Collection CountryJoeMcDonald Band/Artist Country Joe McDonald. Every time he heard Fixin-to-Die, it boosted his morale. As Michael Kramer observes in The Republic of Rock, the music of the 1960s and early 70s gave the generation a sonic framework for thinking, feeling, discussing and dancing out the vexing problems of democratic togetherness and individual liberation.. (hed eventually pay a $500 fine). Country Joe McDonald - NNDB Show, led by then Berkeley neighbor Jane Fonda. His anti-war I Feel Like Im Fixin To Die Rag became a memorable Woodstock moment. Why China is trying to mediate in Russia's war with Ukraine Over six summer Sundays, an estimated 300,000 people in total gathered to see acts including Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight & the Pips and like the upstate Woodstock crowd Sly and the Family Stone. Although the crowd loved it, the management of the Schaefer Beer Festival did not and kicked the band off the tour for life. In the early 1960s, he began busking on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, California. Joe McDonald may have written the most in-your-face anti-war, anti-military song to come out of the '60s, but he was also one of the very few musicians on the San Francisco scene who'd served in uniform. Just about all the guys I served with in Vietnam in 1970 and 1971 laughed at Edwin Starrs War because we knew better than he did that it was good for absolutely nothin., Many of those tensions and crosscurrents came to a head around Country Joe McDonald, the guiding spirit of Country Joe and the Fish, whose unplanned, slightly reluctant performance of I-Feel-Like-Im-Fixin-to-Die Rag at Woodstock in August 1969 placed a veterans perspective on Vietnam at the center of musical protest. McDonald has recorded 33 albums and has written hundreds of songs over a career spanning 60 years. It was time for the second act on the second day of a 1969 music festival in upstate New York, but the band, Santana, was having trouble getting it together. Im sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event. Country Joe McDonald: Yeah, he did that! Harkening back to his days as the high school band leader, Mr. McDonald included a call-and-response with the other four band members. Country Joe and the Fish was an American psychedelic rock band formed in Berkeley, California, in 1965.The band was among the influential groups in the San Francisco music scene during the mid- to late 1960s. HubPages is a registered trademark of The Arena Platform, Inc. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. [3] At the age of 17, he enlisted in the United States Navy for three years and was stationed in Japan. COUNTRY JOE McDONALD 1970 original POSTER ADVERT HOLD ON ITS - eBay This series highlights the artists who performed at Woodstock August 15-18, 1969. Still, the song lives on. Its a soldiers song from a soldiers background and point of view. Naturally, this is reflected in McDonalds music. She sang backup, Live from Willie Nelson 90 tribute: Keith Richards joins Willie at the Bowl, At Willie Nelson 90, country, rock and rap stars pay tribute, but Willie and Trigger steal the show. . Associated Press writer Michael Hill contributed from Albany, New York. McDonald wrote his iconic song "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag" in just 30 minutes. In this Aug. 17, 1969 photo, workers carry medical supplies that arrived by helicopter on the grounds of the Woodstock Music and Art Festival in Bethel, N.Y. (AP). They would have thought I was making a joke., When McDonald stands on the Forum stage tonight as a proud Navy veteran, the crowd will know its no joke. He has explained that he was inspired to write a folk song about how soldiers have no choice but to follow orders, but with the irreverence of rock 'n' roll. The band has performed 6.Recent Work, The origin of the name 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.". So the M.C. McDonald was married to Kathe Werum from 1963 to 1966 and married Robin Menken a year after his divorce from Werum. Innovative, sarcastic, and political, Country Joe and The Fish was a prominent psychedelic rock band in San Francisco Bay Area in mid- to late 60s. Opposition to the draft helped fuel the sounds of protest Draft Dodger Rag, Universal Soldier, It Aint Me Babe. But they were songs we G.I.s knew and often sang in Vietnam. [7]. Money Minute, What's next for experimental AI projects in the C4ISR sphere, Military sex assault reports rise, even as Army numbers fall, Zero trust could have limited Pentagon leak, Navy CTO says, Taliban kill mastermind of suicide bombing at Kabul airport, Ship fires cost the Navy dearly, but lessons still need learning, Russian spy intrigue fizzles in Coast Guard vet, wife ID theft case. After all these years, what Mr. McDonald holds closest about the song is the way it was received by Vietnam veterans. After 30 albums and more than four decades in the public eye as a folksinger, Country Joe McDonald qualifies as one of the best known names from the 60s rock era still performing. Joe and his band had signed a recording contract with Vanguard Records in December of '66 and, having recorded it at Sierra Sound in Berkeley, were unaware of and more or less free from the watchful eyes of a record company. Issue number one of the magazine was a talking version released as an EP, with 100 copies produced. He is still alive and performing, as I will note in my article on "Country Joe and The Fish." Country Joe McDonald | The Vietnam War Summit It's Finally Over For the men and women like me who served in Southeast Asia, music was what inexorably linked us to my generation. We sang along to the Beatles, Nancy Sinatra, Marty Robbins and the Temptations before we went to war, and we listened to them after we came back home. By 1968 they had released a third album Together and were touring successfully around the world. It included the first recording of the song that would go on to define Mr. McDonalds career. It became an underground favorite throughout Europe and the title track is still played on French radio. His mother, Florence Plotnick, was the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants and served for many years on the Berkeley City Council. McDonald's music spans a broad range of style and content. In keeping with the project's goal we are compiling a list of casualties from various sources. Concertgoers werent the only ones struck by the fellow-feeling and calm in the crowd despite scores of drug arrests, medical problems ranging from cut-up bare feet to LSD freakouts, and two deaths, one from a heroin overdose and another when a teen was run over, according to The Associated Press reporting from the time. Joseph Allen McDonald had been steeped in progressive politics long before he took the Woodstock stage. That EP contained two songs by McDonald, "Who Am I?" The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers to this website may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. There was no one approach to what Woodstock meant, says David Farber, a University of Kansas professor of American history. Country Joe McDonald - Hold On It's Coming - Used Vinyl Record - eBay The cheer became popular and the crowd would spell out F-I-S-H when the band performed live. Music was the key to survival and a path to healing, the center of a human story thats too often lost in the haze of politics and myth that surrounds Vietnam. There are conflicting reports about when McDonald performed at Woodstock. In 1982, McDonald began working with organizations such as the Vietnam Veterans of America to raise awareness about issues affecting veterans and their families. Its strictly a show., (Tickets--priced at $16.50 and $17.50--are still available through TicketMaster and the Forum box office. An unusual move by the company that staged the Weavers' reunion concert at Carnegie hall during the height of anti-left sentiment in the United States. With the crucial exception of combat, music was ubiquitous in Vietnam, reaching soldiers via albums, cassettes and tapes of radio shows sent from home; on the Armed Forces Vietnam Network, featuring songs from stateside Top 40 stations; and on the legendary, if short-lived, underground broadcasts of Radio First Termer, a pirate station operated out of Saigon. [Part 2]", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Country_Joe_McDonald&oldid=1142008307, This page was last edited on 28 February 2023, at 01:20. If you were fortunate enough to return home from Vietnam, music echoed through those secret places where you stored memories, including some you never shared with your parents, spouse or children for decades. He played Fixin-to-Die from the back of a flatbed trailer. Country Joe entertaining the crowd at Woodstock. After his enlistment, he attended Los Angeles City College for a year. I Served in Vietnam. McDonald straddles the two polar events of the 60s -- Woodstock and the Vietnam War. Joe had signed with Vanguard as a solo performer and went to Nashville with Sam Charters to record an album of Woody Guthrie songs. But having enlisted in the Navy at 17 and been stationed as an air traffic controller at the Atsugi, Japan, air facility until his honorable discharge in 1962, he refers to himself as a Vietnam era veteran.. He has become a well-respected scholar on the subject of her life and recently traveled to Turkey to further research her activities there during and after the Crimean War, as well as visiting sites relevant to her life in England. It was our lifeline, a link to our existence back in the world, connecting us with the things that enabled us, as the Impressions urged us, to keep on pushing. From the peaks of the Central Highlands and the rice paddies of the Mekong Delta to the air-conditioned jungles of Danang and Long Binh (where I served as an information specialist in 1970-71), soldiers used music to build community, stay connected to the home front and hold on to the humanity the war was trying to take away. The Guthrie album won him critical acclaim and a spot the following year at the Hollywood Bowl celebration in honor of Guthrie featuring Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie and many who had worked with him while he was alive. McDonald makes it clear, though, that the veterans issue is not just one of a long list of causes for him, and that it is vitally linked to his first cause: peace. How Palm Springs ran out Black and Latino families to build a fantasy for rich, white people, 17 SoCal hiking trails that are blooming with wildflowers (but probably not for long! They were the same songs our friends were listening to back home, but the music took on different, and often deeper, meanings in Vietnam. Seven had a career as a TV child actor in the late 1970s and early 1980s,[15] managed Johnny Depp's Viper Room nightclub and the alternative rock band Smashing Pumpkins in the 1990s,[16][17] and wrote for Details, Elle, LA Weekly and Harper's Bazaar magazines in the 1990s and 2000s. Making Money In Chile04. That act of defiance fired up the crowd of 20,000, but cost the band major exposure. Bruce Lint (L) of Meriden, Connecticut and another Marine (unidentified) provide a little musical entertainment for fellow leathernecks at a fortress in northwestern south Vietnam. Opinion | Country Joe's Obscene Truths - The New York Times At the age of 17, he enlisted in the United States Navy for three years and was stationed in Japan. I remember the big hype Woodstock was at the time. The suit was brought by Ory's daughter Babette, who held the copyright at the time. [9] The "Fish Cheer" was the band performing a call-and-response with the audience, spelling the word "fish", followed by Country Joe yelling, "What's that spell?" But he says hes more or less retired. Rock n roll, soul, pop and country. Its his legacy, one that both provided him with financial stability and quashed his chances at Top 40 stardom. Day 2 at Woodstock meant the rock bands were up, and the seventh act to appear at Woodstock on Saturday August 16, 1969 was Canned Heat. President Joe Biden couldn't recall his recent trip to Ireland when asked by a child about the last country he had visited. The powerful sister of North Korea's leader says her country would stage more provocative displays of its military might in response to a new U.S.-South Korean agreement to intensify nuclear . 1. Its a sentiment he has heard repeatedly. Joseph Allen McDonald had been steeped in progressive politics long before he took the Woodstock stage. At its best during the Fete de L'Humanite in Paris it had eight members but for most of its life it was a quartet. The first Country Joe and the Fish record was released in 1965, in time for the Vietnam Day Teach-In anti-war protest in Berkeley, California. Country Joe McDonald, "Rag" Lawsuit Joe's participation was crucial as during the afternoon at least 250,000 people sang along to "Fixin' To Die Rag" and yelled the famous "cheer". This demonstration, the beginning of what was to be a week of protests throughout the Capitol, proved to be one of the pivotal popular manifestations of disenchantment with the Nixon administration's conduct of the war. While appearing in New York, Vanguard recorded a series of shows at the Bitter End nightclub in Greenwich Village. Grove won its fight to gain the film's entry and the film opened in New York in 1971. After some abortive attempts at reuniting the original Country Joe and the Fish, he formed the "Country Joe Band" with original members David Bennett Cohen, Bruce Barthol, and Gary "Chicken" Hirsh; the Country Joe Band toured throughout 2004 and 2005. They skipped the chant that night, but according to a story Mr. McDonald told on a live album, he shouted the expletive at the cops right after the show. Local Leaders Question Expanded US Military Presence in the Philippines 1 song of 1966, is as much a reflection of the shifting politics of the country as it is about changes in musical tastes.