Phil Ochs – Gunfight At Carnegie Hall

The cover is a super unique texture, almost like house paint?

I don’t know if this is better than my MSFL CD, but I certainly put it on more often. It has a very charming sound profile.

By far my favorite live recording of Phil Ochs. Hearing his banter with the crowd and introducing his songs is amazing and he plays songs you never hear or expect to hear from him. Definitely recommend to any Ochs fans.

It's hard to describe "Gunfight At Carnegie Hall" - it's a one of a kind live document that also happened to be the last LP of Phil's released in his lifetime (and only in Canada, several years after the concerts took place). Much has been written on the concerts, so I won't go into too much details (I recommend Michael Schumacher's excellent biography on Ochs, "There But For Fortune", as it covers this event and a lot more.), but needless to say, I would of killed to have been at the two shows. I'm not quite sure which tracks were taken from the 1st show and 2nd show (the 1st show was cut short, while the second show went 4+ hours in to the wee hours of the morning).

Phil shocked a lot of people that night. All his fans came expecting typical Phil Ochs, the man who wrote "I Ain't Marching Anymore" and "Draft Dodger Rag". Instead they got gold lamae suit Phil Ochs, doing a mix of 1950's rock 'n' roll songs and his songs from the 1960's. Many fans were outraged, and while some sense of this comes across on the album, one has to remember that this LP was cobbled together from tapes from both shows, so it's a disjointed set of recordings (tapes do exists of both entire shows, and circulate in the "underground" community.)

Besides the songs (which Phil does a good job on, considering he was drinking during the sets), the other great thing about the album is the between song dialog (there was a LOT more of it that didn't make it to the album). Perhaps my favorite moment is when, after Phil gives a speech about the troubles of wearing the gold suit and compares it to living in America then, one audience members yells out "STRIP!". Phil gracefully declines, stating "No, no I could never do that, for that would be cheap".

The other non-musical highlight comes in the last 10+ minute Elvis medley, when Carnegie Hall decided to shut the power after the second show had gone on for several hours. I don't want to give too much away (one has to hear it to get the full joy), but let's just say Phil got the audience (and his band) to protest and yell "WE WANT POWER!" over and over until it eventually came back.

Besides the long HTF Canadian LP, and the expensive MFSL CD, thankfully Collectors' Choice released this on CD as a two-fer with "Rehearsals for Retirement". If you want a copy cheap, I recommend picking that up.