COUNTRY JOE & THE FISH TOGETHER LP CLEAN ORIGINAL'68 GF

COUNTRY JOE & THE FISH TOGETHER LPCategory / Style / Moods: Rock * * Psychedelic * Folk-Rock Moods * Confrontational * Irreverent * Reflective * Playful * Druggy * Organic * Laid-Back/ Mellow * Trippy * Snide13.77 / 2007-12-18 S asocc1968 VANGUARD LPTITLE: TOGETHERARTIST: COUNTRY JOE & THE FISHCONDITIONCOVER: VG+VINYL: VG+Click here for info on grading and abbreviationsGATEFOLD SLEEVE ORIGINAL PRESSClick the pix for a better view TRACKS: Disc: 11.Rock & Soul MusicBarthol, Cohen, Hirsh ... 6:512.SusanHirsh 3:283.Mojo NavigatorDenson, McDonald, Melton 2:244.Bright Suburban Mr. & Mrs. Clean MachineHirsh, Melton 2:195.Good Guys/Bad Guys Cheer/The Streets of Your TownMelton 3:396.The Fish Moan:277.The Harlem SongMcDonald 4:208.Waltzing in the MoonlightHirsh, Melton 2:139.Away Bounce My BubblesHirsh 2:2510.CetaceanBarthol 3:3811.An Untitled ProtestMcDonald 2:45Review by William Ruhlmann Together, Country Joe & the Fish's third album, was the group's most consistent, most democratic, and their best-selling record. Unlike their first two albums, which were dominated by Country Joe McDonald's voice and compositions, Together featured the rest of the band -- guitarists Barry Melton and David Cohen, bassist Bruce Barthol, and drummer Chicken Hirsh -- almost as prominently as McDonald. That's usually a formula for disaster, but in this case it gave the album more variety and depth: McDonald tended to favor droning mantras like the album-closing "An Untitled Protest," which worked better when contrasted with the likes of Melton's catchy anti-New York diatribe, "The Streets of Your Town," and the group-written "Rock and Soul Music." Songs like the latter cast the group as a soul revue, true, and they couldn't quite pull that off, but Together had the charming quality of unpredictability; you never knew what was coming next. Unfortunately, what came next in the band's career was a split. Barthol was out by September 1968, Cohen and Hirsh followed in January 1969. Thereafter, McDonald and Melton fronted various Fish aggregations, but it was never the same, even when this lineup regrouped for Reunion in 1977. And soon, "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" took on a life of its own. The band had first recorded it before they were on Vanguard, as a folk number, and the version on the Vanguard album showed the most elaborate production yet. In the summer of 1968, the band was appearing in New York City at the Shaefer Summer Music Festival, sponsored by the beer company, at the Wollman Skating Rink in Central Park. By that time, the mood of the country had darkened considerably from 1967 -- the Democrats were split between pro- and antiwar factions, while the Republicans were capitalizing on the forces of reaction among white voters in the South, in the first national election since the passage of the landmark civil rights and voting rights legislation of the mid-'60s. And everybody seemed to either hate -- or were just plain suspicious of -- the motives of college students of the activist variety, who were a big chunk of Country Joe & the Fish's audience. Amid a lot of head-shaking and hand-wringing, many over-forties, even those with sons who could be drafted, seemed to wish that the majority of those "kids" would just act like willing cannon fodder and shut up. And the troop commitments stayed in the six-figure range, while three- and four-star generals whose lives and careers were inextricably tied to the military set goals and strategies that politicians endorsed and accepted and continued to bankroll in their budgets. In a moment that could be filed under "It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time" (and it was), at that particular Shaefer concert, the group was planning on doing "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" when drummer Chicken Hirsh suggested that the opening, high school-style cheer ("Gimme an 'F,' gimme an 'I'") be changed to something a lot more...expressive. The cheer became an expletive, the crowd in those relatively innocent but darkening times devoured it, and the new cheer stuck -- the song, as originally recorded, got onto AM radio once again in its wake, and suddenly 12- and 13-year-olds (like this writer at the time) from places like Whitestone, Queens (Archie Bunker territory in New York City), 3,500 miles from Berkeley, who'd never even heard of the venues in Manhattan where the band had played, knew who Country Joe & the Fish were. The word spread as though by jungle telegraph, and the LP and the song were passed around like some secret code This exquisite piece of retro music history is a vinyl sound recording (not a CD). Please visit the A Sound Deal store for similar items and information on grading and shipping. Add me to your favorites for red hot sales bulletins and sneak previews of upcoming products. Combine Items to Save $$$! Click here to check the store for more!©A Sound Deal