As an Ohio musical chauvanist, I have a soft spot in my heart for Phil Ochs. Here he is in 1967 at the Bitter End in New York, singing his song “The War is Over”.

If only.

Notice Phil’s very, very loose rhythm. This made Van Dyke Parks’ job on the lush A&M recordings a very difficult one. Like a lot of solo performers, Phil had his own idiosyncratic sense of time.