Cops of the World - Phil Ochs
This put me back onto Youtube and a short nostalgic trip through several of Phil's songs. Then I discovered the 1983 film, done for British TV's Channel 4 entitled "Chords of Fame." It's a documentary in four parts about Ochs, his music, career and death by his own hand in 1976.
Chords of Fame - Phil Ochs
It is mostly a documentary, with pictures and film clips, interviews with people who knew Ochs and a performance of some of his music by a young actor/singer named Bill Burnett. Several critics at the time said that the use of an actor to portray Ochs diminished the film. Perhaps. It is, for me, a powerful evocation of a time when I was involved in both the fringes of the folk movement, radical politics and, less fringe-y, the US Army.
I can frequently forget those days for long periods of time, but then, something will dredge up a memory and it all comes cascading back, often accompanied by tears for all that we've lost and the people no longer with us.
So many of the poeple interviewed in the film are gone, now. We lost Dave Van Ronk in 2002; Odetta left us in 2008; and Mike Porco, the Sicilian grandfather Bob Dylan never had, the creator of Gerde's Folk City, died just short of 95 in 2010. The times have changed. Even back in 1983 much had gone the way of so many things.
The Gaslight, once a basket house, then a paying gig for folk singers who had risen a bit above the crowd, closed in 1971 and in '83, according to one of those interviewed in the film, had become "an Arab restaurant."
A brief side note - I met Odetta for the first time with Tex Konig in the Dug Out, a one-step down bar on Bleecker Street, just up the street from "The Tin Angel" made famous in the song of the same name by Joni Mitchell. The three of us sat and drak whatever we were having. Tex wasn't a drinker, but he nursed something along. Tex was a large man, over 6'5" and weighing over 300 pounds. Odetta was also a big woman, imposing, regal and one hell of a singer. And she was coming on to my friend and it was whizing right over his head. When I told him, after Odetta excused herself to move along to a gig, that she was coming on to him, hard, his response was "Odetta? Why would she bother with me? I'm just another folk singer, she's, well, she's Odetta!" I didn't have an answer for that, not then, not now and with both of them gone, not ever.
When I came back from my time in the military in '69, I moved back to New York and with a new girlfriend took over a sub-let apartment at 112 MacDougal Street, upstairs above the Gaslight and the Kettle of Fish, a bar frequented by musicians, artists and the whole gamut of people in the Village in those days. When we wanted a drink, the Kettle was the usual place until some people we knew opened "Nobody's" on Bleecker. Nobody's became one of the rock and roll bars in the city, but it was still folkies and actors and a smattering of rockers when it was more or less home base for a bunch of us.
The Kettle of Fish has moved twice from its MacDougal Street location and is now a Wisconsin-themed sports bar on Christopher Street. I can't imagine it; I really don't want to imagine it, not even a little. When I was living above it and managing the Cafe Feenjon across the street starting at the dinner hour through to breakfast the next morning, I could often be found in the Kettle with friends drinking beer or, when I was flush, Jack Daniels, neat with a cool water back. In 2009, the old location of the Kettle at 114 MacDougal was the Cafe Esperanto.
Last time I remember, the Old Cafe Rienzi, next door to the Feenjon, was a clothing store, featuring retro couture with a hippie flavor. (I learned recently that it was now a pub called the Grisly Pear, which sounds like a place I might want to hang out, if I did that sort of thing any more.) Rienzi's used to be the place to hang out, the back room especially. It drew all kinds of folks, musicians, writers, artists, actors, models and whoever showed up and seemed interesting.
I remember hearing Brian Jones jamming with a young chick guitar player named Carol Hunter early in the Stones rise to greatness. Brian stopped for a bit to marvel at this girl's playing and then joined back in. Great place to be at the time.
The old Feenjon at 109 MacDougal has been known by many names, the first I remember being "The Commons" and then "The Fat Black Pussycat" where I used to do my homework and hang out, sitting in the windows that fronted on Minetta Street, the front entrance back in the day. When it became the Feenjon - which means "coffee pot" I was told by the man who owned the place when I worked there, Bob Englehart - Bob cut through the back entrance to give it a presence on MacDougal Street, which was the main drag as the Village became a tourist mecca. The place is now a Mexican restaurant called "Panchito's" and, for reasons known only to the new owners, they painted out the sign that was above the place for as long as I knew it proclaiming "The Fat Black Pussycat Theater." History obliterated by a broad paintbrush and red paint.
At some point in my time as night manager and espresso machine operator at the Feenjon, we decided to re-open the large back room, the part that had been the main theater in the Fat Black Pussycat days. We had live music there two or three nights a week, mostly lesser-known folks, including my friend Tex before he pretty much took off permanently for Canada. But one night, for some reason, several well-known names in folk music and other forms were in town and they ended up in the back room of the Feenjon. I remember Odetta, Jack Elliot and a couple of others and David Amram, a French horn player whose musical interests crossed all borders. It was a magical night, without egos, without the music business getting in the way of the music.
The Feenjon became a Middle Eastern nightclub under Manny Dworman - whom we used to call "Manny Halfman" for reasons lost in memory - and is now a rock music club run by his son, Noam. Manny Dworman bought the place from Englehart when Bob needed to sell and take over his father's short-haul bus business in New Jersey. Under Dworman, the place became a Middle Eastern coffee house with ethnic music, often including Dworman, who was a pretty good oud player in his own right. He later moved the Feenjon to the former Cafe Wha? which he bought from Manny Roth, David Lee Roth's uncle.
So, I hope you can pardon this unabashedly nostalgic ramble. I was a bit player, the friend to some of the featured players. The only thing I have going for me is that, unlike so many of them, including my best friend from those days, Tex Konig - folksinger, storyteller, actor, fine Chinese cook, pistolsmith and martial artist - I am still here to remember it and write some of it down.
I don't usually dedicate my blogs, but for a lot of reasons, this one is dedicated to Tex Konig, who left this world just shy of 60 in July of '99. I probably wouldn't have been in all those places or known all those people if I hadn't known Tex.
