By Huw Spink

"They smash down your doors, they don't bother to knock / They've done this before, so why all the shock?"

One of the constant joys of Phil’s songs is the amount of historical detail they include. Even a relatively simple song such as ‘I Ain’t Marching Anymore’ takes us from the Battle of New Orleans through the trenches of the First World War to give some context to the horrors of the battles raging in Vietnam.

The weight of history unpinning so many of his songs is echoed in even a brief investigation into the the experiences of his family and their contemporaries and perhaps helps to explain why fighting against war and injustice became so important to him.

Phil’s father Jacob’s parents’ families both left the  northern Polish town of Mława and settled in New York City’s Lower East Side.  The long Jewish history of Mława is riddled with persecution, documented beautifully in 1949 by Dr. Ze’ev Jonis in his work Jewish Mława; It’s History, Development, Destruction. He tells of a segregated existence between Jews and Gentiles, interspersed with periods of hostility. He tells of early Jewish communities having no say at all in the running of the town, before slowly gaining influence. The Russian rule from 1795 became ever more anti-Semitic, the anti-Semitism which must have been a major factor in Jacob Ochs’ parents migration to the USA. 

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Christopher Hitchens, radical left-wing commentator of the 60s and 70s, later radical right right-wing commentator, and long-time Phil Ochs fan has died of cancer at the age of 62.

BBC News

Written by Huw Spink

OCH/Dk,Dx/Interjection
(Scot. And Anglo-Irish)
Expr. Regret, irritation etc
From The Shorter English Dictionary

In an interview with Izzy Young in 1968 at the Folklore Centre in New York City after his return from the chaos and trauma of the Democratic Convention in Chicago, (in the interview during which Phil stated “I’ve always tried to hang onto the idea of saving the country, but at this point I could be persuaded to destroy it”) Phil was asked;

“…But how can you be an enemy of America in America? What can you do? Sabotage?”

To which Phil answered;

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 Our friend David Rovics has released a new album. Here are the details from the official site..

Big Red Sessions is now on CD. It is, in my humble opinion, the best recording I've ever made, both in terms of the selection of songs as well as the execution, with a stellar cast of musicians playing with me there in the Oregon woods at Big Red Studios. You can buy the CD for $10 (plus shipping costs) via my online store, where you'll also find a new, updated Combo Pack -- 8 CDs for $50, including Big Red Sessions. You can go to -

www.davidrovics.com

and click on "buy stuff" or go to -

www.theconnextion.com/davidrovics to get there directly.

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