Country Joe and the Fish were one of my favourite bands back in those heady days of the sixties. They were the voice of protest against the obscene war in Vietnam. Their music was something new – a type of Acid Rock the like of which had not been heard. I loved it. The first two albums – Electric Music For the Mind and Body and I Fee Like I’m Fixing To Die were outstanding. I hadn’t heard a guitar sound quite like Barry Melton’s and Country Joe’s voice was so pure. The songs were a mixture of real trippy and driving political stuff.
I saw them perform a number of times back in the sixties, including the Royal Albert Hall. I also caught them five or six years ago in Leeds. They were still brilliant.
Bruce was the bass player who had jumped ship to live in England to avoid the draft and had formed Formerly Fat Harry. I wasn’t sure what to expect from a solo Bruce but I was pleased with what I got. There was a lot of humour coupled with a biting political edge. I suppose you could expect that at an International Brigade benefit.
It was a great night. Thanks to Eddie Bewsher for putting it on. A great cause and some brilliant music.
I used to play this song over and over again when I was a kid. It seemed to sum up all the confusion and angst I was feeling. It suggested to me that life wasn’t worth living unless you stood up for your ideals and spoke your mind. There were moral decisions to be made and much that was right and needed speaking out for. To keep your head down and accept all the bad things going on around you without doing anything about it was to lose yourself and allow yourself to be ground down.
You had to make something of life. Life wasn’t about making money and having an easy time; it was about having integrity and trying to make the world a better place. If there was injustice, greed, selfishness and violence then there were causes worth speaking out against.
Who am I? I’m only a single person. Even if I’m a lone voice I have integrity. One has to have self-respect.
There is no time like the present to stand up and say what you think.
There are issues all around us – Brexit, Trump, War, environmental devastation, inequality, racism, sexism, misogyny. There are no shortage of laudable causes.
It is time to protest and make your voice heard. If you don’t do something about the things you love, the visions you hold – then they will die in you and you’ll become a zombie going through the motions.
There is a time to make a stand and that time is now.
“Who Am I?”
Who am I to stand and wonder, to wait
While the wheels of fate slowly grind my life away?
Who am I?
There were some things that I loved one time
But the dreams are gone I thought were mine
And the hidden tears that once could fall
Now burn inside at the thought of all
The years of waste, the years of crime
Passions of a heart so blind
To think that but even still
As I stand exposed, the feelings are felt
And I cry into the echo of my loneliness.
Who am I to stand and wonder, to wait
While the wheels of fate slowly grind my life away?
Who am I?
What a nothing I’ve made of life
The empty words, the coward’s plight
To be pushed and passed from hand to hand
Never daring to speak, never daring to stand
And the emptiness of my family’s eyes
Reminds me over and over of lies
And promises and deeds undone
And now again I want to run
But now there is nowhere to run to.
Who am I to stand and wonder, to wait
While the wheels of fate slowly grind my life away?
Who am I?
And now my friend we meet again
We shall see which one will bends
Under the strain of death’s golden eyes
Which one of us shall win the prize
To live and which one will die
‘Tis I, my friend, yes ’tis I
Shall kill to live again and again
To clutch the throat of sweet revenge
For life is here only for the taking.
Who am I to stand and wonder, to wait
While the wheels of fate slowly grind my life away?
Who am I?
Who am I?
Country Joe and the Fish started life as a political Jug Band and went on to become the most radical voice coming out of Berkley. They pioneered the San Franciscan Acid sound of the sixties and melded it to social comment and particularly anti-Vietnam war songs.
Their first album – Electric Music for the Mind and Body, with its overtly LSD based lyrics, was the first Acid Rock album to be released and was a gem. They created a totally new sound that ranged from ethereal to strident and was ideally suited to the new climate of young minds, the light shows and use of Acid. Joe McDonald’s voice was pure and melodic and Barry Melton’s guitar sound was totally unique. I had never heard anything quite like it before.
The second album -I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die – continued the acid theme but added some more political songs such as Untitled Protest and the title track.
They were famous for the Fish Cheer – Give me an F, Give me a U, give me a C, give me a K – What’s that spell? Which was tidied up for the album to spell FISH. Back in those days of censorship and conservatism it was considered totally obscene.
Country Joe and the Fish epitomised the generation gap, antiestablishment stance and protest of the sixties more than any other band.
Their third album Together was good but showing signs of running out of steam. After that it was pretty much downhill.
I saw them on tour in Britain (without Barry Melton) in the 2000s and they were brilliant. Oh for a band of that magnitude of idealism and protest in these times!! Oh for a unified protest movement and a generation who cared about the environment, social problems and civil rights. The time is ripe.
I wrote this book to attempt to crystallise my thoughts on the best Rock albums of all time. Having lived through it all – from the fifties right through to the present – having see nearly all the major acts live (most in small clubs) – and having run the country’s first History Of Rock Music class and written books on it – I felt that I was in a unique position to express an opinion.
Country Joe and the Fish were one of my favourites. This is an extract from the book.
Country Joe & the Fish – Electric Music for the Body & Mind
I can still remember the first time I heard Country Joe & the Fish – Barry Melton’s unique West Coast Acid guitar sound completely blew my skull off. On top of that was Country Joe McDonald’s smooth crystal clear voice. Mike played it to me in his tiny room and I instantly knew that this was something completely different. It was a toss up between this album and the follow up ‘I feel like I’m fixing to die’. They are both equally brilliant in my ears. I went for this one as it was the first one I had heard and it made such an impression on me. It epitomised San Franciscan Acid Rock with its political edge and super tripped out music that sent your mind soaring.
I was introduced to this by my friend Mike who worked in the same bread factory as me. He was in to the whole West Coast scene and was attempting to grow his hair as long as he could. I remember that he refused to brush it because he was certain that would create split ends and the hair would break off and not get so long. Country Joe and Captain Beefheart were his favourite bands.
The stand out tracks for me were ‘Not so sweet Martha Lorraine,’ ‘Flyin’ High’ and ‘Porpoise mouth’ but I loved it all. The long trippy sound they created on ‘Grace’ and ‘Bass strings’ was so redolent of the times with Barry Melton’s spacey guitar. For a time they were my favourite band.
This song was sung with Joe McDonald’s crystal clear voice over a oscillating organ dirge. The effect was mesmeric; the words chilling.
Back in the sixties the Vietnam War was raging and the younger generation did not think it was a valid war. They were being conscripted into an inferno because of the US foreign policy. It was a civil war that was turned into a confrontation between the superpowers China and the US. The concept mooted was that of the domino effect. There was a terror of communism (that still exists to today). The Viet-Cong used guile and terrorist tactics. The Us used Agent Orange, Cluster bombs, Napalm and millions of tons of TNT. They dropped more bombs than were used in the whole Second World War in an attempt to blow the Vietnamese back to stone-age.
The younger generation thought there was a better way. This was the age of peace and love.
Too many people were traumatised by war, killed or maimed; too many innocent civilians were caught up in the mayhem. The result was to create even more opposition to the US.
The perception was that it was the blacks and poor who got conscripted. The rich found ways to become exempt.
The anti-Vietnam War movement created social division between the young and old. It brought into relief, politics and patriotism. There was a different attitude towards people from other cultures, races and countries.
Country Joe and the Fish were an Acid Rock band who epitomised that new political stance.
Red and swollen tears tumble from her eyes
While cold silver birds who came to cruise the skies
Send death down to bend and twist her tiny hands
And then proceed to target B in keeping with their plans
Khaki priests of Christendom, interpreters of love
Ride a stone Leviathan across a sea of blood
And pound their feet into the sand of shores they’ve never seen
Delegates from the western land to join the death machine
And we send cards and letters.
The oxen lie beside the road their bodies baked in mud
And fat flies chew out their eyes then bathe themselves in blood
And superheroes fill the skies, tally sheets in hand
Yes, keeping score in times of war takes a superman
The junk crawls past hidden death its cargo shakes inside
And soldier children hold their breath and kill them as they hide
And those who took so long to learn the subtle ways of death
Lie and bleed in paddy mud with questions on their breath
And we send prayers and praises.
At the dawn of the West Coast Acid Rock the bands came flooding out of San Francisco and Los Angeles. Activated by the social poetry of Bob Dylan and others a generation of young people had been awoken and burgeoning alternative Hippie communities had sprung up and flourished in a number of American cities. These young people had dropped out and formed their own creative communities, supporting each other and espousing their own values of peace, love, sharing and equality. They rejected the capitalist rat-race and were seeking something more fulfilling and meaningful. They were not turned on by the dream of a house in suburbia and the acquisition of money. They believed that there had to be more fun and purpose to life; that life was about community. They stood for political involvement, anti-war principles, civil rights and equality. With their long hair, bright colours and peace signs they made it clear that they opposed the principles of the society they had divorced themselves from.
The San Francisco alternative community gave rise to a number of great Rock Bands including Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Big Brother and the Holding Company, but my favourite band was always Country Joe and the Fish.
The scene was centred around Haight Asbury with clubs like Bill Grahame’s Fillmore West, Avalon Ballroom, Longshoreman’s hall, Winterland and the Carousel. There were ‘happenings’ in the Golden Gate Park where the ‘tribes’ would come together to reassert their apartness.
I fell in love with Country Joe and the Fish from the moment I heard that new guitar sound created by Barry Melton. That was confirmed when Country Joe’s crystal clear voice soared in. What was even more of a clincher was the political stance of a number of their songs.
They were the most overtly political of the West Coast Bands with songs about the Vietnam War, the H-Bomb and disparaging ditties about Nixon and LBJ. My type of band! They also produced these ethereal trippy numbers around Cohen’s organ sound that were paeans to acid.
Country Joe and the Fish were the most extreme of the West Coast groups. Those first few albums were the epitome of Acid Rock.
