Country Joe McDonald
http://www.crawdaddy.com/index.php/2010/08/27/what-makes-a-legend-country-joe-mcdonald/
by: Denise Sullivan
8/27/2010
Who: Country Joe McDonald
Classic track: "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag." "Country Joe"
McDonald's early '40s baby diapers couldn't have been redder: Legend
has it his activist parents named him after Joe Stalin. Honorably
discharged from the US Navy in 1965, Joe made the move from El Monte,
California, where he'd schooled himself in R&B and old time music, to
Berkeley at the height of the Free Speech Movement. As a budding
editor and publisher of the alternative magazine, Rag Baby, he was
inspired to put his political ideas into a song for a "talking"
edition of the paper. The result was the first pressing of the "I
Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" EP and the birth of Country Joe and
the Fish (with Barry Melton) in the fall of 1965. Transitioning from
the coffeehouse scene to the stages of the Fillmore and Avalon,
complete with pioneering electric light shows, Country Joe and the
Fish would become synonymous with all things '60s and San Francisco,
while staying true to their speechifying Berkeley roots.
Career high: Grabbing a guitar and jumping up for an impromptu set
following Richie Havens at Woodstock, a Fish-less Country Joe
McDonald asked 300,000 hippies to give him an "F," before delivering
an unforgettable version of the "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die
Rag." The band performance at Monterey Pop is also indelible.
On the downside: Forty-five years later, McDonald still has cause to
stand and deliver his strong anti-war commentaries and to lead the
sing-along chorus of "And it's 1-2-3, What are we fighting for?"
Essential listening: Electric Music for the Mind and Body, produced
by bluesologist Samuel Charters for the once freethinking Vanguard
label, released in 1967. The groundbreaking SF Sound album includes
the psychedelic "Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine", which cracked the
Billboard Top 100, along with free-form radio faves, like the
trippy/organ intense "Section 43", "Grace" (for Grace Slick), "Super
Bird" (for LBJ), and the soul-inspired "Love." It was followed by I
Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die, which includes the aforementioned "Rag"
and "Cheer", as well as "Janis" (for Janis Joplin). According to
McDonald's website, both albums remained on Billboard's album charts
"around #32 for about two years."
And if you like those: McDonald's second solo album, Thinking of
Woody Guthrie, from 1969 is part exploration of the McDonald family's
own Oklahoma roots and early tribute to an American master. The
thematic Vietnam Experience (1995)recorded with a band that includes
Fish David Cohen on pianooccasionally reprises his trademark style
of juxtaposing the happy jug-band sound with serious subject matter.
What he's doing now: McDonald still lives in Berkeley and continues
to record and perform his own anti-war songs, as well as those of
Guthrie, on acoustic guitar, all over this land.
Quotable: "Nobody really knew what happened. But we know it happened…
But nobody who was there really remembers what happened"Country Joe
to the San Francisco Chronicle in 2009 on the 40th anniversary of Woodstock
Watch the action back when: Country Joe's "F-U-C-K Cheer, I Feel Like
I'm Fixin' to Die"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4xD8j8ye9k
And Now: Country Joe's George Bush song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I59rCNVrXdg
.
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