Phil Ochs – Outside A Small Circle Of Friends (1967) – FESCH.TV

Phil Ochs – Outside A Small Circle Of Friends (1967) & FESCH.TV:

This is the very late folk singer’s criticism and condemnation about social apathy. The central idea behind the song which appears in both the first and final verses was the murder of Kitty Genovese in March 1964, a case that was still taught about in sociology and psychology classes in college when I was taking both courses during the 1970’s. Genovese was stabbed to death on March 13, 1964, outside her home in Queens, New York, while dozens of her neighbors ignored her cries for help. Historical revisionists today try to deny this reaction from her neighbors was true and try to claim it was made up. But of course we know the dark political motivation behind these historical revisionists today, don’t we? Eventually Ochs added four other scenarios to the lyrics making five stories in all, with the Genoveve case repeated at the end.

When Phil Ochs decided to make a song about it in 1966 it was still a very recent event: the recording came in 1967, and the song was released in October 1967 as a single and also on the album Pleasures of the Harbor. Regionally it did well in places like the West Coast, but nationally it had problems, radio station managers removed words and even entire segments. As a result of varied and superfluous editing, the single never made it to the Billboard Hot 100 or Cash Box Top 100, but charted much lower. Most intelligent listeners and disc jockeys loved it and believed it was one of the most brilliant works he ever created. Thus, it fared very well as an „underground“ FM hit, but not right away. Most of the US and Canada did not completely embrace the underground FM radio scene until late 1968/early 1969.

I heard it for the first time in summer 1970, which is when it was getting a lot of airplay. Of course one afternoon I recorded it to cassette tape as soon as I knew it was going to be in line to be played. In any event, please excuse my time machine treatment of the song. At the time I thought it was a 1970 song and still did when I created the video yesterday. Late last night I found out it was made in 1967. So everything and everybody looks like 1970, not 1967. But I think, given the difficulties the song had on AM radio in 1967 and 1968, maybe it works even better for 1970 anyways … it was a little bit ahead of its time.

Tragically, Phil Ochs, a quite popular folk singer and songwriter, who had contributed eight albums, committed suicide on April 9, 1976 … fifteen days before Pete Ham of Badfinger took his own life. I can tell you there was definitely something WRONG about the opening months of 1976, I don’t know what it was but even I could feel it in the electrically-charged particles in the air, and normality did not set in until around May or June.

For a fuller summary of the different parts of the song, this is from Wikipedia: „The lyrics of „Outside of a Small Circle of Friends“ condemn social apathy by relating different situations that should demand action on the part of the narrator, but in each case the narrator evades responsibility by giving a mundane excuse, and invariably concludes that „I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody outside of a small circle of friends“. The five scenarios include a woman who’s being stabbed outside the window, an automobile accident that has left a car hanging on a cliff (actually 13 cars, MMR), the terrible living conditions in the city’s ghetto, a magazine publisher who’s been fined for publishing pornography, and a friend who’s been arrested for smoking marijuana and sentenced to thirty years in prison.“

Although this is mostly AI-generated photo realism that I applied in narrative fashion after much textual creation and then fastidious editing of images, the piano accompaniment in the music I have made to appear to be synchronized to a live performance on honky tonk piano by Gary Landgren. He is yet another talent who is well worth the listen.

Narrative,Retro,1960’s,Gary Landgren,Topical song,Live performance,Dixieland pop,Folk,Baroque pop,Simulated live synchronization,AI-generated photo realism,2010’s,1970’s