Artist: Country Joe & The Fish
Album: Electric Music for the Mind and Body
Year: 1967
I'd only ever heard of Country Joe because of his antics at the Woodstock Festival, where I figured he was somehow more of a war protester than a musician.
This album is the quintessential sixties album. There's blues-rock, country-inspired rock, some psychedelic organ interludes, and even a song that's an ol' flip o' the bird to LBJ. It was decent, if unspectacular. At first, it didn't connect with me too much, but then came the 7-minute instrumental "Section 43," a grand opus of psychedelia that forced me to listen to this album a little more closely. A few nice folk-rock tunes followed. "Super Bird" is a catchy anti-war anthem. "Sad and Lonely Times" has chiming guitars in the vein of The Byrds, while the organ-driven "Love" certainly was a popular little blues-rocker during the Summer of Love that year.
I thought this album was good insofar as it was entirely representative of its time period. If you walk up to a random person on the street and ask them to describe music of the 1960's, you'll get a string of adjectives that describe this very album. Outside of that, I didn't find any of the songs particularly memorable. In the story of 60's music, Country Joe & The Fish are rightfully relegated to footnote status.
Rating: Not worth a listen
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