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How were you introduced to Phil and his music?

For me, unfortunately, it came at about the same time as he was committing suicide....

I had a poetry class in high school, and Mrs. Stevenson, bless her heart, played I'm not Marching any more" for the class....

I was all caught up in the anti-war stuff and so this just resonated with my soul....

In the 1990s, when Kazaa was big, I downloaded every Phil song I could find, burned them to CDs and never looked back.

I miss him but cherish his music. My friends kinda scratch their heads when I say..."You gotta listen to this song?"

So how did you get turned on to Phil?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Adam Sheets on January 18, 2011 at 12:54pm

Back in the late '90s, Stephen King wrote a book called "Hearts in Atlantis" (set in the '60s), in which a character bought a Phil Ochs LP. King's description persuaded me to go out and buy the album myself.

Permalink Reply by Ron Frankl on January 18, 2011 at 5:19pm

I first heard Phil Ochs circa 1968. WNEW-FM in New York played "Small Circle of Friends" almost every day, it seemed. I loved the song, even if the irony was a little distant for a 12-year-old. It was almost a decade later that I started exploring the rest of Phil's music, starting with the "Pleasures of the Harbor"-era albums.

Interestingly, I vividly recall reading about Ochs' disastrous Carnegie Hall concert in the pages of Rolling Stone, not understanding how an artist could be so out of touch with the expectations of his audience. Later, when I read more of Phil's life, the answer became all too obvious.

Permalink Reply by lou paschall on February 12, 2011 at 9:16am