Phil Ochs Last Recording

00:00 Cross My Heart - Originally on Pleasures of the Harbor. The irony of Phil’s opening with this is not missed.

02:53 Boy In Ohio - Originally on Greatest Hits.

06:14 The Ballad of Train - Unreleased. Don’t know what Phil wanted to call this. We called it Train

07:48 Bells - From All the News that’s Fit to Sing

11:15 Alone - Unreleased. Agonizingly honest

13:25 Street Soldier - Unreleased. Just a great Ochs song.
I may not look like much but I owned the world and I gave it all away Now I’m am actor on the street and I do it for no pay

16:29 Che - Unreleased. Many a robber is seen here after a day at the bank

17:45 You’re Fired - Unreleased.

18:45 Changes - Originally on Phil Ochs in Concert

20:55 Power and the Glory - This should be the theme song of ’76

This recording took place Christmas Eve 1975 at my apartment in Soho that I shared with Larry “Ratso” Sloman and Phil when he felt like it. Phil picked up a guitar and started to sing and I decided to record it. For the time being it seemed that Phil’s psychotic episodes during the dog days of the summer of ’75 had reached a zenith at Gerde’s in October and with Che, and Phil had now moved to a different and calmer place on the bipolar spectrum. He had not been drinking and had been writing obsessively. He was planning an album that would be an unflinching narrative of his psychosis over the past year and had at least ten songs in various states. Five of those songs are represented here. The working title for the album was Duel In The Sun. Soon after the New Year Phil started to come around less until he eventually moved in with his sister Sonny in Far Rockaway. We would talk on the phone but I would never see him again.
This is dedicated to Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Mike Porco; three of the best friends Phil ever had and to Sonny Ochs for keeping Phil’s music alive all these years.