04 Friday Oct 2019
Posted in Life, Music, Performance, Writing
Tags
Edgar Allan Poe, folk, guitar, music, performance, Phil Ochs, poem, poetry, song, songwriting, The Bells
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Phil used to open all his concerts with this rousing musical adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe poem.
Thanks to YouTuber Thamali Peiris
21 Tuesday May 2019
Posted in Life, Music, Performance
Tags
flood, Floods of Florence, Florence, Italy, music, Phil Ochs, song, songwriting
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The Phil Ochs song about the 1966 Florence, Italy floods (fifty straight days of rain breached the walls of the River Arno which runs through the city) set to BBC footage of cleaning up the aftermath, as people attempted to save some of the artwork stored in the lower levels of museums, churches and warehouses.
Thanks to YouTuber OnionFart (!) for the great job of putting this together.
07 Thursday Mar 2019
Posted in Life, Music, Performance, Writing
01 Thursday Jun 2017
Posted in Life, Music, Performance, Writing
25 Thursday May 2017
Posted in Life, Music, Performance, Writing
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The first Phil Ochs song I ever heard. My older brother was home on break from college and he played this new record album he had bought, Phil Ochs In Concert. This was the first track on it. Been listening ever since.
Thanks to YouTuber kotuhell
05 Friday May 2017
Posted in Life, Music, Performance, Writing
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Phil Ochs was a great songwriter, and nobody performed Phil’s songs as well as he himself did. His soulful interpretation of this song is one of his best.
Thanks to YouTuber MF
13 Monday Feb 2017
Posted in Books, Life, Music, Performance, Writing
Tags
book, I'll Be There, John Steinbeck, music, performance, Phil Ochs, song, songwriting, The Grapes of Wrath, Woody Guthrie, writing
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Monday, Phil looking back at us, singing a song inspired by Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie.
“Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’ — I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build — why, I’ll be there.”–The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
“Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.”—Pretty Boy Floyd, Woody Guthrie
Thanks to YouTuber HiddenFormula
19 Monday Dec 2016
Posted in Life, Music, Performance, Writing
Tags
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Monday morning on the roller coaster from youthful optimism to despair, back to acceptance and action with Phil Ochs.
05 Monday Dec 2016
Posted in Music, Performance, Writing
Tags
music, performance, Phil Ochs, Song of My Returning, songwriting, WBAI, writing, Yeats
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Monday, we return to the original feelings…
Phil Ochs’s birthday is December 19th. This lovely song was not on any of the original albums, though it was released later. He sung it on the air at WBAI radio in 1965, where he explained that this song was heavily influenced by his reading of the poetry of Yeats.
Thanks to YouTuber Krutponken
And thanks to Phil Ochs fan Claire Stohlman who corrected me on the date for Phil’s birthday.
14 Monday Nov 2016
Posted in Life, Music, Performance, Writing
Tags
Another Age, music, performance, Phil Ochs, song, songwriting
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Monday morning and everything’s different.
19 Friday Aug 2016
Posted in Life, Music, Performance
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Phil Ochs, capturing the madness of life in New York City and Los Angeles in the late sixties.
Thanks to YouTuber abnormalbananas
14 Thursday Apr 2016
Posted in Life, Music, Performance, Writing
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Phil Ochs: December 1940—April 1976
Though it’s been forty years, we remember you, Phil.
Thanks to YouTuber LukeFComics
21 Monday Dec 2015
Posted in Life, Music, Performance, Writing
Tags
Bob Gibson, music, One More Parade, performance, Phil Ochs, protest, song, songwriting
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December 19th was, jarringly, the 75th anniversary of the birth of folk singer Phil Ochs. Jarringly, because Phil, who died too soon, seemed to be the embodiment of youthful energy, creativity, and rebellion. His songs decrying the United States of War sound as fresh and pointed now as they did back then. The song above, co-written with Bob Gibson, is on Phil’s first album, All the News That’s Fit to Sing.
Monday’s child trumps off to war yet once more.
10 Thursday Sep 2015
Posted in Life, Music, Performance, Writing
Tags
life, music, performance, Phil Ochs, song, songwriting, writing
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This is a song that wasn’t on the original Elektra or A&M albums, and as far as I can tell, it was never released on any later compilation. I think it’s one of his best non-political songs.
Thanks to YouTuber Krutponken
13 Monday Apr 2015
Posted in Music, Performance, Writing
Among the political left, there has long been a tradition of the radical folk song masked as a patriotic ditty. Paul Robeson sung “The House I Live In” and “Ballad for Americans”; Woody Guthrie sung “This Land Is Your Land”; Pete Seeger sung “If I Had a Hammer,” and so on.
Phil Ochs, who died 39 years ago last week, continued that tradition. “The Power and the Glory” was Phil’s stirring contribution to the genre. He was clever enough in constructing the song that it was covered by arch-conservative songbird Anita Bryant.
Phil’s anthem gets you out of bed Monday morning, saluting the flag, and stuffing The Communist Manifesto in your back pocket en route to the demo.
Click on the video for the song, and the words in English and Spanish, and an additional unrecorded final verse reportedly written by Theo Bikel.
RIP Phil.
