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Country Joe and the Fish
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A McDonald who rocked the establishment
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Left-leaning parents named him Joe McDonald after Josef Stalin and, not much later, their son was to form one of the most overtly political music bands in rock history.
Joe joined the Navy in his teens but on his return became immersed in the political upheaval rocking California in the '60s. He occasionally published a magazine too, curiously titled Et Tu, Brute. When just 22, he cut his first album, The Goodbye Blues with Blair Hardman. During a stint with the Instant Action Jug Band, he met Barry Melton and the duo formed Country Joe and the Fish.
Among the stridently political songs they penned was the notorious F cheer that began with Gimme an F and so on, which would become their calling card in later years. Signed to the Vanguard label, Feel like I'm fixing to die rag, a black humoured track about the Vietnam war, struck a chord with pacifists like no other song did.
After an appearance in the Monterey Pop Festival and its movie, McDonald almost single-handedly led the 500,000 strong gathering in the F cheer during the Woodstock festival at Yasgur's Dairy Farm, New York. The `cheer' didn't go down too well in Worcester, Massachusetts, where they were arrested `for inciting the audience to lewd behaviour'; in other words, the cheer. Melton was involved in a marijuana bust too but with McDonald appeared in the 1971 film Zachariah.
Melton and McDonald worked together at times and separately also, the former releasing Bright Sun is Shining in 1971 and the latter, Paradise with an Ocean View four years later. McDonald's two tribute albums, Thinking of Woody Guthrie and Tonight I'm singing for you, brimmed with ideological fervour. They regrouped for Reunion in 1977 but McDonald went solo again for Rock and Roll from the Planet Earth.
Still a peace lover, McDonald advocates environmental and Vietnam Veterans' cause, his zeal evident in many memorials erected across the Bay area that's vehemently opposed to war.
A GEORGE ANTONY
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