by Michael S. Foley
Unlike the AFSC or the individual resisters from the Committee for Non-Violent Action, BDRG counselors advised men to take advantage of the system any way they could. If a counselee felt that he could not in good conscience comply with the Selective Service System at all, outright resistance became an option; but few such discussions took place. Counselors more often sought to find something in the young man's life that made him eligible for a deferment. Popular artists like Phil Ochs had described nearly every available escape from conscription in songs like "Draft Dodger Rag," but many men remained unaware of their options. Counselors, then, would lay them out as Ochs had. They looked for men who were still too young ("Sarge, I'm only 18"); who had physical ailments ("I got a ruptured spleen . . I got eyes like a bat, my feet are flat, and my asthma's getting worse"); who were homosexual ("I always carry a purse"); who could get a hardship deferment ("think of my . . . sweetheart dear, my poor old invalid aunt"); who were enrolled in college or graduate school full time ("I'm going to school"); or who were qualified for work in the national interest ("and I'm working in a defense plant"). Therefore, rather than counseling men to refuse to cooperate with the draft, the BDRG told them to over-cooperate by applying for a deferment allowed by the system. In addition, local board decisions could be appealed, sometimes repeatedly, with the goal that eventually a bureaucratic error would occur; if that happened, the process could be dragged out for years and chances of such individuals being inducted became very small.
Saturday, 25 April 2009
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
The Phil Ochs Video Vault: Conventions: The Land Around Us
The 1969 documentary Conventions: The Land Around Us was created for the University of Illinois at Chicago and features live footage and audio of Phil Ochs at Chicago Stadium on August 27, 1968 during the Democratic National Convention. Songs include: "I Ain't Marching Anymore," "Power and the Glory," and the LP version of "Where Were You in Chicago?"
“Conventions: The Land Around Us” is a documentary film essay on the topic of cultural and political change. It takes as its particular subject matter the confrontations that took place between anti-war demonstrators and the US political establishment in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. While bringing to life the emotional and ideological dynamics of that historical moment, it also places it in the dual context of interactional analysis and the history of American Utopian movements.
“Conventions: The Land Around Us” is a documentary film essay on the topic of cultural and political change. It takes as its particular subject matter the confrontations that took place between anti-war demonstrators and the US political establishment in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. While bringing to life the emotional and ideological dynamics of that historical moment, it also places it in the dual context of interactional analysis and the history of American Utopian movements.
Saturday, 18 April 2009
Generation on Fire: Voices of Protest from the 1960s, An Oral History
by Jeff Kisseloff
I was still in the Army, so I went back to Fort Hood, where I hooked up with these people that had a project called GI coffeehouses. These were some old civil rights activists that set up these coffeehouses at a few bases. The purpose was to encourage the GIs to express their minds. They could chill out and listen to records or talk politics. It was really a free space in a military atmosphere. They had underground papers and different literature and stuff there. The coffeehouse staff lived on a commune.
[...]
After I got discharged, I hung out and organized and smoked a lot of pot. I stayed in Texas at the coffeehouse until the end of '71, beginning '72. I was burned out from living there. It was rough organizing. You're under a lot of surveillance from the police. One time we had a shoot-out with the Klan while we were going to Houston on a convoy. We used to fight with the cowboys. In those days, if you had long hair, they all used to think you were "a goddamned hippie."
We had a lot of musicians come to our club. Phil Ochs, Barbara Dane, and Pete Seeger came down. We asked Johnny Winter to come, but he said, "Can't help you, it won't help my career."
I was still in the Army, so I went back to Fort Hood, where I hooked up with these people that had a project called GI coffeehouses. These were some old civil rights activists that set up these coffeehouses at a few bases. The purpose was to encourage the GIs to express their minds. They could chill out and listen to records or talk politics. It was really a free space in a military atmosphere. They had underground papers and different literature and stuff there. The coffeehouse staff lived on a commune.
[...]
After I got discharged, I hung out and organized and smoked a lot of pot. I stayed in Texas at the coffeehouse until the end of '71, beginning '72. I was burned out from living there. It was rough organizing. You're under a lot of surveillance from the police. One time we had a shoot-out with the Klan while we were going to Houston on a convoy. We used to fight with the cowboys. In those days, if you had long hair, they all used to think you were "a goddamned hippie."
We had a lot of musicians come to our club. Phil Ochs, Barbara Dane, and Pete Seeger came down. We asked Johnny Winter to come, but he said, "Can't help you, it won't help my career."
Friday, 17 April 2009
Mathematical Apocrypha Redux: More Stories & Anecdotes of Mathematicians & the Mathematical
by Seven G. Krantz
Mathematician Robert A. Bonic (1932-1990)--who made his first appearance in Mathematical Apocrypha--smoked marijuana one night in 1969 and had a vision. Like Kronecker, he deduced that God made the integers and that all else was derivative material concocted by man. He decided therefore to become a computer scientist.
Using connections he had, Bob managed to land an Assistant Professorship in Computer Science at the Courant Institute in New York City. There was just one catch. Bob had been a tenured full Professor of Mathematics at Northeastern University. He resigned that lofty position in order to move to Courant. He had grown accustomed, since he had a high-paying sinecure at Northeastern, to fight and argue with everyone all the time about everything. Bob continued this tradition as an Assistant Professor at Courant. The unfortunate upshot was that he was fired. So Bob started a new life.
Bob Bonic had many interests. One of his avocations was playing darts, and he was so good at it that he was banned from most of the dart bars in New York City. He ended up opening his own dart bar in Manhattan. His partner in business was Phil Ochs (1940-1976), the famous folk singer. Bonic's bar became quite the hangout: actor Robert De Niro and punk rock singer Patti Smith used to spend time there.
Phil Ochs was manic depressive, and he ended up committing suicide. Bonic was the last person to see him alive before he went off and hanged himself.
Ultimately Bonic was run out of business because the Cosa Nostra wanted his space. He became an itinerant mathematician, traveling from university to university and doing a variety of jobs for different math departments--some of them quite essential (like supervising the calculus curriculum)--in order to keep going. He died at a young age of a brain tumor.
Mathematician Robert A. Bonic (1932-1990)--who made his first appearance in Mathematical Apocrypha--smoked marijuana one night in 1969 and had a vision. Like Kronecker, he deduced that God made the integers and that all else was derivative material concocted by man. He decided therefore to become a computer scientist.
Using connections he had, Bob managed to land an Assistant Professorship in Computer Science at the Courant Institute in New York City. There was just one catch. Bob had been a tenured full Professor of Mathematics at Northeastern University. He resigned that lofty position in order to move to Courant. He had grown accustomed, since he had a high-paying sinecure at Northeastern, to fight and argue with everyone all the time about everything. Bob continued this tradition as an Assistant Professor at Courant. The unfortunate upshot was that he was fired. So Bob started a new life.
Bob Bonic had many interests. One of his avocations was playing darts, and he was so good at it that he was banned from most of the dart bars in New York City. He ended up opening his own dart bar in Manhattan. His partner in business was Phil Ochs (1940-1976), the famous folk singer. Bonic's bar became quite the hangout: actor Robert De Niro and punk rock singer Patti Smith used to spend time there.
Phil Ochs was manic depressive, and he ended up committing suicide. Bonic was the last person to see him alive before he went off and hanged himself.
Ultimately Bonic was run out of business because the Cosa Nostra wanted his space. He became an itinerant mathematician, traveling from university to university and doing a variety of jobs for different math departments--some of them quite essential (like supervising the calculus curriculum)--in order to keep going. He died at a young age of a brain tumor.
Thursday, 16 April 2009
Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State
by Norman Solomon
When Richard Nixon became president in January 1969, I was a seventeen-year-old who wanted peace and love, social justice and marijuana, by then common agenda items for increasing numbers of Americans. The day before Nixon raised his right hand and solemnly swore, I was in the "counter-inaugural" march down Pennsylvania Avenue. ("Tomorrow the old gray buildings will smile at another parade as it marches in the other direction, with soldiers and guns and military bands, thousands already uniform and uniformed," I scribbled in a notebook.) Standing next to me under a big tent while Phil Ochs sang "when I've got something to say, sir, I'm gonna say it now," a guy my age expressed disdain: We've been saying that for a long time, he complained impatiently.
When Richard Nixon became president in January 1969, I was a seventeen-year-old who wanted peace and love, social justice and marijuana, by then common agenda items for increasing numbers of Americans. The day before Nixon raised his right hand and solemnly swore, I was in the "counter-inaugural" march down Pennsylvania Avenue. ("Tomorrow the old gray buildings will smile at another parade as it marches in the other direction, with soldiers and guns and military bands, thousands already uniform and uniformed," I scribbled in a notebook.) Standing next to me under a big tent while Phil Ochs sang "when I've got something to say, sir, I'm gonna say it now," a guy my age expressed disdain: We've been saying that for a long time, he complained impatiently.
Wednesday, 15 April 2009
The Temptation: Edgar Tolson and the Genesis of Twentieth-Century Folk Art
by Julia S. Ardery
In March, the newly formed Appalachian Committee for Full Employment, organized by the Perry County-based miners group, arranged a meeting jointly with SDS. At this "symposium" on conditions in the mountains, held at the Allais Union Hall in Hazard, March 28, 1964, Gibson held forth before a crowd of nearly two hundred, half local people and half students, both black and white, from across the Midwest. Novelist Gurney Norman, then a reporter for the Hazard Herald, remembered being cautioned by one wary citizen, "Be careful, honey, a lot of them are art majors."
In fact, there was a strong cultural dimension to this assembly of union activists and campus radicals, in addition to its overt political purpose. The Committee for Miners arranged for a group of the era's most popular folk singers, including Carolyn Hester, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, and Eric Andersen, to "see the situation first-hand." Paxton was inspired to write "The High Sheriff of Hazard." As late as 1968, the New York committee was continuing to raise contributions through its New York offices and to enlist folk singers for benefit performances, among them Judy Collins, Mississippi John Hurt, Dave Van Ronk, and Hedy West.
In March, the newly formed Appalachian Committee for Full Employment, organized by the Perry County-based miners group, arranged a meeting jointly with SDS. At this "symposium" on conditions in the mountains, held at the Allais Union Hall in Hazard, March 28, 1964, Gibson held forth before a crowd of nearly two hundred, half local people and half students, both black and white, from across the Midwest. Novelist Gurney Norman, then a reporter for the Hazard Herald, remembered being cautioned by one wary citizen, "Be careful, honey, a lot of them are art majors."
In fact, there was a strong cultural dimension to this assembly of union activists and campus radicals, in addition to its overt political purpose. The Committee for Miners arranged for a group of the era's most popular folk singers, including Carolyn Hester, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, and Eric Andersen, to "see the situation first-hand." Paxton was inspired to write "The High Sheriff of Hazard." As late as 1968, the New York committee was continuing to raise contributions through its New York offices and to enlist folk singers for benefit performances, among them Judy Collins, Mississippi John Hurt, Dave Van Ronk, and Hedy West.
Tuesday, 14 April 2009
The Phil Ochs Video Vault: Swiisch Underground
Filmed in July 1968 for the Swedish television program Swiisch Underground, this footage features performances of "I Ain't Marching Anymore" and "Crucifixion."
Monday, 13 April 2009
An American Family: A Televised Life
by Jeffrey Ruoff
National Educational Television was a small organization when Craig Gilbert joined the ranks as a producer in the mid-1960s; it was run primarily by John White, president; William Kobin, head of programming; Don Dixon, head of public affairs programming; and Don Kellerman, head of cultural affairs. Gilbert was hired by Kellerman to produce a weekly program, Magazine of the Arts, and, intrigued by the politics of the counterculture, he did a show about folksingers Buffy Sainte-Marie, Tom Paxton, and Phil Ochs. He later produced and directed a program about sculptors George Segal and John Chamberlain. Magazine of the Arts was discontinued when Kellerman was fired and White discovered that Gilbert had been taken on without authorization.
National Educational Television was a small organization when Craig Gilbert joined the ranks as a producer in the mid-1960s; it was run primarily by John White, president; William Kobin, head of programming; Don Dixon, head of public affairs programming; and Don Kellerman, head of cultural affairs. Gilbert was hired by Kellerman to produce a weekly program, Magazine of the Arts, and, intrigued by the politics of the counterculture, he did a show about folksingers Buffy Sainte-Marie, Tom Paxton, and Phil Ochs. He later produced and directed a program about sculptors George Segal and John Chamberlain. Magazine of the Arts was discontinued when Kellerman was fired and White discovered that Gilbert had been taken on without authorization.
Sunday, 12 April 2009
The Lennon Companion: Updated and Expanded Edition
Edited by Elizabeth Thomson & David Gutman
The deportation case had its roots in a concert-rally John and Yoko gave in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in December 1971--a benefit for a local activist named John Sinclair, who had served two years of a 10-year sentence for selling two joints of marijuana to an undercover cop. Lennon and his movement friends regarded the Sinclair concert as a trial run for their proposed national tour. They wanted to see how a typical rock audience would respond to a rally that combined music with radical politics. The FBI was interested in precisely the same question. Its undercover agents were salted among the 15,000 excited Midwestern college kids who came to Crisler Arena to see John and Yoko and their friends.
The concert-rally began with Allen Ginsberg, who led the crowd in chanting 'Om-m-m-m-m'. Phil Ochs sang a song about Nixon. A local band played Elvis Presley's 'Jailhouse Rock' for the man behind bars, and a version of Chuck Berry's 'Nadine', with new words about Bernardine Dohrn, a member of the Weather Underground: 'Bernardine, sister is that you?/Your picture's in the post office/But the people are protecting you'.
The deportation case had its roots in a concert-rally John and Yoko gave in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in December 1971--a benefit for a local activist named John Sinclair, who had served two years of a 10-year sentence for selling two joints of marijuana to an undercover cop. Lennon and his movement friends regarded the Sinclair concert as a trial run for their proposed national tour. They wanted to see how a typical rock audience would respond to a rally that combined music with radical politics. The FBI was interested in precisely the same question. Its undercover agents were salted among the 15,000 excited Midwestern college kids who came to Crisler Arena to see John and Yoko and their friends.
The concert-rally began with Allen Ginsberg, who led the crowd in chanting 'Om-m-m-m-m'. Phil Ochs sang a song about Nixon. A local band played Elvis Presley's 'Jailhouse Rock' for the man behind bars, and a version of Chuck Berry's 'Nadine', with new words about Bernardine Dohrn, a member of the Weather Underground: 'Bernardine, sister is that you?/Your picture's in the post office/But the people are protecting you'.
Saturday, 11 April 2009
The Turning: A History of Vietnam Veterans Against the War
by Andrew E. Hunt
VVAW escaped from the imbroglio unharmed. With the inquiry fast approaching, funds continued to pour in from antiwar celebrities. Before the event, Jane Fonda organized a show, "Acting in Concert for Peace," which featured performances by Fonda, Donald Sutherland, and Dick Gregory, as well as the singers Barbara Dane, Graham Nash, David Crosby, and Phil Ochs. Two Detroit attorneys, Dean Robb and Ernest Goodman, rallied support from local lawyers. United Auto Workers Secretary-Treasurer Emil Mazey and Michigan's secretary of state, Richard Austin, endorsed the program. Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic clergy in Detroit arranged lodging for the witnesses. "[It] is important that the public realize that American atrocities in Vietnam are an everyday occurrence," announced one supporter, Dr. John B. Forsyth, director of missions for the Detroit Metropolitan Council of Churches.
VVAW escaped from the imbroglio unharmed. With the inquiry fast approaching, funds continued to pour in from antiwar celebrities. Before the event, Jane Fonda organized a show, "Acting in Concert for Peace," which featured performances by Fonda, Donald Sutherland, and Dick Gregory, as well as the singers Barbara Dane, Graham Nash, David Crosby, and Phil Ochs. Two Detroit attorneys, Dean Robb and Ernest Goodman, rallied support from local lawyers. United Auto Workers Secretary-Treasurer Emil Mazey and Michigan's secretary of state, Richard Austin, endorsed the program. Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic clergy in Detroit arranged lodging for the witnesses. "[It] is important that the public realize that American atrocities in Vietnam are an everyday occurrence," announced one supporter, Dr. John B. Forsyth, director of missions for the Detroit Metropolitan Council of Churches.
Friday, 10 April 2009
Chicago '68
by David Farber
At the Colosseum, for most of the night, approximately four thousand protesters, including an increasing number of young McCarthy workers, vented their spleen against LBJ. In a carnivalesque atmosphere, created in the main through the daylong preparations of Ed Sanders, local music groups played and speakers railed against LBJ, racism, and the war in Vietnam. "Fuck you, LBJ," the crowd chanted. And "Hell, no, we won't go." When Phil Ochs sang, "I Ain't Marching Anymore," people wept with frustration, anger, and bitterness. Draft cards and draft notices were put to flame while Ochs sang: "Call it peace or call it treason / Call it honor [sic] or call it reason / But I ain't marching anymore." David Dellinger told the crowd that they would march on the Amphitheater the next day. Shortly before midnight, Rennie Davis ended the show by advising the crowd to make their way in small groups to Grant Park, where they could greet the returning delegates in front of the network television cameras.
At the Colosseum, for most of the night, approximately four thousand protesters, including an increasing number of young McCarthy workers, vented their spleen against LBJ. In a carnivalesque atmosphere, created in the main through the daylong preparations of Ed Sanders, local music groups played and speakers railed against LBJ, racism, and the war in Vietnam. "Fuck you, LBJ," the crowd chanted. And "Hell, no, we won't go." When Phil Ochs sang, "I Ain't Marching Anymore," people wept with frustration, anger, and bitterness. Draft cards and draft notices were put to flame while Ochs sang: "Call it peace or call it treason / Call it honor [sic] or call it reason / But I ain't marching anymore." David Dellinger told the crowd that they would march on the Amphitheater the next day. Shortly before midnight, Rennie Davis ended the show by advising the crowd to make their way in small groups to Grant Park, where they could greet the returning delegates in front of the network television cameras.
Thursday, 9 April 2009
We've Got to Find Another Way
By Mark Spoelstra (1962)I got a Form from my Draft Board sayin' this is what to do
Fill out this Form if you want to be a conscientious objector too
CHO:
Because I know there's got to be Peace
Peace on Earth some day
But Peace don't come from war, you see
We've got to find another way
Well I waited for five long months
Thinkin it's the alternative for me
But they gave me military duty
And they gave it in the 1st degree
Now I do love, I love this land
And Freedom is God-sent
But when it comes to killing men
I won't do it for any government
(Chorus)
I'm going to tell my draft board
That they don't have the right
To make a man go to war
Go to kill and fight
Now the army teaches a man
To go to war and kill
If I have to go to jail
God knows that I will. CHO.
Now they jail a man for murder
Because it is a crime
But if you don't kill for the army
You serve the same prison time
Some people are building them fallout shelters
But I don't know what for
Where are they going to get something to eat
After a nuclear war? CHO.
Now the moral of this here song
Is plain as day to see
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust
To be or not to be. CHO.
Wednesday, 8 April 2009
I Will Not Go Down Under the Ground
By Bob Dylan (1962)I will not go down under the ground because someone tells me that death's comin' round
I will not carry myself down to die when I go to my grave my head will be high
CHO:
Let me die in my footsteps before I'll go down under the ground
There's been rumors of ways and wars that have been
The meaning of life has been lost in the wind
Some people are thinkin' that the end is close by
Instead of learning to live they are learning to die. (CHO.)
I don't think I'm smart but I think I can see
When someone is pulling the wool over me
And if there's a war and death comes around
Let me die on this land 'for I'll die underground. (CHO.)
There's always been people that have to cause fear
They've been talking about war for many long years
I've read all their statements and not said a word
And now, Lord God, let my poor voice be heard. (CHO.)
If I had riches and rubies and crowns
I'd buy the whole world and I'd change things around
I'd throw all the tanks and the guns in the sea
For they all are mistakes of our past history. (CHO.)
Let me drink from the waters where the mountain streams flow
Let the smell of wild flowers flow free through my blood
Let me sleep in your meadows with your green grassy leaves
Let me walk down the highway with my brothers in peace. (CHO.)
Go out in your country where the land meets the sun
See the meadows and mountains where the wild waters run
Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Idaho
Let every state in the Union seep deep down in your soul.
CHO. And you'll die, etc.
Tuesday, 7 April 2009
The Phil Ochs Video Vault: Swedish TV 1967
Filmed in July 1968 with Julie Felix, this special was shown on Swedish television and featured the following songs: I'm Gonna Say It Now / Flower Lady (Julie Felix) / Joe Hill / Deportees (Julie Felix) / Bracero (Julie Felix) / I Ain't Marching Anymore / Changes (Phil Ochs and Julie Felix).
Monday, 6 April 2009
Carlino
Words & Music by Gil Turner (1962)Come all you good people if you want to hear
About a politician that we have 'round here
He takes the people's money
He ought to be ashamed
He's a big shot up in Albany, Carlino is his name
They passed a law in Albany, didn't take much time
Carlino was the engineer, he rammed it down the line
A hundred million dollars, said Nelson Rockefel
We gotta dig some shelters to save us all from Hell
There's a company called Lancer, Carlino's on their team
Their shelters are made of fibreglass, well, isn't that a scream
They're building public coffins, the large economy size
But if they make ten million bucks, well that's free enterprise
If you want to make some money, here's an easy way
Get the people all afraid of comin' Judgement Day
Pay off the politicians and get 'em on your side
Make 'em say we can't have peace, so let's all run and hide
Some folks think that shelters will save them when it's time
They're building them in secrecy, well isn't that a crime
If it gets too crowded in that room below the ground
Even bought a rifle to shoot their neighbor down
Listen friends and neighbors I've one more thing to say
This human race of people has come a long, long way
I will not face my brother -- put a bullet in his head
Let's stop these fears and profiteers and fight for peace instead
Sunday, 5 April 2009
Talking John Birch
by Bob Dylan (1962)I's feeling bad, kinda blue
Couldn't think of what to do
Them communists were all around
In the air and on the ground
...wouldn't give me no peace
I run down most hurriedly
And joined the John Birch Society
Got me a secret membership card
Started walkin' down the road
...oh boy
I'm a real John Bircher now
Look out you commies
We all agree with Hitler's views
Tho he killed 6 million Jews
It don't matter if he was a fascist
At least he wasn't no communist
...that's to say
If you got a bad cold
Take a shot of malaria
I looked all over for them gol-darm reds
Got up in the mornin' looked under my bed
Looked in the closet and baxind the door
Looked in the glove compartment of my car
...couldn't find 'em
They got away
Looked in the cupboard and under the chairs
Looked just about everywhere
Looked up the chimney hole
Even down in the toilet bowl
...I just missed 'em
I's home alone broke out in a sweat
I figured they were in my television set
I poked my nose behind the frame
Got a shock from my feet to my brain
...them reds caused it
Them hard core ones
Quit my job I got so I could be alone
Changed my name to Sherlock Holmes
Following some clues from my detective bag
Found out there were red stripes in the American flag
...oh boy
Can't wait to tell
The rest of the Birchnuts
Eisenhower, he's a Russian spy
Washington, Jefferson and the Roosevelt guy
To my knowledge there's only one man
Who's really a true American
...George Lincoln Rockwell
Know for a fact
Cause he picketed the movie Exodus
I investigated the books in the library
90 per cent gotta be thrown away
I investigated all the people I knowed
98 per cent of 'em gotta go
...the other 2 per cent
Are fellow Birchers
Just like me
I finally started thinking straight
When I run out of things to investigate
I couldn't imagine anything else
So now I'm investigating myself
...hope I don't
Find out nothing.
Saturday, 4 April 2009
No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan
by Robert Shelton
The following night, a little surprise for Mike Porco, who was turning sixty-one. To Mike's astonishment, four film technicians showed up at Folk City, mumbling "educational television." (Under the direction of Dylan, Howard Alk, and Mel Howard, this began hundreds of hours of shooting footage.) On hand were Phil Ochs, Patti Smith, Baez, Commander Cody members, Bette Midler, and Buzzy Linhart. A bit after one A.M., Dylan's red Cadillac Eldorado cruised up to Folk City, and in loped Bob, Kemp, and Neuwirth. Dylan, as "the greatest star of all," went to the stage; he brought up Baez. They sang "Happy Birthday" and "One Too Many Mornings." Mike Porco grinned from wall to wall. He'd been waiting for this a long time!
This was a dress rehearsal for the Rolling Thunder Revue, as performers took to the little stage of Folk City. Hours later, a hoarse Phil Ochs did a set of his own, some traditional songs and "Lay Down Your Weary Tune." Everyone at Dylan's table stood gaping at Phil. Dylan praised Phil when he finished. (When thirty-five-year-old Ochs hanged himself on April 9, 1976, some said his exclusion from the RTR was the last in a long line of crushing events that gave him no way out. Ochs could not be signed on the tour because of his heavy drinking and unpredictability. His friend and eulogizer, Ed Sanders, has described Ochs's "final flameout" as a reaction to "the tyranny of booze, despair, and maddening mood swings.")
The following night, a little surprise for Mike Porco, who was turning sixty-one. To Mike's astonishment, four film technicians showed up at Folk City, mumbling "educational television." (Under the direction of Dylan, Howard Alk, and Mel Howard, this began hundreds of hours of shooting footage.) On hand were Phil Ochs, Patti Smith, Baez, Commander Cody members, Bette Midler, and Buzzy Linhart. A bit after one A.M., Dylan's red Cadillac Eldorado cruised up to Folk City, and in loped Bob, Kemp, and Neuwirth. Dylan, as "the greatest star of all," went to the stage; he brought up Baez. They sang "Happy Birthday" and "One Too Many Mornings." Mike Porco grinned from wall to wall. He'd been waiting for this a long time!
This was a dress rehearsal for the Rolling Thunder Revue, as performers took to the little stage of Folk City. Hours later, a hoarse Phil Ochs did a set of his own, some traditional songs and "Lay Down Your Weary Tune." Everyone at Dylan's table stood gaping at Phil. Dylan praised Phil when he finished. (When thirty-five-year-old Ochs hanged himself on April 9, 1976, some said his exclusion from the RTR was the last in a long line of crushing events that gave him no way out. Ochs could not be signed on the tour because of his heavy drinking and unpredictability. His friend and eulogizer, Ed Sanders, has described Ochs's "final flameout" as a reaction to "the tyranny of booze, despair, and maddening mood swings.")
Friday, 3 April 2009
Dissent in the Heartland: The Sixties at Indiana University
By Mary Ann Wynkoop
This grassroots view of student activism in the 1960s chronicles the years of protest at one Midwestern university. Located in a region of farmland, conservative politics, and traditional family values, Indiana University was home to the antiwar protestors, civil rights activists, members of the counterculture, and feminists who helped change the heart of Middle America. Its students made their voices heard on issues from such local matters as dorm curfews and self-governance to national issues of racism, sexism, and the Vietnam War. Their recognition that the personal was the political would change them forever. The protest movement they helped shape would reach into the heart-land in ways that would redefine higher education, politics, and cultural values. Based on research in primary sources, interviews, and FBI files, Dissent in the Heartland reveals the Midwestern pulse of the Sixties, beating firmly, far from the elite schools and urban centers of the East and West.
Excerpt
Members of SDS and other student groups across the country began criticizing the war in Vietnam, and on Easter 1965 twenty thousand protestors marched on the Washington monument. Folksingers Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, and the Freedom Singers led the crowd in singing "We Shall Overcome." The demonstrators presented Congress with a petition to end the war.
[...]
The National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (nicknamed "the Mobe") had organized a Stop the Draft Week from October 14 to 21, 1967. The point of this campaign was to confront Washington policymakers with the fact that thousands of young Americans - straights and hippies, blacks and whites, working class and middle class - were opposed to the war in Vietnam. The week ended on October 21 with the March on the Pentagon. Protestors gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, where they listened to music by Peter, Paul, and Mary and Phil Ochs and speeches by David Dellinger and Dr. Benjamin Spock.
Then the crowd marched across the Arlington Bridge toward the Pentagon, where they were met by military police. The protestors sang songs, talked to the troops, and joined together in a sense of community. Allen Ginsberg and Abbie Hoffman chanted "om" as they and others tried to levitate the Pentagon. However, by midnight the police were replaced by the 82nd Division and the scene turned ugly. Paratroopers cleared the area by beating peaceful protestors, who faced their attackers singing the national anthem. By the next morning, only a few hundred were left. The protest was over.
This grassroots view of student activism in the 1960s chronicles the years of protest at one Midwestern university. Located in a region of farmland, conservative politics, and traditional family values, Indiana University was home to the antiwar protestors, civil rights activists, members of the counterculture, and feminists who helped change the heart of Middle America. Its students made their voices heard on issues from such local matters as dorm curfews and self-governance to national issues of racism, sexism, and the Vietnam War. Their recognition that the personal was the political would change them forever. The protest movement they helped shape would reach into the heart-land in ways that would redefine higher education, politics, and cultural values. Based on research in primary sources, interviews, and FBI files, Dissent in the Heartland reveals the Midwestern pulse of the Sixties, beating firmly, far from the elite schools and urban centers of the East and West.
Excerpt
Members of SDS and other student groups across the country began criticizing the war in Vietnam, and on Easter 1965 twenty thousand protestors marched on the Washington monument. Folksingers Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, and the Freedom Singers led the crowd in singing "We Shall Overcome." The demonstrators presented Congress with a petition to end the war.
[...]
The National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (nicknamed "the Mobe") had organized a Stop the Draft Week from October 14 to 21, 1967. The point of this campaign was to confront Washington policymakers with the fact that thousands of young Americans - straights and hippies, blacks and whites, working class and middle class - were opposed to the war in Vietnam. The week ended on October 21 with the March on the Pentagon. Protestors gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, where they listened to music by Peter, Paul, and Mary and Phil Ochs and speeches by David Dellinger and Dr. Benjamin Spock.
Then the crowd marched across the Arlington Bridge toward the Pentagon, where they were met by military police. The protestors sang songs, talked to the troops, and joined together in a sense of community. Allen Ginsberg and Abbie Hoffman chanted "om" as they and others tried to levitate the Pentagon. However, by midnight the police were replaced by the 82nd Division and the scene turned ugly. Paratroopers cleared the area by beating peaceful protestors, who faced their attackers singing the national anthem. By the next morning, only a few hundred were left. The protest was over.
Thursday, 2 April 2009
Rehearsals for Retirement
Rehearsals For Retirement was Phil Ochs' sixth album, released in 1969 on A&M Records. Recorded in the aftermath of Ochs' presence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago (where his exploits included selecting and purchasing a pig for Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies to nominate for President), it is the darkest of Ochs' albums, a fact exemplified by its cover, a tombstone proclaiming that Ochs had died in Chicago.
"Pretty Smart On My Part," the album opener, is a song in the persona of a right-wing reactionary, who plans to, among other things, "assassinate the President and take over the government" (the song was noted on Ochs' lengthy FBI file). "William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed" is Ochs' telling of the events that unfolded in Chicago, followed by an upbeat jaunt berating those who weren't there. "The World Began in Eden and Ended in Los Angeles" seems to portray Ochs' then-home as a hellhole, as all metropolises eventually end up. "Doesn't Lenny Live Here Anymore" is the tale of a woman seeking out her ex-lover, and finding Ochs instead, telling a tale of loneliness that permeates American life.
Perhaps the most despairing track on the album is "My Life," in which Ochs states bluntly, "my life is like a death to me," which presages Ochs' suicide seven years later. He also asks the FBI to "take your tap from my phone and leave my life alone."
Track listing
All songs by Phil Ochs.
Side One
1. "Pretty Smart on My Part" – 3:18
2. "The Doll House" – 4:39
3. "I Kill Therefore I Am" – 2:55
4. "William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed / Where Were You in Chicago?" – 3:29
5. "My Life" – 3:12
Side Two
1. "The Scorpion Departs But Never Returns" – 4:15
2. "The World Began in Eden and Ended in Los Angeles" – 3:06
3. "Doesn't Lenny Live Here Anymore?" – 6:11
4. "Another Age" – 3:42
5. "Rehearsals For Retirement" – 4:09
Participants
"Pretty Smart On My Part," the album opener, is a song in the persona of a right-wing reactionary, who plans to, among other things, "assassinate the President and take over the government" (the song was noted on Ochs' lengthy FBI file). "William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed" is Ochs' telling of the events that unfolded in Chicago, followed by an upbeat jaunt berating those who weren't there. "The World Began in Eden and Ended in Los Angeles" seems to portray Ochs' then-home as a hellhole, as all metropolises eventually end up. "Doesn't Lenny Live Here Anymore" is the tale of a woman seeking out her ex-lover, and finding Ochs instead, telling a tale of loneliness that permeates American life.
Perhaps the most despairing track on the album is "My Life," in which Ochs states bluntly, "my life is like a death to me," which presages Ochs' suicide seven years later. He also asks the FBI to "take your tap from my phone and leave my life alone."
Track listing
All songs by Phil Ochs.
Side One
1. "Pretty Smart on My Part" – 3:18
2. "The Doll House" – 4:39
3. "I Kill Therefore I Am" – 2:55
4. "William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed / Where Were You in Chicago?" – 3:29
5. "My Life" – 3:12
Side Two
1. "The Scorpion Departs But Never Returns" – 4:15
2. "The World Began in Eden and Ended in Los Angeles" – 3:06
3. "Doesn't Lenny Live Here Anymore?" – 6:11
4. "Another Age" – 3:42
5. "Rehearsals For Retirement" – 4:09
Participants
- Phil Ochs - guitar, vocals
- Larry Marks - producer
- Lincoln Mayorga - piano, accordion
- Bob Rafkin - guitar, bass
- Kevin Kelley - drums (rumored)
- Ian Freebairn-Smith - arrangements
Disorderly Conduct
By Bruce Jackson
Foreword by William M. Kunstler
"What I like about these essays, which cover an array of highly significant topics from peace demonstrations in the 1960s to contemporary federal drug policies, is that the politics and theory seem to derive from what their author saw; with most observers, the politics and theory seem to control what they saw. The result is a rare measure of balance and clarity, a group of articles with remarkable currency. . . .
"We live in an age when an astonishing amount of claptrap is proffered as revealed knowledge by anyone with a word processor and a willing publisher. I find it delightfully refreshing to find so articulate an olio of intelligent and searching pieces that are as articulate as they are provocative. And, happily, Bruce Jackson has been blessed with the gift of laughter, which helps him deliver to us a remarkable sane vision of a world that all too often is more than a little mad."
William M. Kunstler,
from the Foreword
Excerpt
The action got going on the platform. The Bread and Puppet Theater parodied patriotic hymns, then performed a parable, "The Great Warrior." Three busloads from Oakland, California, arrived - "the real heroes in the fight for peace," said the announcer; the crowd cheered. A flautist fluted. Malcolm X's sister gave a rather simpleminded and incoherent speech about "barbarickisms." There were many speeches, but hardly anyone could hear them. It didn't matter much: they weren't for the crowd anyway; they were for the TV cameramen and wire services, whose electronic rigs were arrayed in a brilliant display of technology in the sun. Phil Ochs warbled a song declaring the war over, and Peter, Paul, and Mary sang about the Great Mandala. The music was the first key that something was wrong: it was surface, anachronistic. Those things belonged back in 1963, but not now. If anything, the main stage should have had something violent and angry, the Jefferson Airplane, or even the Fugs, who were elsewhere.
Foreword by William M. Kunstler
"What I like about these essays, which cover an array of highly significant topics from peace demonstrations in the 1960s to contemporary federal drug policies, is that the politics and theory seem to derive from what their author saw; with most observers, the politics and theory seem to control what they saw. The result is a rare measure of balance and clarity, a group of articles with remarkable currency. . . .
"We live in an age when an astonishing amount of claptrap is proffered as revealed knowledge by anyone with a word processor and a willing publisher. I find it delightfully refreshing to find so articulate an olio of intelligent and searching pieces that are as articulate as they are provocative. And, happily, Bruce Jackson has been blessed with the gift of laughter, which helps him deliver to us a remarkable sane vision of a world that all too often is more than a little mad."
William M. Kunstler,
from the Foreword
Excerpt
The action got going on the platform. The Bread and Puppet Theater parodied patriotic hymns, then performed a parable, "The Great Warrior." Three busloads from Oakland, California, arrived - "the real heroes in the fight for peace," said the announcer; the crowd cheered. A flautist fluted. Malcolm X's sister gave a rather simpleminded and incoherent speech about "barbarickisms." There were many speeches, but hardly anyone could hear them. It didn't matter much: they weren't for the crowd anyway; they were for the TV cameramen and wire services, whose electronic rigs were arrayed in a brilliant display of technology in the sun. Phil Ochs warbled a song declaring the war over, and Peter, Paul, and Mary sang about the Great Mandala. The music was the first key that something was wrong: it was surface, anachronistic. Those things belonged back in 1963, but not now. If anything, the main stage should have had something violent and angry, the Jefferson Airplane, or even the Fugs, who were elsewhere.
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
Disarmed and Dangerous: The Radical Life and Times of Daniel and Philip Berrigan
Brothers in Religious Faith and Civil Disobedience
By Murray Polner and Jim O'Grady
"Comprehensive and dramatically told."
-San Francisco Chronicle
"Conscientious research into many aspects of the Berrigans' lives ... assiduous interviewing of their colleagues in resistance and a finely etched portrait of their bleak youth in the Mesabi Iron Range of Minnesota."
-New York Times Book Review
"A remarkable new biography ... extensively researched and engagingly told."
-Philadelphia Inquirer
What transformed Daniel and Philip Berrigan from conventional Roman Catholic priests into "holy outlaws" - for a time the two most wanted men of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI? And how did they evolve from their traditionally pious, second-generation immigrant beginnings to become the most famous (some would say notorious) religious rebels of their day?
Disarmed and Dangerous, the first full-length unauthorized biography of the Berrigans, answers these questions with an incisive and illuminating account of their rise to prominence as civil rights and antiwar activists. It also traces the brothers' careers as constant thorns in the side of church authority as well as their leadership of the ongoing Plowshares movement - a highly controversial campaign of civil disobedience against the contemporary arms trade and nuclear weapons.
Murry Polner and Jim O'Grady provide a fascinating study of brothers linked by faith and the dreams of peace and social justice in a century bloodied by war, mass murders, and weapons of immense destructive power. It is, above all, an original contribution to modern American history that is sure to be widely read and discussed.
Murray Polner is an editor and author of No Victory Parades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran. He has written for the New York Times, The Nation, Commonweal, The Washington Monthly, and many other publications.
Jim O'Grady is a journalist and author of the biography Dorothy Day: With Love for the Poor .
Excerpt
...he received a three-year sentence in June 1967. At his court-martial Levy declared, very much in the spirit of the times, "It was just a prostitution of medicine. The medical art of healing was becoming the handmaiden of political objectives.") Also present were entertainers Country Joe and the Fish, Jerry Jeff Walker, Phil Ochs, Barbara Dane, and the Bread and Puppet Theater.
By Murray Polner and Jim O'Grady
"Comprehensive and dramatically told."
-San Francisco Chronicle
"Conscientious research into many aspects of the Berrigans' lives ... assiduous interviewing of their colleagues in resistance and a finely etched portrait of their bleak youth in the Mesabi Iron Range of Minnesota."
-New York Times Book Review
"A remarkable new biography ... extensively researched and engagingly told."
-Philadelphia Inquirer
What transformed Daniel and Philip Berrigan from conventional Roman Catholic priests into "holy outlaws" - for a time the two most wanted men of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI? And how did they evolve from their traditionally pious, second-generation immigrant beginnings to become the most famous (some would say notorious) religious rebels of their day?
Disarmed and Dangerous, the first full-length unauthorized biography of the Berrigans, answers these questions with an incisive and illuminating account of their rise to prominence as civil rights and antiwar activists. It also traces the brothers' careers as constant thorns in the side of church authority as well as their leadership of the ongoing Plowshares movement - a highly controversial campaign of civil disobedience against the contemporary arms trade and nuclear weapons.
Murry Polner and Jim O'Grady provide a fascinating study of brothers linked by faith and the dreams of peace and social justice in a century bloodied by war, mass murders, and weapons of immense destructive power. It is, above all, an original contribution to modern American history that is sure to be widely read and discussed.
Murray Polner is an editor and author of No Victory Parades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran. He has written for the New York Times, The Nation, Commonweal, The Washington Monthly, and many other publications.
Jim O'Grady is a journalist and author of the biography Dorothy Day: With Love for the Poor .
Excerpt
...he received a three-year sentence in June 1967. At his court-martial Levy declared, very much in the spirit of the times, "It was just a prostitution of medicine. The medical art of healing was becoming the handmaiden of political objectives.") Also present were entertainers Country Joe and the Fish, Jerry Jeff Walker, Phil Ochs, Barbara Dane, and the Bread and Puppet Theater.
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