General Chat

If I can just be a complete downer now in my Phil Ochs wallowing ... this one reduces me to tears every time I hear it.


Artist: Ochs Phil
Song: When I'm Gone
Album: There But for Fortune

There's no place in this world where I'll belong when I'm gone
And I won't know the right from the wrong when I'm gone
And you won't find me singin' on this song when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here

And I won't feel the flowing of the time when I'm gone
All the pleasures of love will not be mine when I'm gone
My pen won't pour out a lyric line when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here

And I won't breathe the bracing air when I'm gone
And I can't even worry 'bout my cares when I'm gone
Won't be asked to do my share when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here

And I won't be running from the rain when I'm gone
And I can't even suffer from the pain when I'm gone
Can't say who's to praise and who's to blame when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here

Won't see the golden of the sun when I'm gone
And the evenings and the mornings will be one when I'm gone
Can't be singing louder than the guns when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here

All my days won't be dances of delight when I'm gone
And the sands will be shifting from my sight when I'm gone
Can't add my name into the fight while I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here

And I won't be laughing at the lies when I'm gone
And I can't question how or when or why when I'm gone
Can't live proud enough to die when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here

Kathryn B,
excuse my ignorance, would I be able to purchase that album over here, I really like those words.
I think I may have heard them before being sung somewhere....
My daughter ( who did music at Uni) writes some good lyrics, but she is side tracked at the moment doing some other stuff.
cmdx

Kathryn, have just come back from getting some food and seen what you have wriiten about Phil Ochs......my deepest, and sincere, sympathy to you....

Rose xx

Kathryn B,
I have just had a quick look at him on google,
He was a handsome chappy. I will look more at that later,
I had never heard of him, so thanks for sharing your comments with me.....
Kindest regards, and sincere sympathy.
cmdxx

Phil Ochs, There But for Fortune Lyrics

Show me a prison, show me a jail
Show me a pris'ner whose face has grown pale

And I'll show you a young man
With many reasons why
There but for fortune, go you or I

Show me an alley, show me a train
Show me a hobo who sleeps out in the rain

And I'll show you a young man
With many reasons why
There but for fortune, go you or I

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

Show me a country where the bombs had to fall
Show me the ruins of buildings so tall

And I'll show you a young land
With many reasons why
There but for fortune, go you or I
You or I

There But For Fortune -- the name of the album.

I actually don't think The Highwayman is on the original album, but it's on the reissued compilation with that title, I've just seen.

http://www1.epinions.com/content_406749154948
(Someone else with a Phil Ochs / Highwayman youthful memory)

I'm not deserving of all these condolences, and I hope I haven't misled! My only personal contact with old Phil was that night in the coffeehouse, when we exchanged nothing but the gaze. ;)

And having lived for the worst part of three years with an alcoholic two decades later ... it's probably just as well I stayed in my seat that night.

Dear Kathryn,
Dont worry I am not misled, I have learned some good stuff of this thread tonight..
I am satisfied if I end each day more informed than I started it.....
Goodnight and God bless
cmd

Oh, Dead Phil wallowing.

Just search for Phil Ochs someplace like amazon. I'm not sure which There But For Fortune is listed at amazon.co.uk. A music store should be able to advise as to what is on which album, though, and order the right one.

My own favourite is Pleasures of the Harbour ... because some years before seeing Phil in the plesh, I was at the back of a chartered bus coming home from a Young Socialist meeting in Monteal, and a lovely young man (who also turned out to be an alcoholic, at the tender age of 16, a year younger than I was) took my last 50 cents to buy cigarettes and came back with a pack of Gitanes ... yeeecccch ... and then played his guitar and sang songs from Pleasures of the Harbour to me all the way home ... It's actually one of the least political, but most poetic, of his records.

To complete the highjacking of the thread -- although some of Phil's oeuvre is kinda relevant to genealogy hounds -- here he is in a Victorian mood:


Millionaires and paupers walk the hungry streets
Rich and poor companions of the restless beat
Strangers in a foreign land
Strike a match with trembling hand
Learn too much to ever understand
But nobodys buying flowers from the flower lady

Lovers quarrel, snarl away their happiness
Kisses crumble in a web of lonliness
Its written by the poison pen
Voices break before they bend
The door is slammed
Its over, once again
But nobodys buying flowers from the flower lady

Poets agonize, they cannot find the words
And the stone stares at the sculptor asks are you absurd?
The painter paints his brushes back
Through the canvas runs a crack
Portrait of the pain never answers back
But nobodys buying flowers from the flower lady

Soldiers, disillusioned, come home from the war
Sarcastic students tell them not to fight no more
And they argue through the night
Black is black and white is white
Walk away both knowing they are right
But nobodys buying flowers from the flower lady

Smoke dreams of escaping souls are drifting by
Dull the pain of living as they slowly die
Smiles change into a sneer
Washed away by whiskey tears
In the quicksand of their mind they disappear
Still nobodys buying flowers from the flower lady

Feeble, aged, people almost to their knees
Complain about the present using memories
Never found their pot of gold
Wrinkled hands pound weary holes
Each line screams out youre old, youre old, youre old
But nobodys buying flowers from the flower lady

And the flower lady hobbles home without a sale
Tattered shreds of petals leave a fading trail
Not a pause to hold a rose
Even she no longer knows
The lamp goes out the evening now is closed
And nobodys buying flowers from the flower lady

Kathryn...arguably the saddest words..."What might have been".......

the move not made, the words not uttered....

Aha.

http://www.neilrollinson.com/

;)

I'm afraid his poetry is one of those things that people will have to go read for themselves, as reproducing it here could offend anyone with an aversion to certain words! Very evocative, what I read.

Rather ashamed to say, for one plainly so hip as I: I tend to like my poetry old. My Phil excesses notwithstanding. ;)

Ah, Rose -- but if we had made that move and uttered those words, the others, the ones we did make and we did utter, would have become the move not made and the words not uttered! ;)

But nonetheless, the "what if" of that night in the coffeehouse will follow me to my own grave, for sure. And it's probably an "if only" more than a "what if", no matter how badly reason says it would have turned out.

When my gramma died about 12 years ago, at 94, my mother and I were standing in my grampa's workroom in the basement that was mostly as he had left it 15 years earlier, and for some reason gramma's old photo album was there. On one page of pictures from about 1918, a space was empty -- the corner thingies were there, but no picture. We wondered what it had been a photo of.

The next day, we were sorting through gramma's bedroom. At the bottom of the bottom drawer in her night table, under some other stuff, we found the picture. It was her as a teenager, sitting on a fallen log with a young man we didn't recognize.

Don't know how long it had been since she took the photo out of the album and put it there, how long it had been since she looked at it, and what she was thinking when she did. Never will.

A personal favorite of mine;

To Althea, from Prison


When love with unconfined wings
Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at the grates;
When I lie tangled in her hair,
And fettered to her eye,
The birds that wanton in the air
Know no such liberty.

When flowing cups run swiftly round
With no allaying Thames,
Our careless heads with roses bound,
Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,
When healths and draughts go free,
Fishes that tipple in the deep
Know no such liberty.

When, like committed linnets, I
With shriller throat shall sing
The sweetness, mercy, majesty,
And glories of my King;
When I shall voice aloud how good
He is, how great should be,
Enlarged winds that curl the flood
Know no such liberty.

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.



by Richard Lovelace

lol Kathryn very true....I have wondered over the years if the words unspoken (or not spoken at the right time) would have made a big difference in the long run....

maybe like your grandmother we all have a 'photo hidden' that no one else will ever know the truth about.....

Here is one of my favourites......I used to go twice a day every day to our local farm and work in the open in all weathers......and in winter, when I had to break the ice on the horse troughs, and the old farmhouse, I could almost imagine myself in those times......and I always thought of this poem....



WHEN icicles hang by the wall
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail;
When blood is nipt, and ways be foul, 5
Then nightly sings the staring owl
Tu-whoo!
Tu-whit! tu-whoo! A merry note!
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all around the wind doth blow, 10
And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian's nose looks red and raw;
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl—
Then nightly sings the staring owl 15
Tu-whoo!
Tu-whit! tu-whoo! A merry note!
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.


....

This one is a bit long, but it means a lot to me......it is one of four by Alexander Anderson, a poet from the little mining village of Kirkconnel where my Mum was born......I have a book of his poetry which belonged to my grandfather and which he would read to his children from........this is the first and called Cuddle Doon, my Mum would recite them by heart, and my Sis and I put the words, Cuddle Doon on her headstone.......


on

by Alexander Anderson

The bairnies cuddle doon at nicht
Wi muckle faught and din.
"Oh try an' sleep, ye waukrife rogues,
Your faither's comin' in."
They niver heed a word I speak,
I try tae gie a froon,
But aye I hap' them up an' cry
"Oh, bairnies, cuddle doon!"

Wee Jamie wi' the curly heid,
He aye sleeps next the wa'
Bangs up and cries, "I want a piece!"
The rascal starts them a'.
I rin and fetch them pieces, drinks,
They stop a wee the soun',
Then draw the blankets up an' cry,
"Noo, weanies, cuddle doon."

But ere five minutes gang, wee Rab
Cries oot frae neath the claes,
"Mither, mak' Tam gie ower at aince,
He's kittlin' wi' his taes."
The mischief in that Tam for tricks,
He'd bother half the toon,
But aye I hap them up an' cry,
"Oh, bairnies, cuddle doon!"

At length they hear their faither's fit
An' as he steeks the door,
They turn their faces tae the wa'
An Tam pretends tae snore.
"Hae a' the weans been gude?" he asks,
As he pits aff his shoon.
"The bairnies, John, are in their beds
An' lang since cuddled doon!"

An' just afore we bed oorsel's
We look at oor wee lambs,
Tam has his airm roun' wee Rab's neck
An Rab his airm roun' Tam's.
I lift wee Jamie up the bed
An' as I straik each croon,
I whisper till my heart fills up:
"Oh, bairnies, cuddle doon!"

The bairnies cuddle doon at nicht
Wi' mirth that's dear tae me.
But soon the big warl's cark an' care
Will quaten doon their glee.
Yet come what will to ilka ane,
May He who rules aboon,
Aye whisper, though their pows be bald:
"Oh, bairnies, cuddle doon!"

And now for one of my favourites....so sad.


WAIT FOR ME.
by Konstantin Simonov

Wait for me, and I'll return
Only wait very hard.
Wait when you are filled with sorrow
Wait in the sweltering heat,
Wait when the others have stopped waiting,
Forgetting their yesterdays.

Wait even when from afar no letters come to you,
Wait even when others are tired of waiting...
And when friends sit around the fire
Drinking to my memory,
Wait, and do not hurry to drink to my memory too.

Wait. For I'll return, defying every death.
And let those who did not wait say that I was lucky.
They will never understand that in the midst of death
You with your waiting saved me.
Only you and I know how I survived.
It's because you waited, as no one else did.

All lovely. Especially the more Lovelace, one I like too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lovelace

"... On April 30, 1642, on behalf of Royalists in Kent, he presented to Parliament a petition asking them to restore the Anglican bishops to the Long Parliament; he was immediately imprisoned in Westminster Gatehouse. During his sentence, he wrote 'To Althea, From Prison.' ..."

Of course, that runs in my veins. If my weird gr-grfather really was a Monck, one of my ancestors restored the monarchy. ;)


Simonov I didn't know, but Wiki does:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Simonov

Konstantin Simonov ... (28 November 1915 in Petrograd - August 28, 1979 in Moscow) was a Soviet/Russian author. His full name was Konstantin (born Kirill) Mikhailovich Simonov. He was a well-known war poet who wrote a popular poem called "Wait for me", about a soldier in the war asking his beloved to wait for his return. The poem was addressed to his wife, the actress Valentina Serova. It was immensely popular at the time and remains one of the best-known poems in the Russian language."


What people in the Soviet Union endured in WWII ... I have always been depressed by the idea of all the millions of women left "spare" by the millions of men who died, and were left with a life of sweeping streets and then, when they were very old and capitalism, er, freedom came, selling their shoes on those streets to survive.

Sally, that gravestone inscription is so sweet and touching.

I may have to rethink what what I have planned for mine.

"You are here."

But hey, I think Dead Phil would approve. ;)

After John McCarthy was taken hostage in the late 1980's he was imprisoned in the Lebanon for almost 5 years. During that time, against all the odds, a postcard was delivered to him one day. It was from a woman in England. On the postcard was written Konstantin Simonov's poem.

Is that what they mean by fate?

K

Thanks Kathryn, she was such a lovely Mum.......

No headstone for me, I am to be scattered......on a muckheap perhaps.....lol.....