This message is to all that read this when i posted it a little under 3 years ago. It really made me a little nostalgic reading it... To this day i still hold my beliefs on Phil Ochs. I didn't mean to offend anyone who grew up in the 60s... if I've learned anything from Phil Ochs its that we owe a lot today to the baby boomers... it's easy for a young kid (i was 19 at the time) to take it for granted... I think (I hope) what I was trying to say was Phil Ochs death signaled a change and was very symbolic to me. I hate to turn a man whom many of you have written about meeting and seeing perform live into a myth but to me thats what he is. He's this strange muse that keeps me going amidst all of this apathy and laziness. I worship him the way he might have worshipped James Dean or John Wayne. His death was symbolic of something very big though... If in the 60s the times were a changing than in the 80s they changed back in a lot of ways (though the fear of reinstating the draft has remained THANK YOU BABY BOOMERS!).

It's amazing to me how you can listen to a young optimistic man change so drastically by listening to his albums in chronological order. America really missed out on a great artist and i can only pray that the intellectuals and academics will look beyond the highbrow/lowbrow/popular/folk barriers and realize that Phil Ochs was up there among the greatest artists of his times. He is our Van Gough or Rimbaud.

I also gotta say that although I mentioned that I couldnt relate as much to Guthrie, Seeger or Dylan... i respected them all and still do(the first two more so than the latter.. I like Dylan but I hate his influence and the fact that there are so many who want to "be" him...)

I was really happy to read that there was a father on here that turned his son onto Phil Ochs because thats the way I learned of Ochs too.. I cant think of a better way to become acquainted with Ochs than through a family member. I'm sure that some of my undying love for Phil has something to do with the fact that my father showed me him. If I ever have kids... who knows... I look forward to showing them Ochs too.