Phil Ochs concert

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32975, 22 July 1972, Page 16

Phil Ochs concert

The air of informality and casual conversational attitude of the performers established a strong rapport with a predomoninantly student audience at the concert by Phil Ochs, a folk singer, and Ron Cobb, a cartoonist, and students at the Ngaio Marsh Theatre last evening. Fresh from a similar tour of Australia, the two Americans most readily communicated on a variety of topics, ranging from the war in Vietnam to the underground press. Phil Ochs is an accomplished, original song writer with several commercially successful songs—such as “There But For Fortune” and “Changes”—to his credit. Stripped of the saccharine treatment of the betterknown performers of his music, Ochs’s songs reveal the poetic qualities of the lyrics, and it was refreshing to experience the composer’s simple effective presentation.

Ochs has consistently been ahead of the prevailing opinion of his generation as his sample of his “songs of my youth” showed. His weapons are ridicule contrasted with a bitted irony, and the results best exemplified by “Revolution” and “White Boots Marching on a Yellow Land.” The audience demanded two encores, leaving no doubt as to its approval of Ochs’s music and his ideals. Cobb is a free-lance cartoonist who works for the underground press in the United States, and in New Zealand, “hopefully.” Slides showing his work were accompanied by comments from Cobb, outlining the progress of such underground papers as the “Los Angeles Free Press” (circulation, six copies). The concert was opened by a trio playing old-time strrig band music and Bluegrass. Although this genre is fundamentally performers’ music, the overwhelming good humour was infectious and the music was well received.

Paula, John, and Paul sang several excellent songs, the best of which was a piece specially written for the occasion, “Pure Love’s Gonna Change Hie World,” a gentle but most effective song about Bangladesh. The proceeds of the concert, oraganised by the New Zealand Universities Arts Council, will go to the aid of Bangladesh. —H.C.