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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z #

-first letter-A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z #

	C	D	C	D
	Look outside the	window  there's a	woman being	grabbed

	C	Em	F	G
They've	dragged her to the	bushes and	now she's being	stabbed

	E	Am
	Maybe we should call the cops and	try to stop the pain

	F	Am	Dm	G
But	Monopoly is	so much fun  I'd	hate to blow the	game

	C	Am	Eb
And I'm	sure it wouldn't	interest	anybody

	Cm	F
	Outside of a small circle of f	riends

	C	D	C	D
	Riding down the	highway  yes my	back is getting	stiff

	C	Em	F	G
	Thirteen cars are	piled up	they're hanging on a	cliff

	E	Am
	Maybe we should pull them back	with our towing chain

	F	Am	Dm	G
But we	gotta move and we	might get sued and it	looks like it's gonna

rain

	C	Am	Eb
And I'm	sure it wouldn't	interest	anybody

	Cm	F
	Outside of a small circle of	friends

	C	D	C	D
	Sweating in the	ghetto with the	colored and the	poor

	C	Em	F	G
The	rats have joined the	babies who are	sleeping on the	floor

	E	Am
	Now wouldn't it be a riot if they	really blew their tops

	F	Am	Dm	G
But they	got too much	already and	besides we got the	cops

	C	Am	Eb
And I'm	sure it wouldn't	interest	anybody

	Cm	F
	Outside of a small circle of	friends

	C	D	C	D
Oh there's a	dirty paper	using sex	to make a	sale

	C	Em	F	G
	The Supreme Court was	so upset   they	sent him off to	jail

	E	Am
	Maybe we should help the fiend and	take away his fine

	F	Am	Dm	G
But we're	busy reading	Playboy and the	Sunday New York	Times

	C	Am	Eb
And I'm	sure it wouldn't	interest	anybody

	Cm	F
	Outside of a small circle of	friends

	C	D	C	D
	Smoking	marijuana is more	fun than drinking	beer

	C	Em	F	G
But a	friend of ours was	captured and they	gave him thirty	years

	E	Am
	Maybe we should raise our voices	ask somebody why

	F	Am	Dm	G
But demonst	rations are a	drag	besides we're much too	high

And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody

Outside of a small circle of friends

	C	D	C	D
	Look outside the	window  there's a	woman being	grabbed

	C	Em	F	G
They've	dragged her to the	bushes and	now she's being	stabbed

	E	Am
	Maybe we should call the cops and	try to stop the pain

	F	Am	Dm	G
But	Monopoly is	so much fun  I'd	hate to blow the	game

	C	Am	Eb
And I'm	sure it wouldn't	interest	anybody

	Cm	F
	Outside of a small circle of f	riends

From Phil Ochs "Pleasures of the Harbor"

A & M Records 1967

Barricade Music(ASCAP)

http://www.rhino.com/features/liners/73518lin4.html

Ochs might have lamented that "Changes" was never the hit it should've

been, but here he encountered something far more frustrating:

a hit that almost was. "Small Circle Of Friends" was an immediate

staple of "underground" FM radio and looked set to cross the

message over to the less discriminating masses who still understood

only what Top 40 radio tattooed on their consciousness.

The single was all over the AM airwaves in Los Angeles and actually

cracked the Top 10 in Seattle. Then the FCC weighed in

with the opinion that the record was objectionable because of the line

"smoking marijuana is more fun than drinking beer." Never

mind that in context the line was part of an explicitly antidrug

message; that was a subtlety the FCC could not fathom. By the

time A&M Records could get an "acceptable" edit on the market, the

momentum of the early airplay had been lost. And in the

Top 40 game, momentum is everything. Phil Ochs would never have that

hit single. And the tragedy was that had it become the

hit it seems certain it would have been, the Pleasures Of The Harbor

album would have reached the new audience for which it

was intended. In losing the momentum of the single, they lost the

whole album.

This song, still a hit around my house, was inspired by the Kitty

Genovese murder in New York, which was witnessed by several

people who rather than become involved allowed the woman to die. But

Phil saw the Genovese incident as only the screaming headline

of a story that included -- and indicted -- everyone. At precisely the

moment when the "counterculture" was exploding, Phil saw instead

the underlying disease that was eating away at the foundation of all

American life. He liked to say that he "died" during the

demonstrations

at the '68 Democratic Convention in Chicago. But in this song,

recorded a year earlier, he had already diagnosed the cancer --

the avoidance of involvement -- that would take the life of the

artist/activist.

"It's always been a question of: Will it stand the test of time?" Phil

later said of topical music and in particular of "Small Circle Of

Friends."

"That was one of the things in the very early days, before Dylan left

politics, when he and I were writing political songs. There were two

attacks: You can't write folk music, and you can't use folk music for

propaganda. Besides it's topical and it'll be meaningless two years

from

then. And so to sing 'Small Circle Of Friends' seven years later and

still get the same response gives the lie to that attack. Whether the

audience is hearing it for the first or the fifteenth time, it holds

up. It could be nostalgia for some people, but on the other hand,

there's some

essential truth locked up in that song. A thirteen-year-old kid that

hears it today responds to it because the truth is there. In a way

it's more

there than ever, than even when I wrote it."10