Song of the Day
Phil Ochs viewed as himself as an agit-prop musician not as an artistic commodity under the ownership of a music label
Phil Ochs spent his career living beneath the long shadow cast over the folk music scene by his friend Bob Dylan.
Ochs was closer to the style of a conventional old school folk singer than Dylan. Phil was viewed (for better or worse) as an ideological outlaw while Dylan was cultural icon.
Phil Ochs was in frontline of artists who were deeply involved in the civil rights and anti-war movements. He was the only big name performer at the first anti-Vietnam war protest at UC Berkeley in 1965. His left wing politics put him in the crosshairs of the House Committee on Un-American activities, the FBI's watch list of prominent communist sympathizers and eventually Phil even had the honor of making the Top 20 on the Nixon enemy list.
Dylan's early music was as socially powerful as Ochs but Dylan's involvement in the frontline struggles was that of a dabbler not an activist. I think Dylan's own skepticism of politics in general played a role in his limited participation in political protest.
Phil Ochs performing at the first anti-Vietnam rally in UC Berkeley in 1965.
By the time of the first antiwar protest at Berkeley in 1965, Dylan had abandoned topical and protest music and was reinventing himself as a countercultural zeitgeist who sent shock waves through staid Newport Folk Festival by plugging his guitar in to play a high decibel set of bluesy rock and roll backed by the members of the Paul Butterfield Band.
During his performance, the usually affable Pete Seeger was off-stage cursing Dylan and making a frantic effort to pull the plug on the set and put an end to this nonsense by Dylan, right then and there. Unfortunately Seeger was an old school, low-tech folk singer and he couldn't figure out which plug to pull. There were a lot of hard feelings between Dylan and his former folkie friends but Ochs didn't involve himself in the controversy and never commented on Dylan's radical transfiguration at Newport.
Two years later in 1967, Dylan was injured in motorcycle accident and observers were beginning to wonder what, if any, future lay ahead for his musical career. There were rumors that Dylan was suffering brain damage. Dylan had sequestered himself in a remote area of upstate New York and nobody, not even Albert Grossman, Dylan's normally long winded manager was commenting on the state of Dylan's physical or mental health.
It was that fleeting moment in 1967, it appeared that Phil might finally free himself from his unhip image as old school "hootenanny" folk singer and gain some crossover appeal to the Dylan's tuned-in audience of the rock underground.
Pleasures of the Harbor was released during the Summer of Love in 1967 and was hailed as Phil's most ambitious and musically varied album by music critics. It was a concept album and a couple of songs contained orchestral arrangements. The album was consistently imbued with images of mortality, and it all came together on the abstract, electronic-tinged final track, "The Crucifixion."
This time around, it wasn't Dylan who robbed Phil of his moment in the sun, it was the Beatles, who released a
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band their most ambitious album to date, which like Och's
Pleasures of the Harbor, was concept album with widely varied music and contained orchestral arrangements. Like Phil's finale song
Crucifixion, the Beatle's album ended with
A Day In Life a spectacular finale song that tied together the diverse array of the album's songs.
The fact that
Pleasures of the Harbor and
Sergeant Pepper's were created and released at nearly the same moment in 1967 is case study on the probability of synchronicity. Synchronicity is defined in Webster's as:
the creation of the same new idea at causally disconnected places by two persons at approximately the same time.
Phil's attempt to reach a larger and younger audience with
Pleasures of the Harbor was foiled because all eyes and ears were upon the Beatles new album in the summer of '67.
The Haight Ashbury counterculture had arrived and the 27 year old Ochs was regarded as a relic from a bygone era of coffee houses and folk music revivals. It's a shame because Phil Och's beautiful
Pleasures of the Harbor ended up commercial failure and peaked at 167 on the Billboard Charts and to this day,
Pleasures of the Harbor remains a criminally ignored musical masterpiece.
The first and only single from the album
Outside of a Small Circle of Friends was promptly banned from airplay on the radio for the lyric "
smoking marijuana is more fun than drinking beer". For all of their popularity with the counterculture, neither Dylan nor the Beatles would never dare to make an endorsement of marijuana use. Too much commerce was at stake, and breaking the establishment taboos could be a career ender for a band. John Lennon discovered as much after he made his "God" comment in 1966. Phil didn't care about commerce and fought his A&M label tooth and nail, to keep the controversial lines endorsing marijuana use in the song.
Small Circle was initially inspired by the New York murder of Kitty Genovese, in the previous year, in which several neighbors heard screaming but did not call the police, the tongue-in-cheek verses deal with the consistent inability of the general public to help their fellow man due to fear, ignorance, or just plain laziness.
In the end, the song makes a point about role apathy plays in larger social issues like poverty, government censorship, punitive drug laws and racial conflict. Over 40 years later, there isn't a single lyric or social malady commented upon by Phil in
Circle of Friends that has become dated with time. The more that things change, the more things stay the same.
Lyrics:
Outside a Small Circle of Friends
Look outside the window, there's a woman being grabbed
They've dragged her to the bushes and now she's being stabbed
Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain
But monopoly is so much fun, I’d hate to blow the game
And I’m sure it wouldn't interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.
Riding down the highway, yes, my back is getting stiff
Thirteen cars are piled up, they're hanging on a cliff.
Maybe we should pull them back with our towing chain
But we gotta move and we might get sued and it looks like it's gonna rain
And I’m sure it wouldn't interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.
Sweating in the ghetto with the colored and the poor
The rats have joined the babies who are sleeping on the floor
Now wouldn't it be a riot if they really blew their tops?
But they got too much already and besides we got the cops
And I’m sure it wouldn't interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.
Oh there's a dirty paper using sex to make a sale
The supreme court was so upset, they sent him off to jail.
Maybe we should help the fiend and take away his fine. (*)
But we're busy reading playboy and the Sunday New York Times
And I’m sure it wouldn't interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends
Smoking marihuana is more fun than drinking beer,
But a friend of ours was captured and they gave him thirty years
Maybe we should raise our voices, ask somebody why
But demonstrations are a drag, besides we're much too high
And I’m sure it wouldn't interest anybody
Outside of a small circle