Genre: Folk
Original Release: 5/22/2007
1. Pretty Smart On My Part
3:15
2. The Doll House
4:30
3. I Kill Therefore I Am
2:55
4. William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park And Escapes Unscathed
3:00
5. My Life
0:30
6. The Scorpion Departs, But Never Returns
3:11
7. The World Began In Eden And Ended In Los Angeles
4:15
8. Doesn't Lenny Live Here Anymore
3:05
9. Another Age
5:48
10. Rehearsals For Retirement
3:55
11. Rehearsals for Retirement
On Rehearsals for Retirement, Ochs retained his poetic sense, but his songs were imbued with the conflicts of the times. The leadoff track, "Pretty Smart on My Part," the hardest-rocking number Ochs had yet recorded, is sung in the persona of a violent right-wing extremist who fantasizes about running over hitchhikers, whipping women, and finally assassinating the president and taking over the government. Similarly, "I Kill Therefore I Am," a twangy rocker, is sung in the voice of a policeman who hates long-hairs, blacks, students, and homosexuals and plans to spray them with mace, beat them, and shoot them. Specifically combining the poetical with the political, the gentle waltz-time piano ballad "William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed" is a haunting depiction of the confrontation between demonstrators and police in Chicago, quickly followed by a dancehall ditty that sends up its somber reflections without relieving the tragic tone. The result of the convention and the subsequent election of Richard Nixon as president represents, in the songwriter's judgment, the dawn of "Another Age," and a terrible one. That declaration is as positive as things get on Rehearsals for Retirement Read More
The Waterboys
Fisherman's Blues
