PSYCHO'S RECORD PILE
Phil Ochs- There But For Fortune (1989)


Some time ago, in a land not far from where Dubya was schtupping college co-eds and pretending to be serving in the Army National Special Air Reserve something-or-other, there were a class of troubadours with a goal to influence the national psyche through an acoustic guitar and a loud and angry voice. These tunemongering rabble rousers eventually earned the label from various sources of illiterati of the time as Freedom Singers. Such luminaries of the modern folk genre as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger brought in and after the Depression era this musical movement, seen as noble by some and dubious by others, into mainstream America’s ears and concert halls. It helped line the wallets of Bobby Dylan and Joan Baez. And it produced a frontlining Hellraiser with probably the most impressive street cred of the 1960's protest folkies, one Phil Ochs.

There But For Fortune is a choice assortment of selections from Ochs' early work on the Elektra label. When I first spied the track listing for this in the record store, it appeared as only half done as far as collections go. I presumed that any purported Ochs anthology would include later classics such as "Outside Of A Small Circle Of Friends" and "Chords Of Fame". But those were done in his later stint with A&M. Elektra after all, released this. Besides, the slice of time captured on this anthology shines the brightest light possible on Phil Ochs as the textbook example of the American Protest Singer.

Ochs may strike many novice listeners as just another public radio darling of the gourmet beer sipping Trader Joe's crowd. For one thing, occasionally he broke into that smooth yet stilted "I am self-righteous and you know I am right" tone of voice. Sort of like a politically charged Jonathan Richman with a snootier tone mixed in there somewhere. But once you tell your conditioned dismissal defenses to just shut the fuck up for a minute, Ochs' incredible ability to push the message and tell the story through the music registers loud and clear.

Even though songs like "Draft Dodger Rag" and "Here's To The State Of Mississippi" are now coated in the dust of history, they give an unwavering editorial on the State Of The Nation, circa 1965. And there are so many tunes pulled for this collection alone that will withstand the test of time. "What's That I Hear", "One More Parade" and "Is There Anybody Here" are filled with a compelling mix of cynicism and discontent. And yet by their relative negative tone they are crafted to instill hope in the targeted listener. Word for word I would dare to opine that they equal or even surpass the meaning and significance of much of the collected works of the artist formerly known as Zimmerman.

Maybe something that kept Ochs from the level of superfolkie status enjoyed by many of his peers of the era was the fact that his general appearance and demeanor seemed a bit too goshdarn cleancut. Sure, he could drink Dean Martin under the table, but alcohol has always been accepted by the status quo of Establishment America. But really, there was not a shred of latent hippie-dippiness in the guy. He was someone you could just as easily picture in the booth of a truckstop as strumming tunes on a bench in People's Park. Too "male" to some, not rock n'rolled out enough to others.

I only wish that he'd decided to live past '76. Who knows what kind of response we'd get from, "So Phil... heard these Sex Pistols yet? Whaddya think? Wild shit eh?" We need an equal to Ochs today, now more than ever. But if one did step up, for starters, he or she would never get a major label deal. So, the next Ochs would have to have enough shit together to put out self-produced and self-marketed releases. But then, some self-righteous hacks would just shoot it down. They'd ignore the lyrical content altogether and whine and wring their hands over the lack of instrumental ability and use lazy, unjust labels like "sloppy" and "boring". Hmmm, in the closest comparison, I think that there’s a young lady from Buffalo carrying that cross nowadays, but the name escapes me…