Bowdlerization of "Outside Of A Small Circle Of Friends"
Mark Rosenthal
back, I remember seeing a request on rec.music.folk for the words to
Phil Ochs' "Outside Of A Small Circle Of Friends". In one response,
one verse had some crucial words altered, which completely changed the
meaning of the verse. I just ran across the same error in the WWW
site http://www.cs.pds.edu/~trent/ochs/lyrics. I'd like to correct
the error before it becomes too widespread.
I believe this song was written as a reaction to a famous case in New
York in which somebody was murdered while a crowd stood around and
watched. Nobody helped. Nobody was willing to get involved. In the
verse in question, the issue Ochs was concerned with was censorship.
The attitude was, "how dare a governmental authority presume to tell
me what I can think or say or look at." The erroneous lyrics reflect
the way our attitudes about censorship have changed in the intervening
25 years. We now act as if censorship is OK, as long as the
authorities only censor "politically incorrect" ideas. I think Phil
Ochs would have recognized how dangerous that path is. Once we grant
that authorities can suppress some ideas, then the question of which
ideas get suppressed is only a matter of who happens to be in power at
the time.
The verse as it appears on the WWW is:
Oh there's a dirty paper using sex to make her sales
The Supreme Court was so upset, they sent him off to jail
Maybe we should take a stand and send the fiend a 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
The line Phil Ochs actually wrote and recorded was:
Maybe we should help the fiend and take away his fine
^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^
This is a classic example of bowdlerization. Whoever transcribed this
has completely misunderstood the issues Ochs was concerned with. The
verse is concerned with censorship and the prudish attitude of the
Supreme Court. The word "fiend" was intended tongue-in-cheek.
I.E. the Supreme Court declared this guy to be a "fiend", we didn't.
If the Usenet had been invented back when this was written, the word
would have been written as "fiend :-)". The sarcasm exactly parallels
that in the following verse:
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 of friends
The point of the song is that we're too busy to worry about somebody
else getting busted, even if it's for the same thing we're doing. We
only care about it if we're the ones getting arrested.
With the erroneous words, the line "But we're busy reading Playboy ..."
makes no sense. But with the correct words it's clearly saying,
here we are reading a "dirty" magazine just like the one that got
someone else arrested, but since we haven't gotten into trouble over
it, we don't care.
The rest of that line "... and the Sunday New York Times" was a dig at
respectable publications, implying that they are pornographic in their
own way. Ochs may have had in mind the graphic photos of dismembered
bodies in Viet Nam which frequently graced the front of the
newspapers.
--
Mark of the Valley of Roses
m...@gte.com
Wil Leigh
: Maybe we should take a stand and send the fiend a fine
^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ ^ ^^^^
As the above really doesn't make much sense, perhaps it was merely an
unintentional transcription error. I don't see how the tongue-in-cheek
nature of the song could be lost on anyone who listened (or even read the
lyrics) to the entire song. You're right, though. The lyric is wrong and
ought to be corrected.
A fan,
Wil.
P.S. I wonder if the original transcriber got the lyrics from a "live"
recording of some sort. Ochs did "twiddle" with his lyrics some-
times. Just a thought...
--
Wil Leigh Perfect Blue Buildings
Archer Sully
;
; P.S. I wonder if the original transcriber got the lyrics from a "live"
; recording of some sort. Ochs did "twiddle" with his lyrics some-
; times. Just a thought...
You mean Ochs occaisionally forgot his own lyrics. Yep. On "Here and Now"
the line is pretty much unintelligible.
-- a
--
Stop Casting Porosity
Isaac Alden Green
To Phil's credit, on "Here and Now" he admits that it has been a long time
since he sung these songs, and that you'll have to forgive him if he forgets
some of the lyrics. He claims he wrote them a long time ago when he was "but
a child walking through the American wilderness."
Cheers,
Isaac
Robert Derrick
: In my younger days, I was a great fan of Phil Ochs. A number of years
--
rob derrick -- U.of E. Professor mu-meritis of Taoism and TAEism Studies
* Some would argue that God has the whole thing planned out but that His
* concept of planning is a bit more complex that ours -- _design_ and
* _chance_ may be listed as synonyms in the big thesaurus in the sky.
* _Fractal Graphics_ by Dick Oliver & Daniel Hoviss, p.321
Larry A. Clifford
>... We now act as if censorship is OK, as long as the
>authorities only censor "politically incorrect" ideas. I think Phil
>Ochs would have recognized how dangerous that path is.
Well, although there are always some would-be commissars out
there, I know dozens of leftists (politically correct
to the bone and damn proud of it), and every one of them is a
First Amendment absolutist who staunchly defends the
right of the Klan, Penthouse, and Newt Gingrich to publish
their pinheaded, soulless dreck. So I'm not sure who your "we" is
referring to. Not the Left I know (with very cold apologies
to Andrea Dworkin & Co.). When it comes to taking books out of
school libraries, pushing for album labeling or outright
censorship, denying Federal funding to controversial art,
and trying to keep Darwin and Hiroshima out of our secondary-
school textbooks, looks to me like the Right has such a
head start that the Left won't catch up in a month of
May Days. I get the impression that the ACLU is favored
quite often by the dreaded PCers, hardly ever by the God-and-
Country(-Music) crowd.
Ochs was indeed a great political singer, by the way, with a razorknife
edge that can raise eyebrows to this day. Compare his forthright
abuse of Nixon with the smarmy tributes offered earlier this year!
> Once we grant
>that authorities can suppress some ideas, then the question of which
>ideas get suppressed is only a matter of who happens to be in power at
>the time.
I agree absolutely. It's just that the P.C. crowd you seem to be
thinking of, the sort that really would favor some kind of censorship,
is an ascendant "authority" only in the relatively microscopic
realm of a few college liberal arts departments, not in our society
at large. Two words: "November Eighth."
>The rest of that line "... and the Sunday New York Times" was a dig at
>respectable publications, implying that they are pornographic in their
>own way. Ochs may have had in mind the graphic photos of dismembered
>bodies in Viet Nam which frequently graced the front of the
>newspapers.
More likely he had in mind the massive percentage of the NYT devoted to
ads for lingerie and other expensive luxuries, the bloated Fashion
sections, the wedding announcements for Rich & Significant people,
the pompous Week in Review commentaries by self-important talking heads,
the soberly and subtly pro-status-quo spin placed throughout on the
news itself, etc. etc. Those graphic battle photos were at least
images of a truth, an ugly truth that Ochs might have liked people
to confront. I don't know if _anybody_ looks at dead soldiers in a
"pornographic" sense; it's the _hardware_ of war, the uptilted
missile launchers and antiaircraft guns, the mighty carriers cleaving
the yielding seas, the death-spewing and irresistible fighter planes --
the stuff of Gulf War coverage -- that people drool over as if
these items were so many airbrushed playboy bunnies.
Great point about the revision of the lyrics, though. Interesting!
Sincerely,
Larry Clifford
Bill Hopkins
At the time of the song's writing, the Sunday Magazine was known as
the "Girdle Gazette" because of the high number of ads for (and
pictures of) women's undergarments. (Remember "I dreamt I punctured
the Hindenburg..." anybody?) I spent many an hour leafing through
with a subtle sense of guilt...
I suspect that the rest of Larry's analysis, though not terribly unfair,
is a wee bit off the mark. The "bloated Fashion sections" and "graphic
battle photos" hadn't become a part of the paper then.
Bill (just looking for the crossword)
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Hopkins Unisys Corporation, Goverment Systems Group
215-648-2854 Valley Forge Engineering Ctr, Box 517, Paoli, PA 19301
hop...@VFL.Paramax.Com --> Opening my mouth is not company policy. <--
ghost
>In article <3bie20$5...@ceylon.gte.com> mb...@roger.gte.com (Mark Rosenthal) writes:
>>... We now act as if censorship is OK, as long as the
>>authorities only censor "politically incorrect" ideas. I think Phil
>>Ochs would have recognized how dangerous that path is.
->Well, although there are always some would-be commissars out
->there, I know dozens of leftists (politically correct
->to the bone and damn proud of it), and every one of them is a
->First Amendment absolutist who staunchly defends the
->right of the Klan, Penthouse, and Newt Gingrich to publish
->their pinheaded, soulless dreck. So I'm not sure who your "we" is
->referring to. Not the Left I know (with very cold apologies
->to Andrea Dworkin & Co.). When it comes to taking books out of
->school libraries, pushing for album labeling or outright
->censorship, denying Federal funding to controversial art,
->and trying to keep Darwin and Hiroshima out of our secondary-
->school textbooks, looks to me like the Right has such a
->head start that the Left won't catch up in a month of
->May Days. I get the impression that the ACLU is favored
->quite often by the dreaded PCers, hardly ever by the God-and-
->Country(-Music) crowd.
Amen.