YMMV / Phil Ochs

• Anvilicious: Ochs deliberately wrote in that style; he defined protest songs as "a song that's so specific that you cannot mistake it for bullshit."
• Broken Base: A minor case in that there's disagreement on whether "Crucifixion" is better with or without the avant-garde orchestral arrangement by Joseph Byrd. Ochs himself later admitted that he felt the arrangement was a failed experiment. The arranged version is available on Pleasures of the Harbor, while three different acoustic live performances are available on There and Now: Live in Vancouver 1968 (which was actually recorded in 1969), Chords of Fame and Farewells & Fantasies (from a 1970 concert at Carnegie Hall), and Sings for Broadside (believed to have been recorded in 1974 at Vassar College). Despite the disagreement on the Pleasures version of "Crucifixion" the album is generally considered one of his best and the song is also considered to be one of his best despite disagreement on which is the best version.
• Covered Up: Joan Baez's cover of Ochs' song, "There but for Fortune", became much more successful than the original. Ochs sometimes jokingly introduced the song as written for him by Baez.
• Crosses the Line Twice: "Outside Of A Small Circle Of Friends." Lyrics about murder, injustice and poverty... set to a cheery ragtime tune, all to make a point.
• Fridge Brilliance: "Love Me, I'm A Liberal" can also be interpreted as "Love Me, I'm Illiberal", or "narrow-minded or "intolerant", which summarizes the song as being about people who only support leftist ideals as long as it isn't personally inconvenient to them.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The verse about alcoholism in "There but for Fortune" becomes even sadder knowing that Ochs became an alcoholic himself:
    Show me the whiskey stains on the floor
    Show me a drunk as he stumbles out the door
    And I'll show you a young man with many reasons why
    There but for fortune, go you or I.
  • His stated desire to become a combination of Elvis Presley and Che Guevara. Both men died young, and Phil died younger than either of them.
• Signature Song: His anti-war song "I Ain't Marching Anymore".
  • Also, "The War Is Over."
• Unintentional Period Piece: The political and cultural references in "Love Me, I'm A Liberal" are clearly dated to the 1960s, so much so that cover versions (such as the one by Mojo Nixon and Jello Biafra) usually write new lyrics with contemporary references that themselves tend to become dated to the politics of the era they were written in.
• Values Resonance: Though it's incredibly dated, "Love Me, I'm a Liberal"'s indictment of the Bourgeois Bohemian Rule-Abiding Rebel is noted to still hold a lot of water today, with mainstram liberals' squabbles with progressives. Even covers that change the lyrics to fit modern social causes often leave "And I love Puerto Ricans and Negros/As long as they don't move next door" mostly unchanged, as redlining and NIMBY-ism remain very significant problems in wealthy liberal areas.

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