A new film about '60s folk singer Phil Ochs poses questions for today.
by Leah Sottile, inlander.com
March 13th 2011
Were the 1960s much different than today? That decade had Vietnam; we have Iraq
and Afghanistan. The ’60s had segregation; the ’00s have a fear of Middle
Easterners. Americans in the ’60s had anxiety over the new Catholic president;
we have Barack Hussein Obama.
But in the ’60s, there was a culture of dissent and rebellion in art,
literature and music. You get a snapshot of that in There but for Fortune, a
new documentary about Phil Ochs, a mostly-forgotten folk singer from that time.
Ochs was just a normal kid from a good family. He played clarinet in the school
band. He loved John Wayne movies. But during college at Ohio State University,
where he honed his musical talents, he began to tap into the greater feeling of
dissatisfaction with America. He became a folk singer, and as a journalism
student he got material for his songs by scouring newspapers. He wrote ballads
about labor unions, fires and murder victims. Some called Ochs’s work protest
music — but he preferred to be called it “topical.”
Ochs became serious about his music when he moved to New York, where he
entrenched himself in the Greenwich Village folk scene. It was there he met Bob
Dylan, becoming a friend, collaborator and occasional rival. Dylan once said he
couldn’t keep up with Ochs. It’s said that later, during a car ride, when Ochs
critiqued one of Dylan’s songs, Dylan threw him out of his car, saying he was
just a journalist and hardly a folk singer.
But Ochs’s approach made a mark, and not just on American music. He became a
political rabble-rouser at the forefront of the yippie movement. Ochs planned
“theater” rallies around the country in which he would simply declare the war
was over, as a way of expressing anger over Vietnam.
And though his music remains overshadowed by folk singers like Dylan, and his
political legacy dwarved by Yippie organizers like Abbie Hoffman, Ochs was the
definition of counterculture. He was a dissenter in a time of war and
rebellion, unrest and fear.
That decade, like now, was a time of change — one we now define by its
dissenting opinions. But you’ll find yourself asking, as you watch There but
for Fortune, is there a Phil Ochs among us today?
Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune • Sun, March 13, at 2 pm • $10 • Bing Crosby
Theater • 901 W. Sprague • brownpapertickets.com • 838-7870
Original Page: http://www.inlander.com/spokane/article-16281-then-is-now.html
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