h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Being a teen and young adult in the late 60s and early 70s was a heady experience. I suppose because I grew up Unitarian, I was exposed to a rather more liberal view of the world than many of my peers.

Although I live(d) in Canada, were were accutely aware of the turmoil in the US over Civil Rights, the Vietnam War, and the social revolution. Canada was sanctuary for draft-dodgers and Canadians engaged in almost as vigrous debate about what was going on in the US as Americans did.

I attended my share of protest rallies, sit-ins, and strikes. I was about as passionate about Peace, freedom, and human rights at age 15, 16, 17.... as I am at nearly age 50 (crikey....nearly 50!?). I listened to a LOT of folk and protest music, and frequented Le Hibou, the local coffee house that had seen Bob Dylan, Bruce Cockburn, Leonard Cohen, and Joan Baez at various times in its day.

One of the voices I listened to was Phill Ochs. While I can't claim to have seen him in person, I certainly was aware of him and his music. He was one of the movers and shakers in the world of protest and protest music.

This week, a friend loaned me a copy of the 3-CD set "Farewells and Fantasies". All week, I have been listening over and over to familliar and unfamilliar tunes of protest. http://www.cs.pdx.edu/~trent/ochs/collection.html

What particularily stuck me was how timely a lot of the songs are, given the present circumstances with Iraq and the attitudes of some Americans to not only the criticism from other countries, but criticism from coming fellow Americans of American foreign policy, Iraq, and a multitude of other related issues.

Ochs' songs fall into a number of catagories, some of them several catagories at once. Anti-War and Peace, anti-intervention, Civil Rights, Anti-poverty, Anti-pollution (what we now term "environmental issues"), and Women's Liberation and equality are some of the major groupings.

Some of my favorites are "Cops of the World" which is particularily timely. Freedom whether you want it or not....

"When we butchered your son, boys
When we butchered your son
Have a stick of our gum, boys
Have a stick of our bubble-gum
We own half the world, oh say can you see
The name for our profits is democracy
So, like it or not, you will have to be free
'Cause we're the Cops of the World, boys
We're the Cops of the World"

"The Power and the Glory" expresses his love for America, but his how the beauty and power of America is nothing if its people aren't free.

"Yet she's only as rich as the poorest of her poor
Only as free as the padlocked prison door
Only as strong as our love for this land
Only as tall as we stand

(extra verse supplied by Sonny Ochs [Phil's sister])

But our land is still troubled by men who have to hate
They twist away our freedom & they twist away our fate
Fear is their weapon and treason is their cry
We can stop them if we try"


"The Sad and Silent Song of a Soldier": Whether the cause was right or wrong, a dead soldier is just as dead...

"Now a moment of silence for the broken man,
While the president proudly crows "we'll never bend",
And cheers their replacements marching off again,
That's the sad and silent song of a soldier.

And the flag draped coffins are a sailin' home,
And the waves are a watchin' as the engines drone,
As the ship draws near, hear the bugle moan
The sad and silent song of a soldier."


Ochs' arrest in Chicago with those who would later be called thee "Chicago Seven" was the likely inspiration for the following song about arrest and torture at the hands of the police.

"There's nothing as cold as the freeze in your soul at the moment when you are arrested.
There's nothing as real as the iron and steel on the handcuffs when you protested.
You race through the night in the prison of fright as you head for the quicksand of questions.
And children unborn will see you in scorn if ever you make a confession."

"Love Me, I'm a Liberal" is about the NIMBY Liberal who is all for integration except in his schools, and free-speech unless he disagrees with it.

"I vote for the democtratic party
They want the U.N. to be strong
I go to all the Pete Seeger concerts
He sure gets me singing those songs
I'll send all the money you ask for
But don't ask me to come on along
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

Once I was young and impulsive
I wore every conceivable pin
Even went to the socialist meetings
Learned all the old union hymns
But I've grown older and wiser
And that's why I'm turning you in
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal."

And this song about the loss of words (during the last years of his life, Phil Ochs suffered from writer's block), his own disillusionment, and the complacency of society.

"Once I knew a sage/saint(?)
who sang upon the stage
He told about the world,
His lover.
A ghost without a name,
Stands ragged in the rain.
And it seems that there are no more songs.....

Hello, hello, hello
Is there anybody home?
I've only called to say
I'm sorry.
The drums are in the dawn,
and all the voices gone.
And it seems that there are no more songs.

It seems that there are no more songs.
It seems that there are no more songs."

As mentioned earlier, Phil arrested with the "Chicago Seven" -- Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, Tom Hayden (Mr. Jane Fonda), John Froines, Lee Weiner, and Bobby Seale. He was one of the founders of the Youth International Party, better known as the Yippies.

Ochs was called to testify during the trials. A transcript of his testimony can be found here. Be sure to read about the pig... http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/Chicago7/ochs.html

ABBIE HOFFMAN: Are you asking if I had those thoughts or if I wrote that I had those thoughts? There's a difference.

RICHARD G. SCHULTZ, THE ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY: It's a convenient difference, isn't it Mr. Hoffman?

ABBIE HOFFMAN: I don't know what you mean. I've never been on trial for my thoughts before.

""Conspiracy? Hell, we couldn't agree on lunch." -- Abbie Hoffman"

""Gentlemen, let's get something straight. The police aren't in the streets to create disorder; they are in the streets to preserve disorder." -- Mayor Richard Daley"

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/Chicago7/chicago7.html

love the Abbie Hoffman quote - its the main reason I am a believer in the overwhelming power of human stupidy and coincidence rather than attributing much of the worlds misery to a massive conspiriacy.

I'm still a few years shy of 40, but love the protest music of the 60's especially Phil Ochs. I think the end of the vietnam war took away his crusade and a crusader without a crusader is a sad, sad thing. I think that is what led to his untimely death.

Some favorite Ochs tunes:
Draft Dodger Rag (Sarge, I'm only 18, I got a ruptured spleen and I always carry a purse, I got eyes like a bat and my feet are flat and my athsma's getting worse...)
Guess I'll have to do it while I'm here
Mississippi (Here's to the country you've torn out the heart of, Mississippi find another country to be part of - I used to sing an anti-tory version called Mulroney)

Well, today I was walking past a used CD shop near work and popped in. Right off the bat I found a Phil Ochs title, "All the News That's Fit to Sing".

I listened to it in the car on the way home from work. As I said in what I wrote last night (actually, this morning) much of the message is as timely today as it was when he was writing and singing it. That in itself is a terrible fact. Many of the countries would have to be replaced with others, some of them not.

I found it very sad, too, that he was so disillusioned with "the movement". Sadly, many of the generation either drifted off and became the very people, supporting the very ideals that they had fought against so hard. Either that our they became bitter and disillusioned.

I was heartened to hear that in 1998, David Dellinger one of the Chicago Seven was arrested protesting a nuclear reactor... at age 83.

Abbie Hoffman committed suicide in 1989. Like Ochs, he was bi-polar, and suffered bouts of clinical depression (why do they call it clinical? Seems to me that depression is depression and whether "clinical" or not, is a terrible thing to have).