We Never Talk About...

[rayge]

...Country Joe & the Fish.

It was hearing the Serpent Power track in the cup that brought it back to me.

In the late 1960s, as a pre-druggy student who was reading Rolling Stone, the first of the SanFran bands to give me an inkling of the otherness to come were this lot. The mutant British version of Surrealistic Pillow wasn't much of a break at first listen from what the Byrds or Bryan Wilson or indeed The Mamas & the Papas were doing, while the Dead's first album seemed clunky second-rate blues for the most part. But Electric Music for the Mind and Body didn't much sound like anybody else. Folk-based like the Airplane - they were on Vanguard after all - but spinning way off-base into something genuinely new (to me) and psychedelicious, because they had a vibrato-besotted blues-based geetarist who liked a bit of raga, an organist who specialized in colour washes, distortion and sounds most unlike the pop Farfisas and jazz/blues Hammonds my ears were used to, and a very nifty, light-touch drummer. I suspect the bassist was up to no good in parts, too, but I never listen to those guys . It's one of those albums that really needs to be listened to all through, with instrumentals and songs and drug-soaked moods bleeding into one another. One song stands alone, though.

But I didn't come here to talk about that.

Of course the next album gave them a smash hit/millstone with Fish Cheer/I Feel Like I'm Fixing to Die Rag, which effectively turned them into an Anti-War cheer-leading novelty act in many people's minds. The third album, a plangent parade of rampant egos clashing, ironically entitled Together, I haven't had out of its sleeve for neary half a century.

After Together, the bassist left, and the fourth album, Here We Are Again, proved to be their last - although, surprisingly for me, it was their biggest seller. And that's why I'm here. I was going to put this in the album a day series, but basically HWAA is, very much the curate's egg. Nothing actually bad, but some distinctly undistinguished stuff, and Barry Melton's over-the-top wig-out on the anti-drug song Crystal now probably sounding not quite such a good idea, but the first three tracks I've come to see as finely constructed pop songs.

And I just love Donovan's Reef. There's a 38 minute version of this song featuring Garcia, Steve Miller and other luminaries live at the Filmore should you be so inclined, but here's the one from the album.

[Deleted]

I don't rate them at all, but I don't want to say more than that (at least not for now) as a negative post being the first reply after putting so much effort into the opening post would be a bit dispiriting.

[Charlie O.]

I love these guys - warts and all (as it were). I don't mean by that that I love everything they recorded (I'm not a complete idiot), or even that I can't nitpick the stuff I do love. But I nonetheless love what I love so much that forgiveness comes easy.

I knew of them from a very early age, from a photo and write-up (basically a press bio) in the paperback FLIP's Groovy Guide To The Groops!, but I didn't hear them until I was 12 or 13, on the Woodstock album. A local store had the "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die" LP, I took a punt, and I was gone gone gone.

Those first two albums are, for all indentured porpoises, perfect to me (although I suspect that the first could benefit from a remix). Like most of the truly great bands of that era, that Fish lineup sounded like they all lived together in a house where they did nothing but drop acid and play music every waking hour, developing their own unique and very personal sound.

One of my prized possessions is a Country Joe & The Fish songbook, which I stumbled upon in an instrument store not terribly long after I'd become a fan. It includes a surprisingly candid history of the band, written by Sam Charters, the man who signed them to Vanguard and produced most of their albums (and who is probably better known as a writer).

One thing Charters mentions there that stuck with me is that Electric Music was deliberately sequenced so that each LP side would go from the most outer-directed songs to the most inner-directed ones; although he doesn't mention it, they did the same with their second album (and then never again). I don't know if that would work with everyone's music, but on those first two Fish albums it really helps make each of them an experience.

Another Charters revelation is that Country Joe temporarily LEFT the band after recording the second album. They eventually reunited, obviously - but in the meantime The Fish had continued to play without him, and (out of necessity) had started writing songs in earnest. Which is probably the main reason the third album Together seems so un-together.

Speaking of inner-directed: this, for me, is the highlight of Here We Go Again, though it's pretty close to a Joe McDonald solo effort:





And Ray, there was in 1970 a fifth album: C.J. Fish, produced (rather splendidly) by Tom Wilson. There are a few terrific songs, and on balance the album is an improvement on its immediate predecessor - but McDonald and Barry Melton were the only original members left, times and attitudes were changing fast, and... maybe Country Joe & The Fish were just never meant for the '70s.








A modestly delightful (or delightfully modest) homage to rock and roll... and Mose Allison:

[Deleted]

I really like the sound of those CJ tracks.

[Charlie O.]

Ray, did you ever hear their 1977 Reunion album? I always figured it must be depressing, and gave it a wide berth - but this instrumental from it just popped up in my YouTube feed and by gum it sounds pretty sweet!

[rayge]

Apr 26, 2024 1:55:13 GMT Charlie O. said:

Ray, did you ever hear their 1977 Reunion album? I always figured it must be depressing, and gave it a wide berth - but this instrumental from it just popped up in my YouTube feed and by gum it sounds pretty sweet!

Cheers for that Charlie. Never seen that album before, let alone heard anything from it.

Pretty and sweet are good words for it. Barry Melton can get really lyrical when he isn't doing his blues axeman schtick.

[Charlie O.]

I found a cheap copy (CD) on Discogs and ordered it - I'll let you know how it turns out.

[adamcoan]

Always liked them, great name, look and sound. The mighty wah! Of their day.

[Charlie O.]

So: I listened to Reunion for the first (only?) time last night.

"Gibson's Song" aside, I'm having a hard time deciding whether it's not as bad as I always feared, or exactly as bad as I always feared. I'm definitely glad that I didn't hear it in the late '70s when it came out and when I was just getting into the band - that would have been traumatizing. From this distance I can appreciate that there was at least some degree of goodwill effort involved... but after a decade apart, a band can't just conjure up the kind of group unity of purpose, singularity of approach, and cultural relevance that these guys had in their heyday, and the times had undeniably changed (as Chicken Hirsh's occasional attempts at disco drumming make tragically clear).

Goodwill effort notwithstanding, I do wonder how this album came about. Was it the usual case of a record company offering them money and them being unable to say "no", or was it something they had actually considered doing for a while and all the pieces finally fell into place? It's hard to tell. Neither Country Joe's website nor Country Joe & The Fish's does more than deign to acknowledge that the album exists.

Every member - and this is the classic 1967/68 lineup, produced by good ol' Sam Charters - contributes at least one song, just like on Together; Hirsh's is about the reunion itself, as is one of Joe McDonald's. Another of McDonald's is a lament about the near-extinction of the condor - right on, man, but the song stinks. There's a revamp of "Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine" (interesting), and an expansion of a then-unreleased 1965 Joe-ditty called "Dirty Claus Rag" (less interesting). There's some Hippie Dad Rock in Barry Melton's "No One Can Teach You How To Live" (actually one of the better songs) and, I kid you not, "Love Is A Mystery", and David Cohen's "Dreams" (hippie-dippy), and there's another rag from Bruce Barthol called "Insufficient Funds" (sufficient filler). And there are plenty of string and horn overdubs - mostly if not entirely extraneous, by my lights. "Gibson's Song" (Cohen's other contribution) is the best track by miles.

Speaking of Cohen, Hirsh's reunion song recalls that David originally "left in anger... Lost respect for the rest of the band". I don't know that story. I do know that that was the case with Bruce Barthol, who quit in protest after the group voted not to play at the Yippies' "Festival Of Life" in Chicago, which turned into the legendary police riot.

Innarestin' bunch of characters, no doubt about it - and y'know, despite everything, I did kinda get a kick out of hearing them play together one more time...