CJ&TF: "Here We Are Again"

Original released on LP Vanguard VSD 79299

(US, July 1969)

By the time of Country Joe & the Fish's fourth album, the group seemed to consist of only Joe McDonald and Barry Melton, who had started the band in the beginning. "Here We Are Again" continued CJ&F's move toward pop (especially on "Here I Go Again") and bluesy rock, and away from their folk and jug band beginnings. But there were no songs to match some of the idiosyncratic winners on earlier albums, and the anonymous studio backing lacked the spontaneity of the original Fish. Though there would be one more new album in 1970 ("CJ Fish"), Country Joe & the Fish no longer existed as anything other than a name; a fact that would be underlined in December 1969 by the simultaneous releases of "Greatest Hits" and McDonald's solo album, "Thinking of Woody Guthrie". (William Ruhlmann in AllMusic)

Together With Country Joe & The Fish

Original released on LP Vanguard VSD 79277

(US, August 1968)

"Together", Country Joe & the Fish's third album, was the group's most consistent, most democratic, and their best-selling record. Unlike their first two albums, which were dominated by Country Joe McDonald's voice and compositions, "Together" featured the rest of the band - guitarists Barry Melton and David Cohen, bassist Bruce Barthol, and drummer Chicken Hirsh - almost as prominently as McDonald. That's usually a formula for disaster, but in this case it gave the album more variety and depth: McDonald tended to favor droning mantras like the album-closing "An Untitled Protest," which worked better when contrasted with the likes of Melton's catchy anti-New York diatribe, "The Streets of Your Town," and the group-written "Rock and Soul Music." Songs like the latter cast the group as a soul revue, true, and they couldn't quite pull that off, but "Together" had the charming quality of unpredictability; you never knew what was coming next. Unfortunately, what came next in the band's career was a split. Barthol was out by September 1968, Cohen and Hirsh followed in January 1969. Thereafter, McDonald and Melton fronted various Fish aggregations, but it was never the same, even when this lineup regrouped for "Reunion" in 1977. (William Ruhlmann in AllMusic)

COUNTRY JOE & THE FISH: The Second Album

Original released on LP Vanguard VSD 79266

(US, November 1967)

Country Joe & the Fish's second album, "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die", is quite similar to their first in its organ-heavy psychedelia with Eastern-influenced melodic lines, but markedly inferior to the debut, and much more of a period piece. There's more spaciness and less comic energy here, and while the bandmembers were undoubtedly serious in their explorations, some of these songs are simply silly in their cosmic naïveté. To be crueler, there is no other album that exemplifies so strongly the kind of San Francisco psychedelia that Frank Zappa skewered on his classic "We're Only in It for the Money". The weeping, minor-key melodies, liquid guitar lines, and earnestly self-absorbed quests to explore the inner psyche - it's almost as if they put themselves up as a dartboard for the Mothers to savage. For all that, the best songs are good; "Who Am I" and "Thursday" are touching psychedelic ballads. But more notably, the title cut - whose brash energy is atypical of the album - was a classic antiwar satire that became one of the decade's most famous protest songs, and the group's most famous track. (Richie Unterberger in AllMusic)

COUNTRY JOE & THE FISH Debut Album

Original released on LP Vanguard VSD 79244

(US, APRIL 1967)

Their full-length debut is their most joyous and cohesive statement and one of the most important and enduring documents of the psychedelic era, the band's swirl of distorted guitar and organ at its most inventive. In contrast to Jefferson Airplane, who were at their best working within conventional song structures, and the Grateful Dead, who hadn't quite yet figured out how to transpose their music to the recording studio, Country Joe & the Fish delivered a fully formed, uncompromising, and yet utterly accessible - in fact, often delightfully witty - body of psychedelic music the first time out. Ranging in mood from good-timey to downright apocalyptic, it embraced all of the facets of the band's music, which were startling in their diversity: soaring guitar and keyboard excursions ("Flying High," "Section 43," "Bass Strings," "The Masked Marauder"), the group's folk roots ("Sad and Lonely Times"), McDonald's personal ode to Grace Slick ("Grace"), and their in-your-face politics ("Superbird"). Hardly any band since the Beatles had ever come up with such a perfect and perfectly bold introduction to who and what they were, and the results - given the prodigious talents and wide-ranging orientation of this group - might've scared off most major record labels. Additionally, this is one of the best-performed records of its period, most of it so bracing and exciting that one gets some of the intensity of a live performance. The CD reissue also has the virtue of being one of the best analog-to-digital transfers ever issued on one of Vanguard Records' classic albums, with startlingly vivid stereo separation and a close, intimate sound. (Richie Unterberger in AllMusic)