of the Democratic National Convention August 1968) and marches Washington DC (Nixon Counter Inauguration and the '69 Moratorium march on DC (there are those who swear he was at the weatherman evening "stroll" on the Saigon embassy).

Phil was always available to perform benefits. I had an opportunity to see Phil dozens of time between 1867-1970, But there were five notable "concerts" that I personally will never forget. The first was at Vets Memorial Auditorium circa 1968 in Columbus, Ohio (Phil always gave a great concert in Columbus and I'm sure it felt like home to him). We met Phil after the show and invited him to the Urbana College Folk Festival. And of course Phil accepted. Phil was also playing 1968 McCarthy for President rallies if I'm not mistaken.

Second best ever show was at Urbana High School Auditorium in Urbana Ohio (very conservative) sponsored by the Urbana College Folk Festival. Phil performance was flawless and his setlist was endless. I don't know the exact date but I would guess May 1968. The McCarthy Kennedy campaigns were still going on.
I didn't see Phil at Lincoln Park. Both times, I arrived just in time for the police sweep.

Next was Tuesday night anti-birthday party for LBJ at the Chicago Coliseum late August 1968. Pigasus was there along with the Yippies, sds and me. Phil got the crowd so riled up with "I ain't A Marchin' Anymore" that the crowd poured out of the hall and into the streets of Chicago ending up in Grant Park.

Of course Phil performed in Grant Park with Chicago Police and National Guard and the Conrad Hilton as a backdrop that night. Phil's concert the next day at the bandshell in Grant Park was disrupted by the Chicago Police Riot (as described by the Kerner Commission). For a video view see "Medium Cool." Phil performed Wednesday night and possibly Thursday night in Grant Park using a bullhorn as a sound system. (Peter Paul and Mary also performed in the tear gas air of Grant Park. These were late night concerts that were held under the watchful eye of the international television, radio and print media (the whole world is watching).

The last concert I remember seeing Phil at was in 1970 in Pittsburgh. It was a benefit concert. Just remember it followed a anti-Gulf Oil/Corporate America Conference held at the same time. I believe that "the resistance" was the benefactors of the concert. For you youngins out there, the resistance was the Draft resistance movement. As in Hell No We Won't Go! This concert was the first time I saw Phil do his electric show. In an ala Dylan performance, Phil changed from folk to electric at his intermission and came out and did old time rock and roll. It was what Phil wanted to do and I won't say more than that.

That night I was crashing in the same house as Phil. Although Phil got a room and we got the floors. Stayed up listening to him rap about music scene. Asked a really idiot question about Lenny Bruce and Phil's song doesn't Lenny live here anymore. Which should have been a forewarning of things to come? Phil did have several backhanded compliments for the weatherpeople. Love em, hate em.Sort of can't live without them.

After that I can only remember hearing that Phil and Jerry Rubin had been deported from Northern Ireland and Chile where they had gone to stand with the oppressed peoples of those two places. Allende was dead and Bernadette Devlin was in jail. Can't remember dates. Never heard his voice live again. Got into the Grateful Dead after that. And today its Ratdog, RAGE and Greenday for the old man.
Free Mumia, Save Antioch College!
Phil

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: GUEST,Philzone
Date: 07 Jul 07 - 11:04 PM

1867 yeah right. Neither of us were that old. Meant 1967.

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform? Philippa
From: GUEST,Philzone Tiocfaidh Ar La
Date: 07 Jul 07 - 11:13 PM

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: GUEST,Philippa
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 05:57 AM
But when I saw him on stage about 1968 - he was in a dress live Elvis phase - he was drunk and did not give a good performance.

Philippa, I think you have the wrong year. Phil wouldn't have been performing electric or Elvis in 1968. Could you be thinking 1970? Check with Sonny Ochs if you don't believe me. Phil was too busy with antiwar music at the time. Tiocfaidh Ár Lá
Phil

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: Peace
Date: 07 Jul 07 - 11:48 PM

"Phil was also playing 1968 McCarthy for President rallies if I'm not mistaken."

You are not mistaken. I did a few with him in Indiana (South Bend if I recall correctly).

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: Peace
Date: 07 Jul 07 - 11:59 PM

Or Gary, Indiana. (Only other place there I remember singing at.)

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 12:26 AM

I saw Phil at a benefit we did for Sing Out magazine in Chicago. It was the great club owned by Richard Harding called the Quiet Knight at Belmont and Sheffield---upstairs. For the second set he was joined by Jim Glover--his old college roomy. (from the duo Jim and Jean)

Check my on line folk photos for a couple I took of Phil and Jim that night. They aren't great, but they were the only two I ever took of Phil Ochs---so I included 'em in with all the good ones.

http://rudegnu.com/art_thieme.html

Art

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: Rog Peek
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 05:14 AM

Art
I have a couple of recordings of Phil that are said to be at The Quiet Night. One is with Jim Glover and the other with Jim and Bob Gibson. I'm trying to establish dates etc. I'll PM you.

Rog

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: GUEST,'Ray Bucknell
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 08:24 AM

I saw Phil once during the summer of 1967 at the former Westbury Music Fair on Long Island.   As I was quite young, my parents took me to the concert but I'm sure they didn't realize what they were in for (they DIDN'T let me attend the Stony Brook show later that year). I remember enjoying Phil's performance until my father couldn't take his politics/vulgarities any longer and dragged me up the aisle and out the door before the show was over.   One observation has stuck with me all these years -- Phil appeared quite dirty and disheveled that evening. He didn't seem drunk, although I don't know that I'd have recognized it as such back then. I'm just glad I had the opportunity to see him perform at all.   The news about his suicide was devastating.

'Ray

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 05:40 PM

Rog Peek,

Those 2 photos were taken in 1976---don't know what month it was.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: Rog Peek
Date: 09 Jul 07 - 03:49 PM

Art

The shows were definitely 1974 as in both, Phil refers to their forthcoming appearance (19th April '74) on Midnight Special
. All references suggest March '74, but there is confusion as to whether they were both at 'Quiet Knight' or whether one was at 'Earl of Town' in Chicago. Also confusion about dates either 10th March, 12th March or 17th March.

I've emailed Jim Gloverm I guess he will remember about the different shows, if not the dates - long time ago, and memory is not so good among us old'ns.

Rog

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: Rog Peek
Date: 09 Jul 07 - 03:51 PM

Bye the way Art, I nearly forgot:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 10 Jul 07 - 12:34 PM

What assault in Africa?

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: Rog Peek
Date: 10 Jul 07 - 02:38 PM

In 1973 Phil decided on a trip to Africa. Here he wrote a couple of songs, which he recorded with the Pan African Rumba Band. One was called Bwatue, and the other was 'Niko Mchumba Engombe', which he sang in Swahili. In Tanzania, while walking along a beach in Dar es Salaam, he was attacked and robbed by three black men. During the beating, his throat was damaged, causing him to loose the ability to sing the higher notes. His voice was never the same again.

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: 30button
Date: 11 Jul 07 - 07:35 AM

Saw him repeatedly on the streets of Chicago in August, 1968. His ability to rouse a crowd was incomparable. Chatted with him several times in the National Mobilization committee offices, where I was working that summer. I remember him being very affable.

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: lefthanded guitar
Date: 11 Jul 07 - 05:17 PM

I saw him once in the sixties in NYC . I had never heard of him before, I was introduced to his music by my first boyfriend.* It was a wonderful concert, I don't remember exactly when or where it was, may have even been Carnegie Hall. It was an amazing concert, he was vibrant and energetic and the power of his music left an indelible impression. He played his guitar so hard that he busted a string, and kept on playing anyway, til they handed him another guitar. (predates Pete Townsend smashing his) Also during the concert, Judy Collins appeared in the audience, wearing a flowing white dress- she appeared to be an angelic queen of the evening. It was a magic night, Phils voice was a tenor but strong and lyrical, like a swooping seagull. Just him and the guitar and that powerful music.

I think this was before Pleasures of the Harbor, I have never stopped loving Phil's music, and I don't think there's ever been a topical singer as inspired as he. I was shocked and saddened to hear of his death years later, as he was just a wonderful performer the night I saw him and it was a pivotal night in my musical life .

Btw Phil was a strikingly handsome man, looked like a movie star, and had that indefineable something that is charisma.
lefty,

PS- S.R. on the off chance you are on this forum, I thank you for that night and all the joy.

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: JeremyC
Date: 12 Jul 07 - 11:44 AM

Art, those photos are great. I just took a look, and I especially like the first one, where he seems to be glowing alone through the darkness around him.

Rog, I've wondered for a while now if he couldn't have recovered those notes by finding a voice coach. The injuries I've always seen described make me think he was getting to the top of his range by forcing his larynx up (and it sounds that way to me, too, listening to him), and if he'd practiced a different technique, he might have gotten those notes back with maybe a couple of bonuses he didn't have before. As much as I love his singing style and the sound of his voice, I have to wonder at that.

Is it just me, or was he a very underrated guitar player? I've heard him doing some nice, subtle things, like on the original recording of "The Highwayman," and I especially like the way he'd alter his playing off the cuff to fit what he was singing. And yet people say he was a weak singer and guitar player. I thought he sounded great at both.

(I just tried to post this and it didn't go through--what the hell)

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: Rog Peek
Date: 12 Jul 07 - 01:04 PM

JeremyC

After the incident, Phil was determined to complete his tour of Africa, and fulfilled a concert committment in Johanasburg against the advice of doctors. Furthermore, when he returned to America, he went ahead with a fourteen-show engagement at Max's Kansas City in New York. In '74 on returning to Los Angeles, he consulted with Frank Sinatra's throat doctor who told him if he stopped drinking completely , and did special vocal exercises for several hours a day, every day, he might get his voice back in two to three years. (Death of a Rebel-Marc Eliot)

The rest is history.

Subject: RE: Phil Ochs - ever see him perform?
From: JeremyC
Date: 12 Jul 07 - 03:10 PM

Ah, I didn't know he'd sought (and apparently ignored) medical advice. I must have missed that in the book. It's sad how blazing creativity and an independent spirit so often come with self-destructiveness. I wish he were still around, and posting on the 'cat.