Collected 1965-1970

Country Joe & The Fish | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 25, 1990)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Vanguard Records
• ASIN: B000000ECN
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,288 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Superbird

2. Bass Strings

3. Section 43

4. Flying High

5. Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine

6. Death Sound Blues

7. Porpoise Mouth

8. Sad and Lonely Times

9. The "Fish" Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag

10. Rock Coast Blues

11. Janis

12. Eastern Jam

13. Good Guys/Bad Guys Cheers

14. Rock & Soul Music

15. Here I Go Again

16. Maria

17. Crystal Blues

18. Rockin' Round the World

Editorial Reviews

This exemplary 19-cut collection (with discography!) is a good place to start, with three tracks off the seminal Rag Baby EP, plus Fish favorites like Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine; The Fish Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag , and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not just for psychedelic music lovers-very bluesy & original, August 23, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Collected 1965-1970 (Audio CD)

WOW! This collection sounds as good to me now as it did 30 yrs. ago. The songs, especially the original "Fish Cheer" and "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag" brought back alot of memeries of simpler times and the ideals of an entire generation. A word of caution though: Be prepared for some introspection as you wonder what happened to the ideals we had. It can be very disturbing. This collection is not just for music fans of the '60s and '70s. There are a lot of cuts on here that are definitely the blues. Country Joe and the Fish were highly underrated as there music was uniquely innovative for the times. This CD is a must for serious collectors and entertaining for music fans of all ages--just ask my 6 year old.

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great complication of the band, and time capsule of the 1960, November 22, 2003

By 

mixer "na1mixer" (Spring City, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Collected 1965-1970 (Audio CD)

This is, so far, the best commercially available album that chronicles "the band from Berkeley."Though no live tracks are included, several cuts from every studio album performed by Country Joe and the Fish is included here.
The band Country Joe and the Fish started out as a "jug band" from Berkeley,CA.The leader of this band is a musician and social activist named Joe McDonald. Anyway, as the 60s era progressed, CJ&F became a band of protest and psychedelia.To illustrate my point, let's look at the first few tracks.
The first track well demonstrates the overall theme of the band's future work and is a tune which was aimed at then President Lyndon Johnson-which may had created a lot of controversy at the time.
On this CD, you are exposed to jugband, psychedelia, and folk rock,not to mention anti-war satire.Let us explore some of the psychedelia.The song "Bass Strings," the Rag Baby single version, is an excellent example of the band's psychedelic side. Here, you hear the playing of the harmonica-which f a d e s into the sound of a dreary organ.In addition,the lyrics,well, has cryptic references to hallucinatory drugs-that is all I am going to say. The next track, Section 43, is another trippy song/Rag Baby single.An instrumental, Section 43 is organized in such a way that you may compare it to weaving in and out of a dream-beautiful piece. The song "Not so Sweet Martha Lorraine" is an organ-drenched classic that is about a reclusive woman who is unpredictable and is obsessed with death.
The landmark theme, in my opinion, is the band's anti war stance.The controversal "Fish Cheer/Fixin To die Rag" is a song mainly about satire and giving an "in your face" approach to expressing their anti-war attitude. On a serious side, the song "An Untitled Protest" is a song of both poetry and tragedy. Here, McDonald goes into extreme graphical detail about the atrocities of the Vietnam war.
These are just some of the highlights of this CD. There are other tracks included which contains references to hard luck(Sad and Lonely Times,Janis) and substance abuse (Flying High, track 4) which exhibit the common qualities of the sound of the 1960s. Though it would be nice if some live tracks or some outakes were included in this CD, this CD is a good place to start.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars classic san francisco sound collection, August 15, 2001

By 

Stephen F Mulcahy (United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Collected 1965-1970 (Audio CD)

i give this collection 5 stars- not because every single track is excellent, but because this group was, along with moby grape one of the very, very best to come out of the san francisco late 60's scene, and some country joe is essential for fans of that period's music. there's plenty of gems from the band's first two classic lp's, and some of their later work is rather underrated-for instance " here i go again" , the title track from their 4th record is a nice song. of course, i do feel that the early country joe stuff is indisputably their greatest- the ep version of section 43, which predates their 1st album, is actually the better of the two. this, along with eastern jam, is proof that barry melton and the rest of the band can really play. almost all the country joe classics from the first two records, like the fish cheer, not so sweet martha lorraine, janis, flying high,and others are on this cd, which i would recommend for people who are just getting into psychedelic rock,, 60's fans, and people who don't want all of his music.