Phil Ochs Book out Today!!

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Phil Ochs: Every Album, Every Song – Paperback on Sonic Bond Press. Available through Amazon or other book stores!

Phil Ochs was one of my great heroes. A singer who told it like it was, fought for justice and created a range of rousing, well-crafted songs in the process. Back then he was a shining light. His light still shines brightly and never have we needed it more.

For sixty years I’ve been mesmerised by Phil’s fantastic songs. To be able to write this book has been a real labour of love.

Miss you Phil! Still miss you!

Phil Ochs was the ‘The Prince of Protest’ in the sixties. The only real rival to Bob Dylan, he was the archetypal Greenwich Village topical songwriter. Whether protesting the Vietnam War or campaigning for civil rights, workers’ rights and social justice, Phil was always there.

Phil was the man to take up causes, write songs, play at rallies and even risk his life. His clear voice and sense of melody, linked with his incisive lyrics, created songs of beauty and power. As his career progressed, with lyrics and music becoming more highly poetic and sophisticated, he still never lost sight of his cause.

Towards the end of the sixties he joined with the YIPPIES in protest against the Vietnam War. But idealism became Phil’s downfall. He was an idealist who could see no point in continuing if he was unable to make the world a better place. Phil lost all hope and descended into depression, which, along with excessive alcohol consumption, led to his suicide in 1976.

Shortly before he took his life, Phil asked his brother if he thought anyone would listen to his songs in the future. Well here we are; sixty years later, still listening.

The songs of Phil Ochs are every bit as relevant as they ever were and they are making the world a better place!

https://www.amazon.com/Phil-Ochs-Every-Album-Song/dp/1789523265/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1TOE668QZXBHO&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.l6b9YZUbkkX9v13NbEE5wPvKv2yFkJmRIKWTtepZ3GnqGfSEHTLiLcI2YKTOgFVsqZTWns6jPkGMS7R4F01430x86yY5DRbvSjXY0FwuJ1yQhuGYoMuwE_UnKJzYNBWammuWmNsKw0_Ihsy5vSrDWDXhhtjSWRGZJkbFPbABe39X-zLgS9B_8fIz3fAudwW0lP9a2lOdaCO9eZ9dkRH06zAnIJCqTazQvC9PnKgdG38.8LPC1DiMvuBA40o6GcZ09jei6S0GQJB86WKPvYH2zrY&dib_tag=se&keywords=Opher+Goodwin&qid=1732711596&sprefix=opher+goodwin%2Caps%2C278&sr=8-1

Extract – Bodies in a Window Paperback

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Standing in a room with your dead father

Extract:

How rational we become at times of emotional turmoil.

 Humans! I despise them all. I hate them – all of them – even myself – every last human bastard on this planet. I have come to the realisation that we are the stupidest creatures who have ever evolved on this beautiful green sphere – and there have been a few monsters that have evolved here, I can tell you. 

I think the worst thing about us is our damn intelligence. We can’t even claim ignorance for the vileness of our acts. That makes it all far worse. Everything we do is consciously done with intent. We know exactly what agonies we inflict and we thoroughly enjoy inflicting it.

But life goes on – at least for a while to come. We’ll eke out the last days of our vainglorious reign and probably still be around to witness our total annihilation of what once was a beautiful green planet full of beauty and potential. We’ll leave behind a legacy of pain, garbage and senseless destruction.

But hey – that’s probably just the mood I’m in right now. It’s chemical. And I have good reason. You’d probably be feeling a tad down if you were standing where I am right now.

Death goes on too.

I’ll feel differently in the morning……………. probably.

It is strange the morbid, dismal thoughts that go through your mind while you stand in a hospital ward, beside a bed on which lies the remains of your old man, the person who begat you, who looked after you, nursed you, cared for you, loved you without limits and then fucking goes and dies on you – the bastard.

Except that wasn’t him in the bed at all. That was just an ice-cold marble sculpture of some haggard wretch whose cancer-ridden body some master sculptor had seen fit to replicate in stone. He’d done a fucking good job too. The sunken eyes and gaunt cheeks were perfect. The nose stood out like some grotesque beak. He’d captured it. It was a perfect replica of the man he had been yesterday. But he’d got the colour wrong. This marble effigy was as pale as snow. There was none of the sallow, jaundiced pastiness. The smell had gone too. Obviously there are some things even a great artist cannot replicate.

Bodies in a Window – Paperback

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I was remembering back to the day of my father’s death, standing in the hospital room, alone with his body, looking out of the window. My head was full of huge emotional turmoil. People outside were going about their business completely obliviously.

A parent had come into school in a distraught fashion, looking for people to blame. His fifteen-year-old daughter had planned a weekend orgy with her friend while he and his wife were away. All the boys in the neighbourhood had been round for a sex-fest. He wanted to blame the school.

I incorporated it into the book.

Extract:

I had begun thinking of myself and examining the depths of my own psyche looking for clues – for the evidence to condemn myself. I reckon most people would be just like those wealthy fuckers given half a chance, me included. I have come to believe that the whole human race is a savage, callous, selfish group of mindless monkeys out for nothing more than sex, power and wealth, and they don’t give a toss for anything or anyone – least of all nature or the plight of other creatures. If it isn’t about that trilogy of crassness, then it’s about cretinous fun – usually involving some form of cruelty or abuse.

I’ve always had a soft spot for nature. I detest cruelty.

I gave out a deep sigh which came out more like a sob as I absently pondered my own philosophical views on the nature of humanity. They weren’t currently very flattering, particularly when it came to our record with fellow creatures.

Outside the window I watched a young boy on roller skates, all tousle haired and scruffy, who reminded me of myself so many years before. Perhaps he was indeed just like I had been? Perhaps he had pets and enjoyed playing in the fields, climbing trees and wading in ditches and ponds, catching frogs and newts? But would that be enough in his adult life to prevent him from shooting birds or chopping down trees? I thought not. At heart he was human. He was all like the rest; like all the rest of us.

Indeed I have a pretty low impression of mankind and the circumstances were providing me with opportunity to give vent to it. I have come to realise that the majority of people are insane, shallow and stupid. I am convinced that they won’t be happy until they’ve destroyed the whole planet and laughed themselves to death as they busy themselves with slowly frying the last living creature on the sphere.

I played with that image in my head. My mind seemed to attach to it.

They have no scruples – as far as I can see they wouldn’t even want to eat that poor creature, they’d just want to watch it squirm, to make it suffer. That’s how they get their kicks. I believe that. They really would – they would enjoy watching some poor creature, even if it was the last creature on earth, as it screams its way to a horrendously painful death, and all for nothing more than their own amusement. I have really come to believe that.

People are nasty.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bodies-Window-Opher-Goodwin/dp/198626954X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2TPMTXORD1MIA&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.lWqi-f83EoXLlwi3Ij1kM45KucHJeZBO13sRl5Q-6kbGjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.kgAabeNQxn-of0f9bwz4EOJffh0KpDSS0BkDK6HJr7s&dib_tag=se&keywords=opher+goodwin+bodies&nsdOptOutParam=true&qid=1732615200&s=books&sprefix=opher+goodwin+bodies%2Cstripbooks%2C124&sr=1-1

Roy Harper – Sophisticated Beggar Album

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When I was 18 back in 1967 I was desperate to get hold of Roy’s first album – Sophisticated Beggar. Roy had been hawking it around at his gigs but had just sold the last one. I think they’d only press 400. There were none left. So Roy lent me his own copy! (Just imagine! – The only copy he had!)

I remember that Roy had drawn in a moustache with a felt-tip.

I was lucky. One turned up a few week’s later in one of the second-hand record shops I used to browse through. Although it was a hefty £4 (a fortune for an impoverished student living off one meal a day of pig’s head soup) I snapped it up.

Here I am, some fifty seven years later, holding that album. A treasured copy.

The cover artwork was Lon Goddard. He played some guitar on the album too!

Another slab of nostalgia – Oph and Pete

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More nostalgia – Oph and Liz 1971

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Opher 1971 – a bit of nostalgia for the old folk!

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Bodies in a Window – Paperback

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Chapter 1 – Perspectives on a Sunny Day

Life goes on.

That’s all I know. As far as I’m concerned, right now, life is trivial, pointless and boring. It’s nothing more than a repetition of the mundane, periodically interspersed with equally nonsensical novelty. Nothing makes sense. Sadly, today, that is exactly how I’m seeing it. There is no purpose to anything.  It appears to fall into a reassuring pattern – but I think that is an illusion. Change is all there really is. You can be sure that nothing will last for long. Everything you do is doomed to be destroyed in the vagaries of time. Nothing lasts. It’s a pretty miserable state of affairs when you really get down to thinking about it.

I stood in the sanitised room, breathed the Dettol and allowed my mind to run freewheel. Well, I didn’t really allow it to run free, so much as lose control of it. I’d let go. There was no hand on the rudder. It went where it wanted and that appeared to entail a long string of gloomy observations. Right at this moment in time life was looking pretty miserable to me.

Don’t get me wrong. I haven’t always been this morbid; my brain has not always flowed in such a melancholy manner. I used to be a happy, easy-going, positive sort of guy. But that seems a long, long time ago now. I’m no longer that person. Life knocked that naïve optimism right out of me a long time before today.

It is days like this that have robbed me of my positive outlook, and I’ve had a few of these kinds of days. Though fortunately not too many on a par with this particular doozy of an example. This was in a category of its own – a kind of one-off. This truth is, for obvious reasons, you can only experience this event once.

Back when I was young ….. I could laugh at my own naivety ….. I used to postulate solutions to the world’s problems. I even used to have faith in the intrinsic goodness of human beings and believed there were things worth striving for. What a fool I was back then. That was before I realised the true nature of all those movers and shakers out there, the wealthy and powerful, greedily clawing in all they can, and willing to carve up their own grannies for self-advancement. They are a bunch of callous self-servers.

The problem is that I woke up to the reality of humankind but probably didn’t really believe. Today brought it all home with a vengeance.

It is strange what pictures play out on your eyeballs as you stand helpless in a situation like this; what horrid thoughts go through your head. I was certainly no longer in control of my own mental processes. My mind was rampaging down an extremely morbid track. A parade of dark thoughts distil out of nothing and chase each other around.

It occurred to me that, when it boils down to it, we are just glutinous sacs of chemistry; bags of minerals dissolved in water and suffused with ionised electricity. Nothing more.

Right now I had a pretty dim view of my species – not surprising, given the circumstances, I suppose.

We’re all to blame. None of us are guiltless.

Nick Harper – The Wilderness Years – Hardback, Paperback and Kindle

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Section A – The Wilderness from My Hilltop.

Over the years I have had numerous conversations with Nick regarding aspects of his ‘career’. As a friend looking in from the outside it always appeared to me that Nick did not so much have a career as such, more a hap-hazard series of loosely connected events in which he wrote incredible music, played that music to people who paid to see him, recorded it when he had accumulated sufficient numbers and only barely made a living out of it.

It seemed unjust.

Nick tells me that he is still amazed and honoured that he has been able to spend the bulk of his adult life doing exactly what he enjoys doing.

I know his claims of indolence are far from the case. Just last week he came to stay for a few days to start work on this book. I had told him that we were going to get down to business and work hard. He agreed. We would make early starts and press on. I suggested we started work promptly at eight thirty.

Of course we stayed up into the early hours gabbing and sharing a glass of wine or two. Nick went to bed and at nine thirty next morning I took him a cup of tea to find a bleary-eyed semi-comatose Harper peering at me with vague disbelief.

It transpired that Nick had hit the sack at 1am. – like me, but had a head that was buzzing. We had been talking about lyrics and words and he had shown me a few things he was working on. He could not sleep. Ideas were popping into his head. The upshot was that he had spent the night working those words.

Morosely, over a third cup of strong coffee, he read me the words, full of alliteration, character and style, carefully honed and sweated over. ‘Not much to show for five hours,’ he remarked morbidly.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nick-Harper-Wilderness-Opher-Goodwin/dp/B09ZD12CDW/ref=sr_1_1?crid=23AG5LOBPWHLJ&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.f9aRhnQ8DI5hysA2oemJrcdYA2GDOKcT_ZIuLa5nO2H61C4CFvjQf3NNsJgLfaSv4C8pU5F-R_w0SXDLtIaYUy_T8rFsXWiNM19Tuo6TI8rOT7S9gf_pJNb_gsZ-WTXa.IYViU_2_jM7FLawPl-Wa80igMM43-2I6daBxbCSc2WA&dib_tag=se&keywords=nick+harper+book&nsdOptOutParam=true&qid=1732531680&sprefix=nick+harper+book%2Caps%2C188&sr=8-1

How to buy a SPECIAL Opher Goodwin BOOK!

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I know. Christmas is coming. You are looking for something unique, out of the ordinary, SPECIAL. Something that nobody else has! Something that you know they won’t be expecting but will love!!

It hits you!

You want an Opher Goodwin book!!

There are lots to choose from:

You could go to Burning Shed (The publisher’s own site) and purchase a book on a fabulous Rock Musician or band. Perhaps Roy Harper, Captain Beefheart, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Neil Young or Phil Ochs?

https://burningshed.com/index.php?route=product/search&filter_name=opher%20goodwin&filter_sub_category=true

You could go to Amazon for an Opher Goodwin book on Rock Music, weird alternative novels, anecdotes, the environment, poetry, art, antireligion, travel or antinovels. (something for everyone)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=Opher+Goodwin&crid=2SLVYT8G1DN0X&sprefix=opher+goodwin%2Caps%2C212&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

You could look at my take on education! Unique and informative, readable and insightful! A must for anyone in education or ‘owning’ a child.

Perhaps a Nick Harper?

Or you could try for one of my mind-teasing Sci-Fi classics written under my Ron Forsythe penname:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=Ron+Forsythe&i=stripbooks&crid=2HRCNUOCNTTRD&sprefix=ron+forsythe%2Cstripbooks%2C109&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

If you live outside the UK try your local Amazon!

If you really want to give someone something very special you can email the author directly and purchase one direct complete with the Author’s signature!!

opher.goodwin@gmail.com – all questions answered!