Track Listing

1. "Fish" Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag
2. Who Am I
3. Pat's Song
4. Rock Coast Blues
5. Magoo
6. Janis
7. Thought Dream
8. Thursday
9. Eastern Jam
10. Colors for Susan

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22722 in Music
• Released on: 1990-10-25
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

Customer Reviews

A True Masterpiece-shimmering beauty
The term "psychedelic" is even more elusive now than it was when it was first coined. If you ask someone what it means, you'll likely get a different answer from each person you ask. Does it mean throwing in funny sounds, fuzz and echo to make the music sound spacey? Hendrix and Pink Floyd did this, but they did much, much more. Country Joe and the Fish didn't do much of this, but some of their music still stands out in my mind as some of the very best of that era. One important characteristic of understanding this type of music is that in order to appreciate it, you have to really listen to it. Not as background or just for dancing. This was one of the big changes of the time. Instead of just dancing to music, you sat and listened to it, gathering the beauty, feelings and ideas inherent in the music itself. This album is a perfect example of this. You can't listen to it if you're in a hurry. Especially "Colors For Susan", which is a brilliant, subtle instrumental that paints pictures while you lay back and listen. I'm amazed that someone had the patience to write such a piece. It seems to go on forever, but, when it ends, I'm always disappointed, and want it to go just a little longer. My favorites exhibit a quality that I call, "shimmering beauty". The most outstanding example of this is "Thought Dream". The combination of Joe's smooth, soaring vocals, the melodic guitar figures and the solo organ lines just grab hold and go to the base of my spine and start the shivers right up my back.

The album cover is one of many of that time which pay tribute to the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper cover. The record is also an attempt to, as Sgt. Pepper did, create an album as a whole piece, from beginning to end, rather than just a collection of songs. In my opinion, it was successful. Since I got the CD version, I've listened to it dozens of times, and it still goes straight to my heart, and this is about 33 years later. Country Joe and the Fish, I thank you!

A definitive psychedelic gem...
Lost beneath the interest that surrounded, and continues to surround, their first album ("Electric Music for the Mind & Body"), Country Joe & the Fish's second album merits serious consideration as the best "psychedelic" record ever made.

If psychedelic means highly innovative, ethereal music in which technical skill is secondary to the creation of pure "mood & feel" then virtually all of the tracks on this album qualify as winners. Skip the brilliantly metered, wonderfully sarcastic but (in psychedelic terms) incongruous jug-band opener, "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die", and go straight to "Magoo" (one of the most bizarrely structured, yet effective pieces of music produced by this or any other group) and "Colors for Susan" (a series of highly unusual "West Coast" guitar chords played at a snail's pace that succeeds in creating feelings of tension & relaxation at the same time) and drop into a world of weird, reflective and totally unique music that drifts, often precariously, between simplicity and brilliant ingenuity. "Pat's Song" & "Janis" could have been naively wistful hippie "love songs" if it weren't for their marvellously odd arrangements; "Thursday" combines delicately haunting vocals with a stunningly beautiful organ & guitar break before flowing into "Eastern Jam's" first, wonderfully ecstatic guitar solo, and "Who Am I" & "Rock Coast Blues" should be standard folk & blues respectively, but they're not. What they all are, and add up to, is a near perfect example of music from a different time and place in which groups dared to push themselves to the limits of their creativity.

Flawed only by two irritating between-track jingles that forewarn of the mess that their third album "Together" was to become, "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die" remains as playable and interesting today as it was over 30 years ago... a definitive, totally forgotten gem.

More mellow, not as mystical as 'Electric Music'
In general, this release doesn't approach the power and mystical satisfaction of their first album, ['Electric Music for the Mind & Body'], but still, it has its relatively stunning moments. I've always heard this basically pleasant release more as background music, but decided to finally give it the careful listen it probably deserves.

"The Fish Cheer"/"I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" is a satirical anti-[Vietnam]war jug band piece, which is very well designed and very well played/sung [unrated].

"Who Am I?" [5 stars] has an introductory [and recurring] chorus which is lilting and tender, and a series of somewhat abstract but also very emotional meditations on the [authors'] failure to receive what life/death gives and takes away. One needs to listen to this one rather closely, as it refuses to jump out and grab one by the scruff of the neck.

"Pat's Song": Joe's 1st love song on the album. Beautiful lyrics, and great organ solo by Cohen & lead guitar solo by Melton [a little long, though]; next, a bell solo morphs into a short tarantella, after which the second verse starts, and the song repeats all the way through, except for leaving out the bell and tarantella sections. [4½ stars]

"Rock Coast Blues" [5 stars] a bouncy but mournful blues tune delivered with Joe's patented tongue-in-cheek humor. A couple of years later, the band Mother Earth founded their entire sound based on the style of this piece, [or whatever regional source Joe got it from]. CJ might have been better at it than were Mother Earth, though I'm not sure.

"Magoo" starts out almost exactly like "Bass Strings" from the previous album, but has a more meandering melody. This one is very beautiful. At times the thunderstorm (sound effect) almost overpowers the music, depending on which speakers/headphones you are using. Includes a minute-long postlude, which begins as a beautiful acoustic guitar solo and finishes improbably with a short bluesy/jazzy riff [5 stars].

"Janis" [3 stars] is Joe's pleasant love song to/about Janis Joplin. No comparison whatsoever can be made with his love song for another San Francisco diva [Grace Slick] on the first album (emotionally, this one is warm and cuddly).

"Thought Dream" this song has four false starts while Joe is chortling in the background sounding like a Bible Belt preacher [with a gospel choir intoning underneath], before temporarily morphing into the short, bluesy "Bomb Song" and finally swinging into the song proper. It's difficult to characterize this one in terms of style, but the lyrics continue in a similar vein to what was started by "Who Am I?", at a slower tempo, and provide the beginnings of emotional resolution to questions raised by the earlier song. Fades with a quick recapitulation of the "Bomb Song". [4½ stars]

["Thursday" is 'prefaced' by the infamous "Acid Commercial", performed in a similar style as "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag", and at least as funny, and buzzy.]

"Thursday" [3½-4 stars]: what's this? Maybe jazz-folk-rock? The very few lyrics serve to introduce the 'topic' of this medium-tempo jam tune (2 acoustic guitars + electric bass). There's a somewhat tepid organ solo, then a longer, inspired [cleanly picked] electric guitar solo. After the second vocal chorus, there is a brief solo on the cymbals, then . . .

we immediately segue to the next song ["Eastern Jam"] [2½ stars]: the drum kit starts playing as the acoustic guitar [the main coloration up to this point] drops out. This is in identical tempo and key to that of "Thursday", and initially it is identical in feel, but now all electric, with drums. Various duets and trio arrangements emerge one after another as the players continue to jam together, beginning in relatively mellow acid rock style, gradually becoming strident towards the climax.

"Colors for Susan" [4 stars]. This is a long, very slow acoustic two-guitar duet (mostly just strummed chords), seasoned with mallet rolls/hits on the cymbals, occasional electric bass riffs, and bells. All in all, very soothing to listen to.