John on the Sunset Coast. I thoroughly agree with your assessment of Phil Ochs. IMHO he was far, far superior to Dylan, some of whose stuff sounds pretty naive these days. OK, if you want good guitar work, try somebody like Doc Watson; a good voice, someone like Cisco. Much of Phil Ochs's stuff still sounds fresh today: he doesn't whinge like a lot of the so called protest singers of the 60's but has the bitter humour and satire rather like much of Woody Guthrie's work. Good ballads too - like 'Joe Hill'; the lovely song 'Celia'; a fine song about Woody Guthrie; and he was one of the few who could succesfully put poems to music. Some of his songs needed a bit of fine tuning perhaps but this often happens. I never did get on with his later material but his early work was superb.
Doc John