| Rehearsals for Retirement | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | May 16, 1969 | |||
| Recorded | 1968–69 | |||
| Studio | A&M Studios, Los Angeles | |||
| Genre | Folk rock | |||
| Length | 38:54 | |||
| Label | A&M | |||
| Producer | Larry Marks | |||
| Phil Ochs chronology | ||||
| ||||
Rehearsals for Retirement is Phil Ochs's sixth and final studio album, released in 1969 on A&M Records. Two compilation albums were released after it, in 1970 and 1986, the latter being released posthumously.
Recorded in the aftermath of Ochs's presence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago (where Ochs claimed to have witnessed the symbolic "death of America") it is often considered to be the darkest of Ochs's albums, exemplified not just by the lyrical matter but also by its cover: a tombstone sardonically proclaiming that Ochs had died in Chicago. [1]
Rehearsals for Retirement saw Ochs exploring folk rock, incorporating orchestral accompaniments and electric guitar into his music. [2] According to English studies scholar David Pichaske, songs such as "Pretty Smart on My Part" and "The Scorpion Departs but Never Returns" functioned as "art-protest songs". The former was written from the perspective of a John Birch Society member who is paranoid of switchblade-toting thieves, foreign operatives, dissident hitchhikers, and dominant, large-breasted women, and acts on this paranoia by killing them and others with a rifle and his friends from the National Rifle Association of America (NRA). Pichaske interpreted the narrative as a psychological analysis finding insecurity to be the source of violence in the United States. The latter song used the 1968 disappearance of the Scorpion nuclear submarine as an allegory for a modern "Lost Generation" who abandon the U.S. in response to the Vietnam War. [3]
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [4] |
| The Village Voice | B [5] |
Rehearsals for Retirement was the poorest-selling of all of Ochs's albums released during his lifetime,[ citation needed ] having been deleted from the A&M Records catalog before sales of 20,000 units had occurred.
Reviewing for The Village Voice in 1969, Robert Christgau said the musical arrangements are "excellent and work for [Ochs'] voice". While observing "some predictable bummers", Christgau highlighted two flashes of greatness with "The Scorpion Departs But Never Returns" and "Another Age". [5]
In 1998, The Wire included Rehearsals for Retirement in their list of "100 Records That Set the World on Fire (While No One Was Listening)", where the staff praised it "the single most eloquent collection of protest songs in the English language." They further described it as a song cycle where "the political gives way to the existential", with a combination of "angry disillusion and impassioned optimism" that is "entirely disarming." [6] William Ruhlmann, in a retrospective review for AllMusic, felt the album imbued Ochs' poetic sense with "the conflicts of the times", and noted how, with regard to Ochs' 1976 suicide, "it is impossible not to see the evidence of the songwriter's personal anguish in Rehearsals for Retirement. [4]
All songs by Phil Ochs.
Philip David Ochs was an American songwriter and protest singer. Ochs was known for his sharp wit, sardonic humor, political activism, often alliterative lyrics, and distinctive voice. He wrote hundreds of songs from the 1960s to early 1970s and released eight albums.
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Gunfight At Carnegie Hall is the final album by Phil Ochs released during his lifetime, comprising songs recorded at the infamous, gold-suited, bomb-threat shortened first show at Carnegie Hall in New York City on March 27, 1970, though it contains less than half of the actual concert. The shows recorded that day served to surprise Ochs' fans, from his gold lamé Nudie suit, modeled after Elvis Presley's, to his covers of Presley, Conway Twitty, Buddy Holly and Merle Haggard songs, to his own re-arranged songs. Some fans loved it, but some attendees at the show were unhappy with the music he was playing, wanting only to hear "old" Ochs. Before he had a chance to convince them, the concert was cut short by a telephoned bomb threat.
Greatest Hits is Phil Ochs' seventh album and final studio album released in his lifetime, released in 1970 on A&M Records. Contrary to its title, it offered ten new tracks of material, mostly produced by Van Dyke Parks.
Pleasures of the Harbor is Phil Ochs' fourth full-length album and his first for A&M Records, released in 1967. It is one of Ochs's most somber albums. In stark contrast to his three albums for Elektra Records which had all been folk music, Pleasures of the Harbor featured traces of classical, rock and roll, Dixieland jazz and experimental synthesized music crossing with folk, in hopes of producing a "folk-pop" crossover.
Cross My Heart: An Introduction to Phil Ochs is a British best-of compilation of the U.S. folk singer's A&M recordings. The CD features three tracks each from Pleasures of the Harbor, Tape from California, and Rehearsals for Retirement as well as two from Greatest Hits and one from Gunfight at Carnegie Hall, with the thirteenth track the B-side to his 1973 Africa-only single, "Niko Mchumba Ngobe". Overall, this is a more diverse collection than 2002's 20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection: The Best of Phil Ochs, which tips the balance more heavily toward Pleasures of the Harbor.
The War Is Over: The Best of Phil Ochs is a 1988 compilation album of Phil Ochs' works on A&M Records recorded between 1967 and 1970. With varying amounts of tracks from the albums, between two and five, from each album except Gunfight At Carnegie Hall, it paints a portrait of Ochs' later works that does not emphasize his folk songs, instead presenting the more introspective and/or experimental tracks. It did feature a live version of "I Ain't Marching Anymore" later reissued as a part of the 1991 album that presented the entire concert from which it was culled, There And Now: Live in Vancouver 1968.
There and Now: Live in Vancouver 1968 [sic] was a 1990 archival release of a concert by Phil Ochs in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, at the PNE Garden Auditorium on Thursday, March 13, 1969. Performing solo with guitar, Ochs was worn, weary and despairing in the aftermath of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Ochs presents some of his older material, such as "There But For Fortune," "Changes" and "The Highwayman," alongside then-new songs from the as-yet-unreleased Rehearsals for Retirement such as "The Doll House" and "William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed." The album thus documents two eras of Ochs in one seventy-minute show.
American Troubadour is a 1997 British 2-CD set that presented a portrait of singer-songwriter Phil Ochs' later career, featuring selections from each of the five albums he recorded for A&M Records, from various non-album single sides and from a performance Ochs gave on March 13, 1969, in Vancouver, British Columbia. It is notable for the inclusion of Ochs' post-1970 single sides, otherwise unavailable on compact disc and for the inclusion of a cover of Chuck Berry's "School Days", a previously unavailable outtake from Ochs' infamous March 27, 1970, concert at Carnegie Hall.
Farewells & Fantasies is the 1997 posthumous box set of the work of singer/songwriter Phil Ochs, chronicling his life and career in music from 1964 through 1970. With its non-chronological running order, it plays like three separate albums, each showcasing a different side of Ochs. The compilation was produced by Gary Stewart, Michael Ochs and Meegan Lee Ochs. Liner notes include a foreword by Meegan Lee Ochs, "The Sound of Freedom Callin'" by Michael Ventura and "Song of a Soldier: The Life and Times of Phil Ochs" by Mark Kemp, track-by-track explanations by Ben Edmonds, discography, selected bibliography, and many photographs, some of which are from the family's private collections. The box set is dedicated to a friend, co-writer, and inspiration to Phil Ochs, Bob Gibson, who died while the box set was in production. Its title comes from the back of Ochs' LP Tape from California.
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