![]() ![]() ![]() Although the crowd loved it, the management of the Schaefer Beer Festival did not and kicked the band off the tour for life. Gary "Chicken" Hirsh suggested before one of the shows to spell the word " fuck" instead of "fish". During the summer of 1968 the band played on the Schaefer Music Festival tour. The cheer became popular and the crowd would spell out F-I-S-H when the band performed live. The cheer was on the original recording of "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag", being played right before the song on the LP of the same name. The "Fish Cheer" evolved into the "Fuck Cheer" after the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. 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?" twice, with the audience responding, and then, the third time, "What's that spell?", followed immediately by the song. McDonald wrote the song in about 20 minutes for an anti-Vietnam War play. Their best-known song is his " The "Fish" Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag" (1965), a black comedy novelty song about the Vietnam War, whose familiar chorus ("One, two, three, what are we fighting for?") is well known to the Woodstock generation and Vietnam veterans of the 1960s and '70s. Left to right: Mario Cipollina, Peter Albin, Joel Selvin, McDonald "Legendary Artists: Sounds of San Francisco" at an Audio Engineering Society convention in 2012. In 1965, he and Barry Melton co-founded Country Joe & the Fish which became a pioneer psychedelic rock band with their eclectic performances at the Avalon Ballroom, the Fillmore Auditorium, the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, and both the 1969 original and 1979 reunion Woodstock Festivals. McDonald has recorded 33 albums and has written hundreds of songs over a career spanning 60 years. Music career Country Joe McDonald (Kralingen, 1970) In their youth, both were Communist Party members and named their son after Joseph Stalin, before renouncing the cause. ![]() His mother, Florence Plotnick, was the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants and served for many years on the Berkeley City Council. His father, Worden McDonald, from Oklahoma, was of Scottish Presbyterian heritage (the son of a minister) and worked for a telephone company. In the early 1960s, he began busking on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, California. After his enlistment, he attended Los Angeles City College for a year. At the age of 17, he enlisted in the United States Navy for three years and was stationed in Japan. McDonald was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in El Monte, California, where he was student conductor and president of his high school marching band. Joseph Allen "Country Joe" McDonald (born January 1, 1942) is an American musician who was the lead singer of the 1960s psychedelic rock group Country Joe and the Fish. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |