With talk of committing ground troops to Trump’s War on Iran, it would be a good time to break out this iconic Vietnam-era protest song, even if Joseph Allen “Country Joe” McDonald hadn’t died Saturday to bring it renewed attention.
People too young to remember San Francisco’s psychedelic era and the protests over the Vietnam War might not even be aware of Country Joe and the Fish. They fell out of public consciousness pretty quickly after they broke up in 1970; by that point all the proponents of the San Francisco sound were yesterday’s news.
McDonald came to rock and roll through a love of folk music, particularly Woody Guthrie, and started out in Bay Area jug bands. Like many of the folkies in that time and place, drug experimentation led them into psychedelic rock, but like the early Grateful Dead their folk roots usually showed through. The band’s LPs were successful, but they only ever charted one single. The McDonald composition “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine” snuck into the Hot 100 at No. 98, featuring lead guitar work by Barry “The Fish” Melton.
Thanks to its performance at the original Woodstock Festival, the satiric sing-along “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag” became by far their best-known tune.
After the band broke up, McDonald continued as a solo act, eventually releasing 33 albums, mostly of socially conscious protest music. His outlook was summed up nicely by the title track of his 1984 album “Peace on Earth.”
