Phil Ochs: Artist, Activist and American

Music DVD Review: Phil Ochs: There But For The Fortune

Kenneth Bowser's Phil Ochs: There But For The Fortune is a fascinating documentary overview of the largely unheralded, overlooked sixties protest singer who spent the bulk of his career in the shadow of his more famous, critically acclaimed friend and inspiration Bob Dylan. However, as this film so often poignantly illustrates, where Dylan chose to shroud his persona in a cloud of vagueness and mystery, Ochs wore his political values much more visibly on his sleeve.

While Dylan's protest songs may have led the political charge of the sixties progressive "movement," they were just as often measured by the sort of lyrical ambiguity that was such an essential element of the mystique he was creating even back then.

By contrast, Phil Ochs took a far more direct approach in songs like "There But For The Fortune" (a song most often identified with fellow protest icon Joan Baez), the antiwar anthem "I Aint' Marching Anymore," and "Love Me, I'm A Liberal," a biting satirical commentary directed more cynically towards his own. Songs like these and others left little room for doubt of Phil Ochs' lefty politics.

Arriving on the burgeoning New York folk scene at roughly the same time as Dylan, Ochs quickly befriended the future "voice of a generation" and adjusted his own ambitions accordingly — deciding he would need to settle on being merely "the second best songwriter in the world."

But as Dylan set out to conquer the music world, Ochs set his own sights on the larger goal of actually changing it, organizing benefit concerts for the causes of union workers and civil rights. Eventually he would take the equivalent of a self inflicted bullet for these beliefs.

Although Ochs artistic and commercial fortunes would take many twists and turns over the years, he never strayed far from his original political idealism. As this film so vividly points out (backing it up with rare, original footage from the period), even as Ochs was enjoying a minor commercial radio hit with "Outside Of A Small Circle Of Friends" (from the A&M records album Pleasures Of The Harbor), he was organizing the Yippie Party with fellow radicals Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Paul Krassner. When the Yippies famously disrupted the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Phil Ochs was right there in the middle of the tear gas and the pepper spray.

But the cracks in Ochs' fragile, idealistic hopes for progressive change were beginning to show even then. By the time of the political assassinations of Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and especially his friend Chilean protest singer Victor Jana (murdered by soldiers in a football stadium in the coup which toppled the government of President Allende), they had grown into an insurmountable chasm. This was followed in short order by alcoholism, mental illness and Ochs' eventual suicide in 1975.

All of this — accompanied by footage that is quite riveting, yet often painful to watch — is documented in Kenneth Bowser's Phil Ochs: There But For The Fortune.

Made with the blessing and participation of family members like brother and former manager Micheal Ochs, the film combines rare concert and newsreel footage and new interviews with Joan Baez, Tom Hayden, Pete Seeger, Sean Penn, Peter Yarrow, Billy Bragg and other contemporaries. The result is a fascinating, sympathetic and long overdue career study of this criminally overlooked artist, activist and American.

The DVD extras — which include a photo gallery and a director's bio — aren't all that great. But the rare concert and historical archive footage makes this a film that is more than worth your attention.

This article also appears at Blogcritics Magazine.

Making Sense of Amy Winehouse And The 27s Tragedy

The death of Amy Winehouse is a tragedy. But what might be the saddest commentary of all has been all of the Monday morning speculation — both in the media and elsewhere — surrounding it.

For the love of God people, it isn't even Monday yet.

Over the course of the next several days and weeks, you are going to hear a lot more of it too — particularly once the medical examiner's report comes in (which could be as early as Monday, according to some published reports). The fact is, even before family, friends and fans have been given the chance to take a proper step back to absorb and reflect, it has already begun.

The glib and dismissive "I told you so" tone of some of the comments that have popped up on internet discussion boards over the past 48 hours, has been particularly distasteful. Never mind the fact that perhaps we've all been guilty of such armchair commentary on occasion. When Alice In Chains vocalist Layne Staley overdosed back in 2002, I joined many others in Seattle's music community in shaking my head, perhaps a little too condescendingly, and with a knowing sigh.

Crass as this type of behavior might be though, it is also sadly predictable. Some might even argue it as a way of coping with grief, albeit a strange and perhaps tactless one. Nonetheless, it's both amazing and unfortunate how celebrity death has the side-effect of transforming so many of us into instant experts on subjects as complex as addiction and mental illness. Not to mention turning still more of us into foolish, obnoxiously prognosticating Nostra-dumbasses.

Among the strangest reports out there though, have been the odd articles popping up everywhere linking Amy Winehouse's death to something called the "27 Club."

Many of the internet posts on this subject have a certain Twilight Zone quality to them — connecting the dots between the sex and drugs and rock and roll lifestyle and things like astrology, numerology, and other assorted New Age mumbo-jumbo. I even saw a post that attempted to draw a straight line between Amy Winehouse and Jesus Christ himself (was Jesus crucified at 27? Uh, no...he was 33).

Others, however, are of a more blatantly exploitative nature. The authors of the book The 27s: The Greatest Myth Of Rock And Roll for example, have wasted no time claiming credit for predicting Winehouse's membership in "The Club." Wow, nice "hit" there guys.

According to the same book, the official number of rock stars to die at 27 is 34 (and now 35, with the addition of Amy Winehouse to the list). On the surface at least, this high number — beginning in 1938 with the mysterious poisoning death of legendary bluesman Robert Johnson, and continuing with iconic names like Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and other lesser known names like Uriah Heep bassist Gary Thain — is striking, especially when the relationship with substance abuse is figured into the mix.

It is this connection that carries along with it the mythical sort of connotations you'd expect. In the minds of some, premature death, tragic as it is, plays perfectly into the whole "live fast, die young, and leave a good corpse" mythos of rock and roll itself. By this measuring stick, dying for ones art is considered a badge of honor.

Factor in a few creepy coincidences like how Jim Morrison was said to have remarked "you're looking at number three" (when asked for his reaction to the deaths of Hendrix and Janis Joplin), and you have all the ingredients for some very compelling, if rather creepy mythology.

Things get even weirder when official versions of events surrounding some rock and roll deaths are called into question. There are a surprisingly greater number of people out there than you might think who really do believe that Elvis is alive and that Paul is dead. And while such rock and roll conspiracy theories as Jim Morrison faking his death (he didn't), Kurt Cobain being murdered (he wasn't), and Tupac Shakur remaining alive (he isn't), have died their own merciful deaths, others such as the "accidental drowning" of Brian Jones continue to raise some legitimate questions even today.

Where this line of thinking begins to fall apart however, is when you realize that not all rock stars who died at 27 — not even all of the really significant ones — succumbed due to causes related to drug and alcohol abuse. Mia Zapata of the Gits for example was 27 when she died. Zapata, however, was brutally murdered in Seattle in a case which went unsolved for years.

Still others didn't die at 27 at all. John Lennon was 40 when he was murdered, and Marvin Gaye was 44 when he was shot by his own father. Elvis was 42 when he overdosed.

Yet another very decent argument — one nearly as compelling as the so-called 27 Club in fact — could be made for the high body count amongst rockers who have gone on to the "Great Gig In The Sky" at the equally young age of 24. These include Duane Allman and Berry Oakley — both of the Allman Brothers Band — who died nearly a year to the day apart in separate, but eerily similar motorcycle accidents.

Other members of the "24 Club" include Mother Lovebone's Andrew Wood (overdose) and rapper Notorious B.I.G. (murdered). The still unsolved murder of Tupac Shakur (which has been linked to B.I.G.'s murder and to a rivalry between the two men) happened when the "Dear Mama" rapper was 25.

As much as we may like to worship our rock stars and place them on pedestals as Gods, the fact is that they are as human as the rest of us. Aside from the occasional horrific plane accident (Otis Redding, Buddy Holly, Ronnie Van Zant), this means they mostly die from the same natural causes (Bob Marley, Clarence Clemons) as the rest of us.

Some also die of overdoses. But far too many of them die young (there goes that whole God theory). Perhaps this is the reason we willingly clutch at the straws offered by an oddball theory like the 27 Club. As ludicrous as the whole idea might be, maybe in some odd way it helps us sort through our grief or to make sense of that which otherwise does not. If nothing else, it's mostly harmless and a far more constructive coping mechanism than finger pointing or engaging in otherwise pointless, sanctimonious "I told you so" jackass behavior.

If Amy Winehouse's death does prove to be the result of drugs and/or alcohol, there are some important things that probably need to be put into perspective. It would be easy to say the entertainment industry eats its young, but it would also be unfair. As much as death can make for short term, increased record sales (at least under the old industry model), its also fair to say that most record executives would prefer a long sustained career with healthy back catalog sales, over a short and out-of-control, but meteoric one.

As prevalent a problem as drug and alcohol abuse remains in the entertainment industry (and in society itself), I've seen no evidence that the corporate types running today's media conglomerates have any use for slackers. As with any other "employee," entertainment industry employers want someone who shows up on time and works hard.

Amy Winehouse leaves behind two officially released albums that were both commercial and critical successes. Like other greats whose careers were cut tragically short like Kurt Cobain and Janis Joplin (both of whom had officially released just three albums at the time they died), one can only speculate what would have come next had they been able to conquer their demons.

There is considerable evidence that all three of these 27 Club members — Cobain, Joplin and Winehouse — sought drugs and alcohol as more of an escape route from deeper seeded emotional problems than as a means to a more wreckless end. Both Cobain and Joplin were known to suffer from depression, with Cobain in particular reportedly wanting no part of the limelight during his tortured final days. Janis was known to routinely drown her loneliness in Southern Comfort.

If this was also true in Amy Winehouse's case — as some of the stories emerging now indicate — then it is particularly tragic that her troubles were so often reported in the same light as celebrity trainwrecks like Lindsay Lohan, Charlie Sheen and Paris Hilton by the tabloid media.

Gifted with a voice that could be alternately sultry and ageless, or smoky, painful and husky, Amy Winehouse had that rare, unique ability to transport you to another place with songs combining the soul of a torchy ingenue ("Love Is A Losing Game") with the defiant sass of a blues belter ("Rehab"). The fact that the retro-soul, Billie Holiday influenced terrain of her Grammy winning album Back To Black had been previously mined by Old School R&B revivalists like Erykah Badu is of little consequence. With respect to Badu (and others like her), Amy Winehouse's melding of blues and jazz with both doo-wop and hip hop sensibilities had the greater impact by far. Her influence can be heard most notably today on Adele's chart-topping smash 21.

In an age of short attention spans and flash-in-the-pan celebrity culture, driven by disposable, flavor-of-the-minute, now-you-see-them, now-you-don't pop stars created by cable and the internet, Amy Winehouse was a shining, rare talent. It's a shame we will never know what would, or could have been. It really is just a damn shame.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

Robert Fripp's New Sons Of The Crimson King

Music Review: Jakszyk, Fripp And Collins - A Scarcity of Miracles - A King Crimson Projekct

This album is probably going to surprise a lot of people. Given the heavy names attached to it, and particularly the King Crimson pedigree, it might also come off as mildly disappointing — at least on an initial listen. Although the vague subtitle coyly brands this as "A King Crimson Projekct," Robert Fripp seems content to stop just short of labeling this is as the latest full-on incarnation of the pioneering progressive rock group he founded some forty years ago.

In this case, keeping that particular link at arms length is probably appropriate.

A Scarcity Of Miracles bares little resemblance to either the frenetic histrionics of Red era Crimson, or the stately prog-rock sweep of the band's earliest work (despite the return of saxophonist Mel Collins). Rather, it falls somewhere in the middle.

Along with Fripp's far too occasional guitar soundscapes, the vocals of unlikely collaborator Jakko M. Jaksyzk (Level 42) provide the clearest link to the ghost of Crimson's past. On songs like "The Price We Pay," his voice comes eerily close to being a dead ringer for past Crimson vocalists Greg Lake and John Wetton.

But perhaps the oddest thing about this album is just how smooth it sounds. If "smooth" is a word you never thought would be spoken in the same sentence as King Crimson ("Projekct" or otherwise), you are not alone.

Yet the way Mel Collins saxophones swirl in and out of the mix on songs like the aforementioned "Price We Pay" recalls the atmospheric sheen of Andy Mackay's work on Roxy Music's Avalon, more than anything with Crimson. On the closing track "The Light Of Day," Collins' drifting saxes are equally matched by the ebb and flow effect of Jakszyk's keyboards.

If anything, this album has the same kind of distinct, dreamy feel to it as the Roxy Music classic mentioned above. It's just very soothing, "smooth" sounding music (there's that word again). It also has quite an atmospheric feel to it, although not so much in the ambient sense of Fripp's sonic "Frippertronics" explorations with Brian Eno. If anything, A Scarcity Of Miracles may be the most song oriented record Fripp has done since the days of In The Court Of The Crimson King and Lizard.

Fortunately, the prog fan's dream rhythm section of bassist Tony Levin (Peter Gabriel, Remain In Light era Talking Heads) and monster drummer Gavin Harrison (Porcupine Tree) get a chance to shine on "The Other Man," the lone track here displaying flashes of the darker, more musically dangerous side of King Crimson. Fripp also gets in some of his trademark "treatments" here, as he also does on the title track.

But mostly, this is a rare case of some of the best musicians in the world really laying back for a change, and allowing the songs to be the focal point. For a band more traditionally prone to a certain degree of musical excess, it's an oddly refreshing change. It just might take some getting used to.

In addition to the standard CD version, A Scarcity Of Miracles is available in vinyl and deluxe CD/DVD-A versions. The latter features 5.1 and high def 24/96 stereo mixes, and a bonus album of alternate mixes.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

For Guitar Players, By Guitar Players And About Guitar Players...

Book Review: Guitar Player Presents Guitar Heroes of the '70s Edited by Michael Molenda

Given the more pop oriented climate of today, it seems like a million years ago that guitar heroes like Hendrix, Clapton and Page ruled the musical landscape. Yet, in the late sixties and continuing throughout the seventies, the guitar reigned supreme in popular music.

This was due in large part to the enormous popularity of guitar oriented hard rock bands like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple in the seventies, later followed in the eighties by Van Halen and an endless slew of metal bands. But with technique being as important an element as style back then, jazz guitarists like John McLaughlin and Al DiMeola also enjoyed considerable success, as well as influencing more traditionally rock oriented players like Jeff Beck and Carlos Santana.

All of these great musicians, and many more are represented in Guitar Player Presents Guitar Heroes of the '70s, a compilation of interviews which originally appeared in the pages of Guitar Player magazine. Not surprisingly, all of these interviews focus primarily on the guitar — this is Guitar Player magazine after all.

In that respect, the interviews here might seem a little dry to readers who don't happen to be musicians themselves. Pages upon pages here are devoted to subjects like fingering and picking techniques, and what strings, picks, and amplifiers are used by the interview subjects. Occasionally this proves interesting, such as when Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi describes the protective plastic tips he uses on his fingers (he lost two of them in an electric welding accident). But if you find musical tech talk at all boring, this may not be the book for you.

However, once all the gear gab is dispensed with, Guitar Heroes of the '70s is an often fascinating read, and one which offers up a surprising number of new insights into what makes some of the greatest axe-wielders on the planet really tick.

When it comes to influences for example, many of the names one would expect to see, do in fact come up repeatedly. Among the veteran rock guitarists, early rock pioneers like James Burton and Scotty Moore and blues greats like Muddy Waters and B.B. King are mentioned often, while guys like Clapton and Hendrix are name checked by second generation guitarists like Eddie Van Halen. More surprisingly, the comparatively lesser known Leslie West is cited by no less than Pete Townshend and Jimi Hendrix as a guitar player they admired.

The book also occasionally sheds light on the human side of these great musicians, and not always in a flattering way. Robert Fripp — who pioneered the progressive rock genre with both King Crimson and in various solo and collaborative projects with people like Brian Eno — comes off as both prickly and self absorbed, for example. In his interview, Fripp says that most guitarists don't interest him and he describes the work of Eric Clapton as "mostly quite banal."

In addition to the hot-shot rock players, the book also effectively covers the remaining genre bases, from jazz (McLaughlin, DiMeola, Larry Coryell, Pat Martino) to blues (Mike Bloomfield, Johnny Winter, Bonnie Raitt) to folk and acoustic music (Leo Kottke, Ry Cooder). In short, a book about guitar players, for guitar players, that will be read mostly by guitar players.

This review was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.