- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- Together is the third and most successful album by Country Joe and the Fish and opens with “Rock and Soul Music”, a tribute to James Brown.
The Greatest Music
Ever Recorded!
Country Joe and the Fish – Together (1968): Country Joe and the Fish was an anti-war band that combined psychedelic rock, folk-rock, and jug-band music; they leavened their songs with a lot of imagination and humor. Together is their third and most successful album and opens with “Rock and Soul Music”, a tribute to James Brown, which the band performed live at Woodstock the following year. The final song on Side 1, “The Streets of Your Town” opens with the “Good Guys/Bad Guys Cheer” – reminiscent of “The Fish Cheer” that launches the band’s best-known song, the bitingly satiric though high-spirited “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag”. Greg Shaw of Bomp! Records adapted the title of one of his innumerable publications, Mojo Navigator and Rock ’n Roll News from one of the songs on this album, “Mojo Navigator”; it was launched in 1966, the year before Rolling Stone magazine was founded.
While the band’s first two albums were dominated by bandleader Country Joe McDonald (one of the few counter-culture figures who was a veteran), Together is more of a group effort. Country Joe and the Fish broke up in 1970, but Country Joe McDonald has released numerous albums of folk and folk-rock music over the years since.