COUNTRY JOE AND THE FISH
important work in color
1967: Electric Music for Mind and
Body * I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die. 1968: Together. 1969: Here
We Go Again * Greatest Hits of Country Joe and the Fish. 1970: C.J. Fish. 1971: Life and Times of Country Joe and
the Fish. 1977: Reunion. 1987: The Collected Country Joe and the
Fish.
COUNTRY JOE MCDONALD: 1970: Thinking of Woody Guthrie * Tonight
I'm Singing Just for You * Hold On It's Coming. 1971: War, War, War - Composed by
Country Joe McDonald from the poems of Robert W. Service. 1972: Live, Incredible. 1975: Paradise
with an Ocean View. 1977: Goodbye Blues. 1978: Rock and Roll Music from
the Planet Earth.
Country Joe's work with the Fish showed an easy facility for
minor-chord love ballads with more-than-usual atmosphere, ersatz
novelty tunes, astute social-political consciousness-raising, and
off-hand, not too inspired, psychedelia. Because Joe was one of
several writers in the Fish, his own disparate nature, along with
the song-flavorings of the rest of the band, created an unfocused
unit. Vanguard Records, a lean record corporations known
mainly for its folk acts, may not have provided the production
values necessary for an experimental San Francisco band, and most
of the Fish albusm are under-produced. Like almost all San
Francisco bands, C.J. and the Fish played well. Their Chicago
blues influences were present in Barry Melton's often shrill, but
fluid, lead solos and fills (his tone was almost an exact
duplicate of Jorma Kauknonen's early work with the Airplane), and
the Chicken Hirsh/Bruce Barthol rhythm section was noticeably
tighter than average. But the band's simplicity didn't quite
flower into the expected flamboyance of psychedelia and their
attempts in this area are a little tedious. It's this failed
psychedelia as well as the dated topicality of some of their
jokey/political songs, which gives a quaint tinge to most of
their albums. Here We Are Again has a certain amount of
sixties' charm in it's eclectic approach: musicians from Count
Basie's band of that time added a horn section to the band’s
diverse approach. But C.J. Fish is the band's finest
achievement, an unsung classic of sixties’ San Francisco
music; it's an aural, psychedelic haze that find's its focus
around spooky, atmospheric love songs, trance-inducing rhythms
and echoed, shimmering guitar lines.
Country Joe's solo career
continued the multi-faceted approach with
the same results. Although his consciousness-raising songs find
significant peaks in tunes from various albums ("Save the
Whale," "Copiapo," "Coyote," "Blood
on the Ice:" and his novelty tunes and love songs also now
and then seem memorable ("Jamila," "Holy
Roller," "Breakfast for Two" "Southern
Cross," "U.F.O."); as often as not they lack the
consistent spark that makes you want to listen again. Rock and
Roll Music from the Planet Earth is quintessential Joe,
though, and War, War, War is a harrowing anti-war classic,
cinematic in atmosphere, and boasting, in Robert Service's poems,
a poetry of experience that makes Bob Dylan's early anti-war
rhetoric seem tepid.
Most recently Country Joe recorded an album with the young British band knows as Bevis Frond. We’ll let you know what it sounds like.
For our complete listings of bands, visit our
King of Pop Music Reviews Index
SF
Music Chronicle Home
Contact Us