Help me regain my sanity about a song while growing up in Detroit in the late 60's.

**Dan Wesson** · January-26-14, 02:45 PM

Originally Posted by Honky Tonk

Does the name Betty Joe Beolowski mean anything? High..... on top of the David Stott building. LOVED what Phil Proctor used to do.

You mean Nancy?

Listen with Headphones, couldn't pick up the nuances with the portable radios.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xu0m8i_nick-danger_fun

**gazhekwe** · January-26-14, 03:39 PM

Where did hijinx go? Reading the OP just now, the first thing that popped into my head was Phil Ochs, Small Circle of Friends, then I see that others also picked that up. I sure miss Phil, it was great hearing him again.

**Downriviera** · January-26-14, 04:24 PM

Originally Posted by NickCharles

So several of us fondly remember WABX and Firesign Theater. Good deal!!

Did Firesign Theater have an album that featured funny radio commercials, like the glow in the dark concert kit and a used car dealer?

**highjinx2** · January-26-14, 05:18 PM

Originally Posted by Sandhouse

There's not a word in common, but the meter of your half-remembered line makes me think of "A Small Circle of Friends" [[by Phil Ochs? My memory's going, too.) One verse goes,

Smokin' marijuana is more fun than drinking beer.
But a friend of ours got captured and they gave him twenty years.
Maybe we should raise our voice and ask somebody why.
But demonstrations are a drag, and besides, we're much too high.

[[Chorus)
And I'm sure it wouldn't interest
Anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.

All three verses lampooned lack of involvement in some way. I don't think this would have been on mainstream radio, but I suspect I heard it repeatedly on the WQRS folk-music show around 1972.

Harry Houdini I presume? Must be since you pulled that trick right out of a hat. What a great garbled song lyrics interpreter you are.
Wow, is my brain fried out; that is the song I was looking for; now how in the heck did I come up with the lyrics I posted is beyond me.....
Thanks for restoring what little gray matter function that I have left and restoring my sanity...
Gee, I just listen to it on YouTube and the voices are gone in my head.

Thanks again Sandhouse.

**highjinx2** · January-26-14, 05:37 PM

Thanks to all for the assistance, but top honor goes to Sandbox for his quick thinking.

I usually can recall the name of tunes rattling around in my head, but this one seemed to elude me...

Small Circle of Friends, Phil Ochs at The Stable in East Lansing, 1973

And all that may have wondered, I was a big fan of CJOM and WABX.
How many recall CJOM's rock format and because of the artist expressions laws in Canada, what ever was on the album went over the air.

They did a whole Saturday afternoon on The Mothers of Invention and Frank Zappa and the words coming from the FM radio were unbelievable....they even aired Kick Out The Jams MFK'rs until local churches in Windsor protested.

From the Grande to the Eastown and all points in between, what a great time period it was in Detroit, and in my life.....

**NickCharles** · January-26-14, 06:30 PM

Well then. Perhaps this one, too, will be familiar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okULELQL5kA

**Sandhouse** · January-26-14, 08:23 PM

Ralph Spoilsport here, from Ralph Spoilsport Motors,

WABX! That was the one I couldn't think of. And Melvin Van Peebles and Firesign Theater, too!

I was in East Lansing in 1973, but don't remember the Stable. I saw "Inside Llewyn Davis" today. Boy, did we really look that dopey when listening to folk singers? Yes, we did.

"Porgy! Porgy Tirebiter!"
[[bedsprings squeaking)
"C-c-coming, mother!"

**douglasm** · January-27-14, 07:32 AM

OK, you Firesign geeks, where did:

"Your papers, please."
"But I've only got a pipe."
"Then you'd better come with me."

come from?

**Sandhouse** · January-27-14, 08:53 AM

I think we're all bozos on this bus.

Okay, enough happy hippie nostalgia. Time to kill the buzz and get back to Detroit, 2014.

Some of Phil Ochs' songs were the best kind of satire, by which I mean subtly vicious and impossible to ignore.

I finally recalled the lyrics of the last verse of "Small Circle of Friends," which went something like this:

Look outside the window. There's a woman being grabbed.
They dragged her to the bushes, and now she's being stabbed.
Maybe we should call someone, and try to stop the pain.
But Monopoly is so much fun I hate to blow the game.

And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody . . .

The reason I remember this song is because I remember Kitty Genovese, maybe because of a haunting Life Magazine photo essay, in the mid-1960's. She was killed by a maniac on a New York City sidewalk, and later research discovered that 24 or so people heard her screams and watched it happen from their apartment windows, and not one of them did so much as shout or call the police. This made big news at the time, but not many remember it today.

The next time a trendy new urbanist tells you our neighborhoods will all be safe when we move back into tenements and keep more "eyes on the street," tell him about Kitty Genovese.

Too bad Phil Ochs is gone, too, I think. We could use him.

**NickCharles** · January-27-14, 09:00 AM

Yep. The Genovese story is the one to which I referred.

Ochs was a rather unhappy guy, sad to say. One can pretty much see it on his face. I'll bet that he would be truly astonished, to think of this discussion arising in 2014.

**Honky Tonk** · January-27-14, 09:08 AM

Originally Posted by Sandhouse

I think we're all bozos on this bus.

Okay, enough happy hippie nostalgia. Time to kill the buzz and get back to Detroit, 2014.

Some of Phil Ochs' songs were the best kind of satire, by which I mean subtly vicious and impossible to ignore.

I finally recalled the lyrics of the last verse of "Small Circle of Friends," which went something like this:

Look outside the window. There's a woman being grabbed.
They dragged her to the bushes, and now she's being stabbed.
Maybe we should call someone, and try to stop the pain.
But Monopoly is so much fun I hate to blow the game.

And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody . . .

The reason I remember this song is because I remember Kitty Genovese, maybe because of a haunting Life Magazine photo essay, in the mid-1960's. She was killed by a maniac on a New York City sidewalk, and later research discovered that 24 or so people heard her screams and watched it happen from their apartment windows, and not one of them did so much as shout or call the police. This made big news at the time, but not many remember it today.

The next time a trendy new urbanist tells you our neighborhoods will all be safe when we move back into tenements and keep more "eyes on the street," tell him about Kitty Genovese.

Too bad Phil Ochs is gone, too, I think. We could use him.

You're absolutely correct that Kitty Genovese was the basis for Phil's song. You don't have to go to NY for the lack of concern. A few years ago, on a warm Summer night on Belle Isle, a woman dinged a guy's custom car. The guy was huge, intimidating, and outraged. Somehow he intimidated the woman into stripping naked in front of the gathered crowd. The poor woman was so embarassed, she jumped from the McArthur Bridge , into the Detroit River, and died. A huige crowd witnessed the scene, and no one intervened.

**mallory** · January-27-14, 09:15 AM

Originally Posted by CassTechGrad

I always kept one of the buttons on my radio tuned to WJLB.
Leon the Lover the soul street strutter, Martha Jean the Queen, and "frantic" Ernie Durham.
Attachment 22546
Attachment 22547

WOW! Thanks for this incredible memory. I worked for The Queen and Norm Miller back in the late 80's/early 90's and it was an absolute pleasure. TRUE radio people, and for a young kid from the suburbs just coming up in the biz, what an education. They never taught me that much at Wayne State. <basking in the glow of warm memories>

**Scottathew** · January-27-14, 09:15 AM

There is nothing that this forum can't figure out.

**Scrivener** · July-27-15, 11:38 AM

Believing that 48307's post is spot-on and that this forum can figure out anything Detroit-related, I have another question about obscure and fragmentary lyrics. I remember listening to the radio in the 1970s and hearing a song [[perhaps just an advertising jingle) about Detroit. IIRC, the first lines were "This is my home / This is where I want to be". The only other part of the lyrics I remember was "Greektown by night / Eastern Market shopping spree".

Since I wasn't living in Detroit at the time, I most likely heard this song or jingle while listening to Tigers games on WJR. I hope someone has a better memory than I do and recognizes it!

**txlady** · July-31-15, 04:14 PM

I'm sure there's dozens of us!

**Smirnoff** · August-01-15, 08:34 PM

Song is the "Rouge Plant Blues" by Stix & Stoned.

**Scrivener** · August-02-15, 01:26 PM

The Stables was a former horse barn on the south side of Grand River Avenue in Meridian Township, just east of the East Lansing city line. It was renovated into a music venue in the early 1970s; Phil Ochs played there at least once. My wife and I saw him at the Stables after his trip to Africa when, because of being strangled during a robbery in Kenya, his voice couldn't hit the high notes. He played that night with his right hand or wrist in a cast, joking about it.

We also saw Ochs play at Wells Hall on the Michigan State Univ. campus in 1972 when he was touring to raise money for George McGovern's presidential campaign.

**Scrivener** · August-02-15, 01:37 PM

Thanks. That is a fascinating song and I'm glad to have now heard it, but it's not the song I am trying to find. The song I mentioned in my post was sung [[at least in the version I heard on the radio) by a woman as a soulful, melodic tribute to Detroit.

**shovelhead** · August-04-15, 08:19 PM

Originally Posted by Honky Tonk

Does the name Betty Joe Beolowski mean anything? High..... on top of the David Stott building. LOVED what Phil Proctor used to do.

Oh, you mean Nancy.....

And "he's no fun, he fell right over"..........I've lost track on how many times that I have interjected that line since 1969-70......

**Honky Tonk** · August-05-15, 06:43 AM

Originally Posted by shovelhead

Oh, you mean Nancy.....

And "he's no fun, he fell right over"..........I've lost track on how many times that I have interjected that line since 1969-70......

Dad???? Yeah, me too. One of my favorites. The downside is 99.99% of the time, people have NO idea what you're talking about. Glad to run into a fellow Tirebiter.

**Sandhouse** · August-05-15, 10:42 AM

Sorry, no help this time. The "Greektown by night" song sounds like it might have been a radio-station promo from the time when Detroit was desperate for anything to congratulate itself for. The phrases sound only vaguely familiar and if I ever heard it, the memory is submerged under a lot of audio junk from the seventies.

"She'll run everything!"
"For everybody!"
"And I'll name it after Nancy."
"You mean Pushover?"
"With the invention of the motor-operated pushover . . ."

**rb336** · August-05-15, 07:12 PM

Originally Posted by douglasm

OK, you Firesign geeks, where did:

"Your papers, please."
"But I've only got a pipe."
"Then you'd better come with me."

come from?

a child's garden of grass. was that firesign theater? never realized that. I was locked in t he refrigerator or getting hung up

**rb336** · August-05-15, 07:20 PM

Has anyone figured out the original song?

**Scrivener** · August-22-15, 05:38 PM

Since no one from this smarty-pants forum has recognized it--please note that "smarty-pants" is used as a term of respect--it seems likely you are right. It could have been just an advertising jingle that burned itself [[partially and imperfectly) into my brain.

**dguy4evr** · August-23-15, 08:47 AM

Originally Posted by Honky Tonk

He's a student like you.

Easy on the 90 weight Ma! The St. Louis Aquarium Choir, I'm high all right, but I'm high on the real thing, a clean windshield, a full tank of gas, and a hot dog!

Ha, Ha, Ha, whoa, flashback time.