Country Joe Band: "Uncle Sam Needs Your Help Again"

By Norman Solomon / Creators Syndicate
<http://www.fair.org/media-beat/0404...>

Taking the stage at a community center in the small
Northern California town of Bolinas, a group of four
musicians quickly showed themselves to be returning as a
vibrant creative force centered very much in the
present.

Not that the music of Country Joe and the Fish ever
really disappeared. Since the release of the band\’s
first two albums in 1967 — \’Electric Music for the Mind
and Body\’ along with \’I-Feel-Like-I\’m-Fixin\’-To-Die\’ —
many of its songs have meandered through the memories
and semi-consciousness of millions of Americans who came
of age a third of a century ago.

Now reconstituted with four of the legendary group\’s
original five members, the new Country Joe Band has just
begun to tour. When I saw them perform, midway through
April, the music was as tightly effusive as ever, with
poetic lyrics mostly brought to bear on two perennials:
love and death.

Their new song \’Cakewalk to Baghdad\’ is in sync with
Country Joe McDonald\’s compositions that stretch back to
the escalating years of the Vietnam War. With the
post-\’victory\’ occupation of Iraq in its thirteenth
month bringing death to many people including children,
his old song \’An Untitled Protest\’ remains unfailingly
current. Sung the other night, it was no more dated than
today: \’Red and swollen tears tumble from her eyes /
While cold silver birds who came to cruise the skies /
Send death down to bend and twist her tiny hands / And
then proceed to target ’B\’ in keeping with their plans.\’

No less than its previous incarnation, the Country Joe
Band exemplifies how rock music can transcend itself as
an art form. This is no small feat for any musicians,
including those who create songs that encourage
resistance to deadly routines of the status quo.

Rhetoric is destructive to art. On the other hand,
ambiguous or self-absorbed artistry is apt to be
isolated from key social realities. But the Country Joe
Band is not agitprop or evasive. For an overview, take a
look at www.countryjoe.com — a website that reflects
how a creative process can stay grounded in humanistic
projects of our times.

Songs that Country Joe and the Fish released in 1967 are
so intricate that an attentive listener is bound to
agree with McDonald\’s recent comment to an interviewer:
\’Those songs are very complex and difficult to play,
they\’re less rock \’n\’ roll and perhaps more ... well,
symphonic.\’ Rendered by the Country Joe Band, the
psychedelic sound can seem orchestral. Yet there\’s still
no reliance on high-tech sound effects.

By now, apparently, we\’d be foolish to take the
integrity of talented artists for granted. Maybe, as a
late \’60s advertisement proclaimed, \’the man can\’t bust
our music\’ — but the corporate system can sure water it
down a lot. Or turn music into outright pabulum.
Television showcases plenty of grim results when so many
knees bend toward corporatized altars.

These days, cynicism about famous musicians with protest
credentials is running high. Weeks ago, Bob Dylan began
to appear in a Victoria\’s Secret commercial. It may seem
that the times they are a prostitutin\’.

Media outlets are filled with ads, commercial plugs and
vapid — or corrosive — content leaving the impression
that gifted artists sell out to the almighty dollar
sooner or later. \’Today\’s musical superstars seem more
interested in hawking their clothing lines and name-
brand perfumes than in any meaningful form of political
action,\’ magazine editor Leslie Bennetts wrote in a Los
Angeles Times essay. By coincidence, the article
appeared on the same day that I saw the Country Joe Band
in concert.

Unlike the profuse and dreary examples now personified
by Dylan, quite a few musicians — renowned or scarcely
known — have successfully struggled to retain creative
control over their work. They continue to resist the
corporate juggernauts that routinely flatten talent into
the pap of pop.

A new development to celebrate is the rise of the
Country Joe Band. While standing the test of time, music
from the ensemble group resonates profoundly each day as
young Americans in uniform do their best to survive in a
faraway country: \’And pound their feet into the sand of
shores they\’ve never seen / Delegates from the western
land to join the death machine / And we send cards and
letters.\’

It happens that Country Joe McDonald and the band\’s
other musicians have returned to public space together
at a time when many American soldiers — following the
orders of the commander in chief — are continuing to
kill and be killed. An old question is also new: What
are we fighting for?

\’And those who took so long to learn the subtle ways of
death / Lie and bleed in paddy mud with questions on
their breath / And we send prayers and praises.\’

Norman Solomon is co-author, with foreign correspondent
Reese Erlich, of \’Target Iraq: What the News Media
Didn\’t Tell You.\’