Phil Ochs

First of all I'd like to thank Rosa Mannen from Sweden, who ripped these clips, shared them on the web and allowed me to upload them here.
In the early sixties Phil Ochs was a very promising folk singer of the Greenwich Village scene, like his friend/enemy Bob Dylan. He probably hadn't got the same poetic talent as Dylan, just a beautiful voice, a guitar to accompany his biting or tender ballads, and a great urge to communicate. He never stopped being commited as a militant for peace, and this costed him the censorship of the medias and even some troubles with the FBI. He was present at the famous Democratic Convention of 1968 in Chicago, and he was arrested along with many other protesters.
When he started recording "pop" music, he did it with very original and refined arrangements, like in the album Pleasures Of The Harbor, on which the song Crucifixion is included. Unfortunately the clip of this tune is incomplete, but it is so good, and also quite difficult to find, that I decided to upload it just the same.
I Ain't Marching Anymore is his "almost famous" song, the anti-war hymn that the people always expected him to sing.
The videos are from an appearance at the Swedish TV in 1969.
Phil committed suicide in 1976. Thirty years after his death, his songs don't sound so dated to me...unfortunately.

Abot Crucifixion Phil said: "It's a song about Christ-killing, how all America and even, especially, New York loves to create heroes to moralize to them and then kill them violently, bloodily and dig the death so much, every detail of the death. It's a song about Jesus Christ. It's called The Crucifixion. It's a song about Kennedy. And maybe a song about Dylan."

In fact it was not about Dylan, it was about John Lennon, but Phil couldn't know it because, when he wrote the song, Lennon wasn't living in New York yet.

Phil Ochs - I Ain't Marching Anymore (1969)
Phil Ochs - Crucifixion (1969)

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See you soon

Mirco