My first encounter with Phil Ochs was on a Sunday afternoon sometime around 1967 when our little local AM station suddenly erupted with the ragtime piano intro to "Outside Of A Small Circle Of Friends." I loved it. Eventually I made my way to the Pleasures Of The Harbor album, then All The News That's Fit To Sing, and all too soon (and all too sadly) the post-mortem retrospectives.

That radio station was amazing. In some ways it was a typical pop station of its time, playing its share of 1910 Fruitgum Company and the Lemon Pipers and other similar fare, but every so often when they thought no one in authority was paying attention they'd run the full versions of "Small Circle of Friends" or the Animals ' "Sky Pilot" or similar subversive fare. Not bad for a 1000-watt AM station in the middle of the Columbia River desert country.