(2020) Martyn Joseph – Days of Decision: A Tribute to Phil Ochs



Review:
In 1993, while touring America supporting Clannad, a Boston Globe review of a Massachusetts gig likened Martyn Joseph to the late Phil Ochs. At the time, he’d never heard of him before, but, intrigued, he sought out his music and found himself captivated. Twenty years after the concert, he met Ochs’ sister, Sonny, and encouraged by her, he subsequently resolved to record an album of his songs. It’s taken a while to come to fruition and was preceded by his Springsteen covers collection, Tires Rushing By in the Rain, but, featuring a sleeve note endorsement from Sonny, it arrives as a completely solo 14 song set that mixes some of Ochs’ best-known numbers with more obscure material. It opens with one of the former, I Ain’t Marching Anymore, the fiercely strummed angry title track from his 1965 album protesting the Vietnam War sung in the person of weary soldier who’s been part of all conflicts throughout American military history since 1812 with a chorus that notes how “it’s always the old to lead us to the war, always the young to fall.” The same album is the source for three further selections,  Days of Decision, essentially Ochs’ Times They Are A Changin’, with its lines about how “Dark is the danger that’s knocking on the door/And the far-reaching rockets say you can’t wait anymore”, and That Was The President, written in the wake of JFK’s assassination (an earlier, lyrically different draft was sent to Jackie Kennedy), Joseph’s gruffer voiced version even more stained with emotional despair than Ochs’ reedier original. Interestingly, in the time of benefit cuts, unemployment, food banks and homelessness, he’s also chosen to include the bluesy rag That’s What I Want To Hear, a somewhat politically naive song Ochs wrote urging the jobless to stop whining and rise up from victim mentality and refuse to be oppressed in the chorus lines “Now don’t tell me your troubles,/No, I don’t have the time to spare./But if you want to get together and fight./Good buddy that’s what I want to hear.” Ochs released seven studio albums in his all too short career, albeit his third was misleadingly titled In Concert, the ‘live’ audience reactions in many cases dubbed on to the studio recordings and spoken introductions. It is, however, regarded by many as his finest hour and from it comes five numbers, the first up being  I’m Gonna Say It Now, another protest song, centred around the clash between the college establishment and the radical student body (“Oh I am just a student, sir, and only want to learn/But it’s hard to read through the risin’ smoke from the books that you like to burn”). Then there’s the prescient When I’m Gone, about the need to make a stand while you can, and Cannons of Christianity’s attack on the hypocrisy of the church, while There But for Fortune is arguably his best-known song, albeit via Joan Baez’s cover, the reading here starker and rawer than either. The fifth is another much-covered song (my favourite being by Crispian St Peters), Changes, a bittersweet ballad about love, loss and the passing of time. Ochs released his first album, All the News That’s Fit to Sing, in 1964 and it’s represented by three numbers, two about real-life figures. Joseph using his guitar as percussion, the walking rhythm Lou Marsh recounts the story of the titular social worker and former Yale Divinity School student who died trying to prevent a gang war in Harlem while the lightly fingerpicked The Ballad of William Worthy concerns the African-American journalist and civil rights activist who, in defiance of  State Department restrictions,  travelled to Cuba to report on the Cuban revolution, and, upon his return, was convicted for “returning to the United States without a valid passport. The third is Knock On the Door, the chilling account of persecution, from Ancient Rome to the Nazis, the Russians and the tyrants of the modern age, a reminder that “the banners have changed but the knock is the same.” Although 45 seconds shorter than the six-minute original, Flower Lady, as featured on the fourth album, Pleasures of the Harbour, offers anecdotes about various  New York characters, all having in common that they ignore the woman trying to sell her flowers. Today it would be Big Issue sellers. The album’s final track is the crusading troubadours’ lament Song of My Returning  (“I’ve got to challenge every chalice that I know/My eager ears are listening for the singing of the sign”) which, written while travelling in Wales, clearly resonates with Joseph, the song itself recorded in the mid-60s but only posthumously released on the 1986 compilation, A Toast To Those Who Are Gone. While there’s nothing from Greatest Hits, most notably neither Jim Dean of Indiana or the stunning Chords of Fame, it’s hard to quibble given the passion that clearly informs the album, so many of the songs and sentiments echoing the humanistic and political convictions of Joseph’s own material, so many of the issues Ochs protested still rife today.  There are, undoubtedly, many out there who, like Joseph back in 1973, remain ignorant of Phil Ochs and for whom, as the notes say, this will afford a nudge forward. That it also happens to be one of Joseph’s finest albums is an added bonus. — folkradio.co.uk



Track Listing:
1.I Ain't Marching Anymore 02:21
2.I'm Gonna Say It Now 02:51
3.Days Of Decision 03:30
4.The Ballad Of William Worthy 02:20
5.Flower Lady 05:15
6.Knock On The Door 02:36
7.That Was The President 03:31
8.Lou Marsh 04:19
9.There But For Fortune 02:52
10.That's What I Want To Hear 03:23
11.Cannons Of Christianity 04:23
12.Changes 04:08
13.When I'm Gone 02:36
14.Song Of My Returning 04:51


Media Report:
Genre: folk, tribute
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits