I had a 5″ 33 1/3 version when I lived in Bezerkeley cira 1968. Angel Albert was a regular fixture in my living room back then. The 5″ (was it 6″?) 33 1/3 was the best version they released. That copy is long gone. The notes that go with this YouTube version are interesting. I’m reproducing them in full. BTW this version is from “Electric Music For The Mind and Body” I believe.
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About The Band: The group’s name is derived from leftist politics; “Country Joe” was a popular name for Joseph Stalin in the 1940s, while “the fish” refers to Mao Tse Dung’s statement that the true revolutionary must “swim among the people as a fish.” The group began with the nucleus of “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. Co-founders McDonald and Melton added musicians as needed over the life of the band. By 1967, the group included Gary “Chicken” Hirsh (drums) (born in 1940, in Chicago, Illinois); David Cohen (keyboards) (born 8 April 1942, in Brooklyn, New York) and Bruce Barthol (bass) (born 11 November 1947 in Berkeley, California). The 1967 lineup lasted only two years, and by the 1969 music festival Woodstock, the lineup included Greg ‘Duke’ Dewey (drums), Mark Kapner (keyboards) and Doug Metzler (bass).
The band came to perform an early example of psychedelic music. The LP “Electric Music for the Mind and Body” was very influential on early FM Radio in 1967. Long sets of psychedelic tunes like “Section 43”, “Bass Strings”, “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine”, “Janis” (for and about Janis Joplin) and “Grace” (for singer Grace Slick) (all released on Vanguard Records) were often played back to back on KSAN and KMPX in San Francisco and progressive rock stations around the country. Their first album charted at #39 on September 23, 1967, their 2nd album at #67 on February 3, 1968, and their third at #23 on August 31, 1968. Country Joe and The Fish were regulars at Fillmore West and East and Chet Helms’ Avalon Ballroom. They were billed with such groups as Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Led Zeppelin, and Iron Butterfly. They played at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and at the Woodstock Festival in 1969. In 1971 the band appeared in a Western film starring Don Johnson as an outlaw gang called the Crackers. The film, entitled Zachariah, was written by the Firesign Theatre and was billed as “The First Electric Western”. They also appeared in the George Lucas film More American Graffiti and in the 1971 Roger Corman film Gas-s-s-s.
Electric Music For The Mind And Body, Country Joe and The Fish’s debut album, was one of the first psychedelic albums to come out of San Francisco in 1967. Many timed their acid trips to peak during Country Joe and The Fish performances at The Avalon or The Fillmore, where they were frequent performers.
Tracks from the LP, especially “Section 43”, “Grace”, and “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine” were played on progressive FM rock stations like KSAN and KMPX in San Francisco, often back-to-back. A famous version of the song “Love” was performed at the 1969 Woodstock Festival
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I remember DJ Tom Donahue from KSAN. He had a very deep voice and had a knack for programming music exactly in tune with the Zeitgeist. Gone are the days.
Comments
7 responses to “Secton 43 – Country Joe”
I have cd of their woodstock version of fixin to die rag and song was in movie hamburger hill! Its the song that completely discredited the vietnam war far more then “Ohio” By the way clear channel told their dj’s that they would end up lile phil donahue and be fired if they played that song during the early part of iraq war. They rightly thought it had discredited the vietnam war and would do the same to operation Iraq Liberation OIL untill they changed the name.
“Fixin To Die” was a favorite of the troops. Still is. I saw some SFs I think singing it the other day on a mil site in fact. The guys looked to be in their late 20s. Had I known this would have come up I would have saved the link.
Politically the Iraq War made some sense. We were spending a LOT defending the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs.
And you know who got the oil contracts? The French and the Germans. If it was anything about oil it was about defending European oil supplies.
So why didn’t the Euros do it? They don’t have competent militaries. Given their 20th Century history I think it is not unwise to keep them that way.
GIMME AN “F”!!!
“F!”
Woodstock version
Those were the days. Cap, you and I may have gone different ways, but I think we game from the same place to start.
PS – Above version NSFW (if anyone didn’t understand my “Woodstock version”. But it’s the classical one.
I was goldwater republican back then we drove up to prescott to here him speak ;but they had left janette rankin behind and I stayed with her veiws!