Showing posts with label Country Joe McDonald. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Country Joe McDonald. Show all posts

August 28, 2019

20,000 vinyl LPs 194: Woodstock ~ Looking back after 50 years

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Woodstock vinyl LP gatefold cover open
left photo photographer unknown, right photo by Burk Uzzle
photo of album cover by Styrous®


Fifty years ago this month, in 1969, a miracle called Woodstock was staged on a remote 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York and music as well as the world was never the same. 

My favorite film dealing with the event is Taking Woodstock directed by Ang Lee and based on the memoir Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert, and a Life by Elliot Tiber and Tom Monte.     

I was going full speed ahead with my corporate ambitions (I would "drop out" a few months later) so did not go to the event, unfortunately, but my friend Genie was there and here's what she had to say about it.     

Genie:   
"I haven’t really thought about it much in the years since. My memory is that it was an extremely peaceful event given the incredibly stressful situation with rain, mud, lack of water and other things . . .  toilets. I don’t remember ever seeing any fights break out, I don’t even remember drunken things, people being drunk and obnoxious. Now, we know there were other mind altering drugs but I think that was very amazing.    

Yes, everyone was using mood altering stuff to enjoy this incredible party but even when it was raining and mud still, there was an amazing magic kind of thing because it was just really peaceful, helpful and joyful people. 

I remember trying to get to a potty and walking through crowds and crowds of people and wondering if I would find my way back to my people. But we did and it was some magical thing going.   

The music was obviously out of this world and never to be experienced again. I think most people at the moment, including myself, weren’t thinking much of the history, only of the moment, but then we all kind of went back to the “Summer of Love” thing. It was just very much all about finding a new way, you know.       
It was very hard because there was no food. Mr. Yazgur had cows and some of the more daring young men went out and got corn, we ate what I called “cow corn”; we would roast it and eat it. It was just terrible food but it was better than nothing.         

Max Yazgur farm - 1968 
photographer unknown

It was such an enormous group of people, so things could have been happening that we would never have known about where we were in that massive group of people. So, I have a recollection of that [the sandwich distribution] but my people didn’t go running for the sandwiches because there was no way they could have fed all those people.  

Woodstock Opening Ceremony 
photographer unknown

Anyway, by the time the sun came out, it was still a mess, I mean the mud and the steam and all that happens in that kind of weather. It’s something you really DO want to forget because it is really awful.      

Woodstock rain
photographer unknown


Over arching was the art, the music, the joy, the people getting along no matter what and no matter how much drugs or alcohol people had it was all about the fun and the wonderment of it all coming together.

I think that what happened in the media was all true. The superstars were truly superstars. Everybody wanted to see Jimi Hendrix and he, of course, was a show stopper. So, I think that the truth is everything that was recorded by all others, every band that was given stardom really did take the show away.

And people played all night long, all day long. I can’t remember specifically anymore, many of the stars, let’s say, Grateful Dead and Big Brother, would play together when there was nothing going on. I remember to some degree, people in the crowd getting up on stage being able to sing or play instruments with these stars. It was everybody just getting along."     








Woodstock vinyl LP gatefold interior open
left photo photographer unknown, right photo by Burk Uzzle
photo of album cover by Styrous®    

     
     
Side one
  1. "I Had a Dream" (John Sebastian) – 2:38 (2:53)
  2. "Going Up the Country" (Alan Wilson) – 3:19 (5:53)
  3. "Freedom (Motherless Child)" (Richie Havens) – 5:13 (5:26)
  4. "Rock and Soul Music" (McDonald, Melton, David Cohen, Barthol, Hirsh) – 2:09 (2:09)
  5. "Coming into Los Angeles" (Arlo Guthrie) – 2:05 (2:50)
  6. "At the Hop" (Artie Singer, David White, John Medora) – 2:13 (2:33)
Side two
  1. "The "Fish" Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag" (McDonald) – 3:02 (3:48)
  2. "Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man" (Roger McGuinn, Gram Parsons) – 2:08 (2:38)
    • Performed by Joan Baez & Jeffrey Shurtleff.
  3. "Joe Hill" (Alfred Hayes, Earl Robinson) – 2:40 (5:34)
  4. "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" (Stephen Stills) – 8:04 (9:02)
  5. "Sea of Madness" (Neil Young) – 3:22 (4:20)
Side three
  1. "Wooden Ships" (Stills, David Crosby, Paul Kantner—Kantner not credited on original release) – 5:26 (5:26)
  2. "We're Not Gonna Take It" (Pete Townshend) – 4:39 (6:54)
    • Performed by The Who. (The performance on the album picks up mid-song at the very end of the "We're Not Gonna Take It" portion and then finishes with the "See Me, Feel Me" and "Listening to You" sections.) The final 1:50 of the track is an emergency announcement and the statement that declared "It's a free concert from now on".
  3. "With a Little Help from My Friends" (John Lennon, Paul McCartney) – 7:50 (10:06)
    • Performed by Joe Cocker. In the CD version, the first disc would close with this track, with a 1:30 long recording of the rainstorm.
Side four
  1. "Soul Sacrifice" (Santana, Rolie, Brown, Carabello, Shrieve, Areas) – 8:05 (13:52)
    • Performed by Santana. The first 3 minutes of the track is the "Crowd Rain Chant," a chant started by the crowd as an attempt to stop the rainstorm.
  2. "I'm Going Home" (Alvin Lee) – 9:20 (9:57)
Side five
  1. "Volunteers" (Marty Balin, Kantner) – 2:45 (3:31)
    • Performed by Jefferson Airplane. The final 34 seconds or so of the track is a speech by Max Yasgur, praising the crowd for coming to the festival.
  2. "Medley" (Performed by Sly & the Family Stone) – 13:47 (15:29)
  3. "Rainbows All Over Your Blues" (Sebastian) – 2:05 (3:54)
Side six
  1. "Love March" (Gene Dinwiddie, Phillip Wilson) – 8:43 (8:59)
  2. "Medley" (Performed by Jimi Hendrix.) – 12:51 (13:42)
    • "Star Spangled Banner" (Traditional, arrangement, Jimi Hendrix)– 5:40
    • "Purple Haze" (Hendrix) – 3:28
    • "Instrumental Solo" (Hendrix) – 3:43 (retitled and re-edited when Hendrix's Woodstock show was released more fully in the 1990s. The improvised, fast solo section immediately following "Purple Haze" was heavily cut in the original Woodstock film and soundtrack, and most of the track here is what would later be titled "Villanova Junction", a slow bluesy ballad with the band joining in the background. The uncut version of the solo was restored in the director's cut of Woodstock and on the video of Jimi Hendrix: Live at Woodstock and titled "Woodstock Improvisation")
     
     
   

     
Viewfinder links:     
       
Joan Baez      
Canned Heat       
Joe Cocker      
Jerry Garcia     
Grateful Dead       
Jimi Hendrix      
The Who      
        
Net links:     
       
Woodstock website       
Rolling Stone ~ Woodstock: ‘It Was Like Balling for the First Time’ 
Consequenceofsound ~ How much each artist earned from playing Woodstock         
Rockhall ~ Woodstock at 50 exhibition          
CBS News ~ Woodstock at 50       
Smithsonian ~ Woodstock—How to Feed 400,000 Hungry Hippies           
NBC News ~ Woodstock 50: How the golden anniversary festival went off track    
USA Today ~ Woodstock 50: What has gone wrong?      
Vice.com ~ Canceled Woodstock 50        
       
YouTube links     
     
     
     


   

Genie - 2013
photo by Styrous®





"It was amazing!"
                        ~ Genie - August 25, 2019

       
       
       
      
Styrous® ~ Wednesday, August 28, 2019            







     
       
      
     
       

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May 5, 2014

101 Reel-to-Reel Tapes 64: Country Joe & the Fish ~ I Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die









Country Joe & the Fish ~ 
I Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die




In addition to my 20,000 Vinyl LP collection I'm selling, I have reel-to-reel, pre-recorded tapes for sale as well (see link below). If interested, contact me by email please, not by a comment. 

~ ~ ~


Country Joe and the Fish was a jug band from the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960's that was one of many music groups to protest against the war in Vietnam. It was a fusion of blues and rock with a touch of country thrown in.

Born to a Jewish mother and a communist father in Washington, D. C., in 1942, Joe McDonald moved to Berkeley in 1962 after four years in the Marines.

The origin of the name, Country Joe & the Fish, appears to have come from the band's manager, ED Denson, who coined the phrase drawing from Mao's saying about "the fish who swim in the sea of the people;" the Country Joe part has numerous variants, the most oft-told refers to Joe's parents having named Joe for Joseph Stalin, whose nickname during World War II was "Country Joe."

In 1968, Denson said, "How it happened was simplicity itself. At a rally for a radical candidate for Congress, we saw the Fugs put on what was then a really mind-blowing show — the audience was stunned, and we were overjoyed. Contacting them, we arranged for a concert on the Berkeley Campus presented by the Pretentious Folk Front."

The group began with "Country Joe" McDonald (lead vocals) and Barry "The Fish" Melton (lead guitar), recording and performing for the "Teach-in" protests against the Vietnam War in 1965. McDonald and Melton added musicians as needed over the life of the band. By 1967, the group included Gary "Chicken" Hirsh (drums) (born March 9, 1940, in Chicago, Illinois); David Cohen (keyboards) (born August 4, 1942, in Brooklyn, New York) and Bruce Barthol (bass) (born November 11, 1947 in Berkeley, California). The 1967 lineup lasted only two years, and by the 1969 Woodstock Festival, the lineup included Greg 'Duke' Dewey (drums), Mark Kapner (keyboards) and Doug Metzler (bass).





reel-to-reel tape box cover
photo by Styrous®




The opener for the album, The "Fish" Cheer / I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag, is one of the most delightful anti-Vietnam War protest songs ever written. Bouncy and fast, it propells right along with the aid of a whacky and irreverent kazoo.  It is sometimes also referred to as the Vietnam Song. It was supposed to be on the first album of the group, Electric Music for the Mind and Body, but Vanguard Records vetoed it, so it wound up on the second album. The song was never a big hit, but was nonetheless well-known, and in the film, Woodstock, the audience can clearly be heard singing along. It was supposedly written in less than 30 minutes.

The song begins with a "Fish Cheer", in which the band spells out the word "F-I-S-H" in the manner of cheerleaders at American football games ("Give me an F", etc.). The "Fish Cheer" later gave way to the "Fuck Cheer", winning widespread approval from audiences and disapproval from others. In 1970, Country Joe was arrested for giving the "Fish Cheer" in public, and was charged with obscenity.

The song was regularly broadcast into Hỏa Lò Prison (the "Hanoi Hilton"), in North Vietnam, to American prisoners of war by their captors. The prisoners later reported it actually boosted their morale as they sang along.




reel-to-reel tape box back
photo by Styrous®




Pat's Song is a phenominal tune. It starts with a quiet acoustic guitar played by Barry "The Fish" Melton, then goes into a slow dreamy waltz with a quiet celeste accompaniment. It wanders around and has some nice electric guitar work by McDonald. It gets a bit crazy for a few seconds then settles back to the waltz for a total length of 5:25. 






reel-to-reel tape box back detail
detail photo by Styrous®



Then there is Janis, a tender serenade with a harpsichord and harmonica that fuses waltz, rag, country and western. The song was written for Janis Joplin; they were lovers at one point.  

Magoo fits into the quiet retrospective category with thunder accompaniment to echoey, processed vocals by McDonald. It gets a bit strange before it fades back to the quiet mode; then it ends with a short (ten seconds), kind of bossa nova feel to it.



reel-to-reel tape box back detail
detail photo by Styrous®






Thought Dream starts as a spiritual with organ then goes into a slow rock ballad. It is dreamy, thoughtful, a bit of an odd ball and strange. The organ, played by David Cohen, continues throughout the song.

Thursday starts off whacky but goes into a moderate speed, kind of syncopated beat with some great guitar work.

Eastern Jam has a kind of White Rabbit by the  Jefferson Airplane feeling to me. It is an instumental that is prog rock at its best with some fantastic guitar work.    





reel-to-reel tape box back detail
detail photo by Styrous®




There is an envelope/promo form for information about other music available on open reel (reel-to-reel) and eight-track Ampex tapes.



Ampex envelope
photo by Styrous®




From a High Times interview:

"Steve Miller won’t work with me. Steve Stills won’t work with me. The list of people is really, really long. Mickey Hart is afraid of me because I talk about vets and the Vietnam War all the time. I’ve become larger than life and there’s really nothing I can do about it. For example, when I played this year at the 30th anniversary of the Kent State killings, the administration was worried about two people on the program: Country Joe and Mumia Abu-Jamal."






New From Ampex!!
Stereo Tape '68
Ampex envelope back
photo by Styrous®



Ampex envelope open
photo by Styrous®


photo by Styrous®


reel-to-reel tape label detail
detail photo by Styrous®



Track list:

Side 1:

    "The "Fish" Cheer / I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag"" (McDonald) – 3:44
    "Who Am I" (McDonald) – 4:05
    "Pat's Song" (McDonald) – 5:26
    "Rock Coast Blues" (McDonald) – 3:57
    "Magoo" (McDonald) – 4:44
    "Janis" (McDonald) – 2:36

Side 2:

   "Thought Dream" (McDonald) – 6:39
    "Thursday" (Cohen, Hirsh) – 3:20
    "Eastern Jam" (Bartol, Cohen, Hirsh, Melton) – 4:27
    "Colors For Susan" (McDonald) – 5:58

Personnel:
 
Country Joe McDonald: vocals, guitar, bells, tambourine
Barry Melton: vocals, guitar
David Cohen: guitar, organ
Bruce Barthol: bass, harmonica
Gary "Chicken" Hirsh: drums



Credits:

Producer: Samuel Charters


Recorded: 1966 – March 1967
Released: November 1967
Genre: Psychedelic rock
Length: 44:56
Label: Vanguard - VG 9266
Reel-to-Reel Tape





Country Joe & the Fish website
The Well website



reel-to-reel tapes on eBay





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