Phil Ochs ‎– Rehearsals For Retirement (Reissue) (1969/1990)

Recorded in the aftermath of Ochs's presence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago (where Ochs claimed to have witnessed the symbolic "death of America") it is often considered to be the darkest of Ochs's albums, exemplified not just by the lyrical matter but also by its cover: a tombstone sardonically proclaiming that Ochs had died in Chicago.

Rehearsals for Retirement saw Ochs exploring folk rock, incorporating orchestral accompaniments and electric guitar into his music. According to English studies scholar David Pichaske, songs such as "Pretty Smart on My Part" and "The Scorpion Departs but Never Returns" functioned as "art-protest songs". The former was written from the perspective of a John Birch Society member who is paranoid of switchblade-toting thieves, foreign operatives, dissident hitchhikers, and dominant, large-breasted women, and acts on this paranoia by killing them and others with a rifle and his friends from the NRA. Pichaske interpreted the narrative as a psychological analysis finding insecurity to be the source of violence in the United States. The latter song used the 1968 disappearance of the Scorpion nuclear submarine as an allegory for a modern "Lost Generation" who abandon the U.S. in response to the Vietnam War.