"Gunfight at Carnegie Hall" was the eighth and last album released by the
singer-songwriter Phil Ochs, (although others were released posthumously. It's a live recording of parts of Ochs' two infamous "gold suit" concerts, which took place at
Carnegie Hall in March,
1970, and which got him banned from that venue. Basically, the
clinically insane Ochs dressed up in an impossibly
tacky gold lamé suit and performed banal 50s
Rock 'n' Roll, with only a few of his own topical, satirical, or increasingly
melancholy folk songs. Meanwhile, the audience got puzzled, and then angry. As the singer says in
stage patter on the album, his intention was to "make
Elvis Presley into
Ché Guavara"- i.e. bring the ostensibly pro-worker
hippies down to the real world level of
conservative,
blue collar hardhats. Ochs did know what he was doing at the time, though no one else understood him.
The album was released in
1974 on the
A & M label. Tracklist: