{"id":506,"date":"2019-10-31T19:08:14","date_gmt":"2019-10-31T19:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/?page_id=506"},"modified":"2022-08-25T13:29:16","modified_gmt":"2022-08-25T13:29:16","slug":"country-joe-the-fish","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/home\/country-joe-the-fish\/","title":{"rendered":"Country Joe &#038; The Fish Play the Avalon the Evening the U.S. and South Vietnamese Troops Invade the DMZ (San Francisco, May 19, 1967)"},"content":{"rendered":"<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-506-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/11\/CJ-at-Avalon.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/11\/CJ-at-Avalon.mp3\">http:\/\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/11\/CJ-at-Avalon.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mainstreetragbookstore.com\/product\/ticket-stubs-liner-notes-tim-hunt\/\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"262\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/home\/my-ding-a-ling-chuck-berry-at-the-roadhouse-ithaca-ny-november-1970\/top_banner_flat\/#main\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2018\/12\/top_banner_flat.png?fit=1020%2C80&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"1020,80\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2018\/12\/top_banner_flat.png?fit=1020%2C80&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-262\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2018\/12\/top_banner_flat.png?resize=940%2C74\" alt=\"Available now from Main Street Rag\" width=\"940\" height=\"74\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2018\/12\/top_banner_flat.png?w=1020&amp;ssl=1 1020w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2018\/12\/top_banner_flat.png?resize=300%2C24&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2018\/12\/top_banner_flat.png?resize=768%2C60&amp;ssl=1 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 940px) 100vw, 940px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h3><a href=\"https:\/\/themuseumofamericana.net\/when-napa-and-san-francisco-were-far-apart-summer-1967-poetry-by-tim-hunt\/\">&#8220;When Napa and San Francisco Were Far Apart (Summer, 1967),&#8221;<\/a> bonus poem from <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.broadstonebooks.com\/shop\/p\/voice-to-voice-in-the-dark-poetry-by-tim-hunt\">Voice to Voice in the Dark<\/a><\/em>:<\/h3>\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-506-2\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/11\/Napa-SF-Far-Apart.mp3?_=2\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/11\/Napa-SF-Far-Apart.mp3\">http:\/\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/11\/Napa-SF-Far-Apart.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>For a while copies of the second <a href=\"https:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/country-joe-the-fish-mn0000128266\/biography\">Country Joe &amp; The Fish<\/a> album, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/album\/i-feel-like-im-fixin-to-die-mw0000195025\">I-Feel-Like-I&#8217;m-Fixin&#8217;-to-Die-Rag<\/a><\/em>, featured not only the title song, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/song\/i-feel-like-im-fixin-to-die-rag-mt0002589835\">Country Joe&#8217;s antiwar satire inviting parents to send their sons off to Vietnam<\/a> (and &#8220;Be the first on your block to have your son sent home in a box&#8221;), but a sticker on the shrink wrapped \u00a0cover declaring:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Contains Giant<br \/>\nFULL-COLOR<br \/>\n<strong>FISH GAME<br \/>\n<\/strong>Complete with Instructions<\/p>\n<p>The<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"515\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/home\/country-joe-the-fish\/fixin-cover\/#main\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/10\/Fixin-cover..jpg?fit=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"300,300\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Fixin cover.\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/10\/Fixin-cover..jpg?fit=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"wp-image-515 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/10\/Fixin-cover..jpg?resize=200%2C200\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/10\/Fixin-cover..jpg?w=300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/10\/Fixin-cover..jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/> game, designed by the group&#8217;s drummer, Gary &#8220;Chicken&#8221; Hirsh, is a sort of Summer of Love <em>Candy Land<\/em> or <em>Chutes &amp; Ladders<\/em>, except that moving around the board as one of the bandmembers offers squares with such instructions as &#8220;Score 1 Joint&#8221; and &#8220;Play the Fillmore.&#8221;\u00a0 And as befits the era and its ethos, players are invited to &#8220;make up your own rules, you&#8217;ll probably have to&#8221; and told &#8220;The game is never over, end it when you want to.&#8221;\u00a0 Take a hit, roll the dice, enjoy the wit.\u00a0 (My thanks to John Prewitt for posting his photos of <a href=\"https:\/\/boardgamegeek.com\/thread\/1504447\/country-joe-fish-game\">The Fish Game<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>There is, though, one psychedelic <em>non sequitor<\/em> (and that, in itself, is probably a <em>non sequitor<\/em>): Landing on one square does actually end the game:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>NAPA<br \/>\n<\/strong>You Lose the Game<br \/>\nStart Over<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"517\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/home\/country-joe-the-fish\/fish-game\/#main\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/10\/Fish-Game.jpg?fit=300%2C196&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"300,196\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Fish Game\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/10\/Fish-Game.jpg?fit=300%2C196&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-517\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/10\/Fish-Game.jpg?resize=300%2C196\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"196\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">*<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Today, Napa, California is upscale wineries, fancy restaurants, golf resorts.\u00a0 Tres chic.\u00a0 Tres pricey. \u00a0Very hip.\u00a0 In 1967 Napa was the working class town you drove through and tried not to notice as you cruised on up the valley to St. Helena, where some wineries were already catering to the nascent tourist trade.\u00a0 And June 15, 1967 was the date Country Joe &amp; The Fish played the Napa County Fairground (my memory is that we were in the 4-H Building).\u00a0 This excerpt from Irwin Silber&#8217;s <em>Sing Out! <\/em>interview (V18, Ns 1&amp; 2, June\/July 1968) with Country Joe and Barry Melton is, so far as I know, the only comment on this evening:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 80px;\"><u>Irwin Silber<\/u>:\u00a0 My feeling is that for a lot of the people in the audience, it&#8217;s more like a secret life or a fantasy life.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 80px;\"><u>Barry Melton<\/u>:\u00a0 Yeah.\u00a0 We&#8217;re a bravery trip for them.\u00a0 Every once in a while, we&#8217;ll play in a very, very straight place.\u00a0 We went to a place called Napa, where two of the band got beat up.\u00a0 They&#8217;re going to get the lousy, long-haired hippies.\u00a0 So the three hippies in town showed up.\u00a0 Because we sort of give them courage.\u00a0 You know, we stand out there and we jump up and down\u2014really exposed and open about the whole thing\u2014and they have to sneak around corners in the towns where they live.\u00a0 So we sort of give them courage.\u00a0 Like Pete Seeger, right?<\/p>\n<p>I guess.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t remember if there were any &#8220;long-haired hippies&#8221; in the crowd that night.\u00a0 Across the hills in Santa Rosa there would have been.\u00a0 But in Napa?\u00a0 Not sure.\u00a0 I was there in my jeans and gray &amp; white striped railroad work shirt, my hair not yet long enough in the back to be a political statement or declaration of lifestyle as I counted down the days before I would fly east to start college in some place called Eye-thack-uh, New York.\u00a0 Lots of crew cuts, though.\u00a0 And some really fine DAs, and girls with bee hives.\u00a0 Expecting what?\u00a0 Maybe a local cover band&#8217;s renditions of Paul Revere &amp; The Raiders.\u00a0 Maybe, some garage band &#8220;Louie Louie&#8221; as prelude to the evening&#8217;s real event after the show.\u00a0 Was I the only one there who&#8217;d come to hear &#8220;Sweet Martha Lorraine&#8221; and &#8220;Section 43&#8221;?\u00a0 Probably not, but mighta been.\u00a0 And the beat down in the bathroom out in the lobby at intermission?\u00a0 I do remember thinking, <em>this isn&#8217;t Berkeley, what&#8217;d you expect!<\/em>\u00a0 So, Napa, You Lose.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">*<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"507\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/home\/country-joe-the-fish\/electric-music-for-mind-and-body-559dbb3fecc84\/#main\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/10\/electric-music-for-mind-and-body-559dbb3fecc84.jpg?fit=1000%2C1000&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"1000,1000\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"electric-music-for-mind-and-body-559dbb3fecc84\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/10\/electric-music-for-mind-and-body-559dbb3fecc84.jpg?fit=1000%2C1000&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-507\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/10\/electric-music-for-mind-and-body-559dbb3fecc84.jpg?resize=200%2C200\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/10\/electric-music-for-mind-and-body-559dbb3fecc84.jpg?resize=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/10\/electric-music-for-mind-and-body-559dbb3fecc84.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/10\/electric-music-for-mind-and-body-559dbb3fecc84.jpg?resize=768%2C768&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/10\/electric-music-for-mind-and-body-559dbb3fecc84.jpg?w=1000&amp;ssl=1 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In accounts of what the media dubbed <em>The Summer of Love<\/em> there&#8217;s a tendency to treat everything related to it as simultaneous\u2014as if everywhere was immediately, fully, and only a kind of pulsing multidimensional <em>now<\/em> like the undulating colored blobs of a psychedelic light show at the Fillmore as the Grateful Dead meandered into an extended jam for dancing teens and the adult children who in turn undulated the hazy smoke of incense and hand rolled joints.\u00a0 But constructing this <em>now<\/em> (either in memory or as journalist might have then or might now) often involves airbrushing out things that don&#8217;t quite fit or might complicate our image of the <em>now<\/em>, or even contradict it.<\/p>\n<p>But 1965 was different than 1966 was different than 1967, and Berkeley and Oakland were very different places in those years. \u00a0And both differed from San Francisco, even though the Bay Bridge seemingly linked them together.\u00a0 And where I grew up, a mere 55 and 75 miles away in the little towns of Sebastopol and Calistoga?\u00a0 That might as well have been Kansas in newsreal Black &amp; White.\u00a0 And the place we called <em>The City<\/em> might as well have been some technicolor Oz, as we dutifully sat through Algebra trying not to think about the draft and Vietnam and trying to believe we believed in that vision of suburban utopia that hadn&#8217;t quite materialized for our parents.<\/p>\n<p>Science has taught us the importance of recognizing microclimates.\u00a0 There are, as well, microcultures and microhistories.\u00a0 If <em>The City<\/em> was &#8220;Ticket to Ride&#8221; becoming &#8220;Magic Carpet Ride,&#8221; Calistoga and Napa were still Dinah Shore singing &#8220;See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet&#8221; on TV or maybe Bobby Fuller on the car radio (AM only) singing &#8220;I fought the law and the law won,&#8221; a rebellious protest against Fifties conformity that was an improbable hit in the mid-1960s made even more ironic by Bobby&#8217;s death July 1966 &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/2015\/jul\/16\/the-short-life-and-mysterious-death-of-bobby-fuller-rocknroll-king-of-texas\">under mysterious circumstances<\/a>&#8221; (though most of us didn&#8217;t know about this at the time).<\/p>\n<p>Still, if Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper had starred in a movie of Fuller&#8217;s story featuring a hot Corvette (a drag racing epic?) with &#8220;I Fought the Law&#8221; as its iconic song instead of <em>Easy Rider&#8221; <\/em>featuring motorcycles and Steppenwolf&#8217;s &#8220;Born to Be Wild,&#8221; would we have lived this era differently? remember it differently? have constructed it as a different all-encompassing paradigmatic image?\u00a0 Unrepentant penance or open road transcendence?\u00a0 In real life, one story led to an actual death in a parking lot, a beaten body posed behind the car wheel as if a suicide.\u00a0 In cinematic life, the other story, too, imagines death. \u00a0But within the world of the film, the actual death, which is actually an imagined death, offers us the freed spirit perpetually two-wheeling off into the beyond of some transcendent sunset.\u00a0 In the recollection of cultural life, the technicolor &#8220;heavy metal thunder&#8221; of the one plays on the main screen of the cineplex.\u00a0 The Black &amp; White silence of the other, that corvette in the early dawn of the otherwise empty parking lot?\u00a0 It might occasionally flicker on the screen at some hip, curated local film series, provoking a bit of discussion, then shelved again in that library of the forgotten.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">*<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"510\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/home\/country-joe-the-fish\/country_joe_and_the_fish\/#main\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/10\/Country_Joe_and_the_Fish.png?fit=872%2C848&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"872,848\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Country_Joe_and_the_Fish\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/10\/Country_Joe_and_the_Fish.png?fit=872%2C848&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"alignright wp-image-510\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/10\/Country_Joe_and_the_Fish.png?resize=200%2C194\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"194\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/10\/Country_Joe_and_the_Fish.png?resize=300%2C292&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/10\/Country_Joe_and_the_Fish.png?resize=768%2C747&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/10\/Country_Joe_and_the_Fish.png?w=872&amp;ssl=1 872w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/>I wasn&#8217;t there in that bathroom off the lobby as Country Joe, Barry, David, Bruce, and Chicken waited their turn to pee, long-haired, in full psychedelic costume among the locals in their T-shirts and jeans as if they were Johnny&#8217;s buddies in <em>The Wild One<\/em> or maybe extras from <em>Rebel without a Cause<\/em>.\u00a0 But, sure, they got beat up.\u00a0 With my hair barely long in back, I&#8217;d probably have gotten beat up, too.\u00a0 But I was still local enough to know that.\u00a0 And Napa and Calistoga were, then, very far away from Berkeley and San Francisco.\u00a0 <em>Summer of Love<\/em>?\u00a0 Or the summer of sex, a draft notice, that brief interlude of Basic Training, and <em>Good Morning, Vietnam<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>So why was Country Joe &amp; The Fish, even more than the Jefferson Airplane or Grateful Dead or Quicksilver (all bands I&#8217;d drive down to The City to hear), the band closest to my being that summer?\u00a0 I don&#8217;t think it was a &#8220;bravery&#8221; thing.\u00a0 And it wasn&#8217;t a drug thing.\u00a0 It was, I think, the way they blended a kind of exotic lyricism (modes and harmonies that were a sonic world that wasn&#8217;t Dinah Shore driving the U.S.A. in her Chevrolet) with politics that said <em>No<\/em> to the war and what seemed empty suburban materialism (and for small town kids that, too, was a fantasy image, one we were supposed to see as aspirational). \u00a0Playing <em>Electric Music for the Mind &amp; Body<\/em> was a way to drift, for a moment, into a space beyond or prior to the draft and war and, as well, call out L.B.J. and send him &#8220;back to Texas, make him work on his ranch&#8221; (as if that fantasy, in reality, would make an actual difference).\u00a0 So not quite a &#8220;bravery thing.&#8221;\u00a0 More a sonic world and array of lyrics in which we were allowed to experience our dismay, our anxiety, and for a moment set them, as if, aside in the psychedelic meandering and the satire.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Recommended Listening<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The EPs that Country Joe McDonald and Barry Melton recorded with the evolving personnel of Country Joe and the Fish have been gathered as <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/album\/the-first-three-eps-mw0000837170\">Collector&#8217;s Items: The First Three EPs<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/em>Used copies of the LP and CD versions of this can still be found.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/album\/electric-music-for-the-mind-and-body-mw0000193777\"><em>Electric Music for the Mind and Body<\/em><\/a>, the group&#8217;s first LP on Vanguard (released January 1967) and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/album\/i-feel-like-im-fixin-to-die-mw0000195025\"><em>I-Feel-Like-Fixin&#8217;-To-Die<\/em><\/a>, the group&#8217;s second (released May 1967) feature the band&#8217;s most strongest material.\u00a0 The third album, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/album\/together-mw0000616364\"><em>Together<\/em><\/a>, has its moments.<\/li>\n<li>Two days after Country Joe &amp; The Fish played the Napa County Fairgrounds, they played The Monterey Pops Festival.\u00a0 This video clip includes only <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=YDhLYJMPlYg&amp;list=RDYDhLYJMPlYg&amp;start_radio=1&amp;t=63\">&#8220;Sweet Martha Lorraine.&#8221;<\/a>\u00a0 This clip, audio only, audio only, includes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NjQwVz_34io\">&#8220;<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NjQwVz_34io\">Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine,&#8221; &#8220;I-Feel-Like-I&#8217;m-Fixin&#8217;-to-Die Rag,&#8221; &#8220;Please Don&#8217;t Drop That H Bomb On Me,&#8221; and &#8220;Section 43.&#8221; <\/a>\u00a0(If &#8220;Sweet Martha Lorraine&#8221; offers a psychedelic lyric and &#8220;Section 43&#8221; a psychedelic sound, this Monterey Pops performance of &#8220;I-Feel-Like-I&#8217;m-Fixin&#8217;-To-Die,&#8221; especially the opening, underscores the group&#8217;s roots in political street theater.)<\/li>\n<li>Country Joe McDonald&#8217;s settings of nine poems from Robert Service&#8217;s <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.redcross.ca\/history\/artifacts\/the-rhymes-of-a-red-cross-man%E2%80%9D-by-robert-service\">Rhymes of a Red Cross<\/a><\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.redcross.ca\/history\/artifacts\/the-rhymes-of-a-red-cross-man%E2%80%9D-by-robert-service\"> Man,<\/a> released in 1971 on Vanguard as <em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/War_War_War\">War War War<\/a><\/em> was little noted at the time and too little remembered now.\u00a0 McDonald demonstrates that Service was a deeper poet than the popularity of &#8220;The Cremation of Sam McGee&#8221; would suggest, and he transforms these poems of World War I and the horrors of trench warfare into powerful demonstrations of the cost of war to those who fight them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>A Note on Radio<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFun, Fun, Fun\u201d by The Beach Boys, \u201cPipeline\u201d by the surf group The Chantays, and \u201cGloria\u201d by Van Morrison&#8217;s group Them were the sorts of songs one would have heard on AM radio.\u00a0 Inexplicably, &#8220;Sweet Martha Lorraine&#8221; was also played on AM radio on Bay Area stations in the spring of 1967.\u00a0 The oft celebrated impact of free form or underground FM radio playing &#8220;underground&#8221; music was still months away and initially had only modest influence on teens and young adults because few of us had radios that would play FM stations (or could afford them).<\/p>\n<h4><a href=\"http:\/\/mainstreetragbookstore.com\/product\/ticket-stubs-liner-notes-tim-hunt\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Ticket Stubs &amp; Liner Notes<\/em> is available from Main Street Rag Publishing<\/a><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;When Napa and San Francisco Were Far Apart (Summer, 1967),&#8221; bonus poem from Voice to Voice in the Dark: &nbsp; For a while copies of the second Country Joe &amp; The Fish album, I-Feel-Like-I&#8217;m-Fixin&#8217;-to-Die-Rag, featured not only the title song, Country Joe&#8217;s antiwar satire inviting parents to send their sons off to Vietnam (and &#8220;Be &#8230; <a title=\"Country Joe &#038; The Fish Play the Avalon the Evening the U.S. and South Vietnamese Troops Invade the DMZ (San Francisco, May 19, 1967)\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/home\/country-joe-the-fish\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Country Joe &#038; The Fish Play the Avalon the Evening the U.S. and South Vietnamese Troops Invade the DMZ (San Francisco, May 19, 1967)\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":8,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-506","page","type-page","status-publish"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/PapaTS-8a","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":524,"href":"https:\/\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/506\/revisions\/524"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tahunt.com\/ticketstubs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}