Born in El Paso, Texas in 1940, Phil Ochs only lived to be thirty-five years old, but he emerged in the 1960's as one of the most important of a host of folksingers, and his body of work still stands as some of the most powerful work to emerge from the folk era. My first contact with Ochs and his music came when my father purchased the CD "Phil Ochs in Concert" for me. Both the poetically beautiful songs like "Changes" and "When I'm Gone," and the visciously political songs like "Love Me, I'm a Liberal" and "Is There Anybody Here?" had a profound influence on me when I first heard them, and their power has stayed with me to this day. Since first listening to this album I have become an Ochs junkie, buying his albums wherever I can find them, and doing whatever I can to find out more about his life. Phil Ochs commited suicide in 1976, after seeing that few of his political dreams were being realized and losing his creative inspiration, but the message behind his music still remains powerful today.