I never like to let New Years Day go by, though I often do, without celebrating the birthday of Country Joe McDonald. The above is a video with all the glories and all the faults of that briefest of windows in our culture and musical history - flower power, baby! The song, "Not So Sweet Lorraine," is a subtle send up of the classic jazz/blues tune of similar title, and the Fish song was an early selection on Issa's Sunday Service.
Barry Melton's smoking lead guitar is a joy to listen to, and in this case, behold.
New Year's morning:
the ducks on the pond
quack and quack.
The album Electric Music for the Mind and Body by Country Joe and the Fish is probably one of the 10 best albums of genuine 60's West Coast psychedelic rock. And we are talking some pretty heavy company: Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Love, Moby Grape, The Doors, The Byrds, Steppenwolf and on and on. "Not So Sweet Lorraine", this week's featured track at Issa's Sunday Service, is probably one the strangest and more salient pieces of spot-on satiric psych rock of that era. One might trace the history of songs about goth girls from the moment of this song's inception. For those who think that the 60's was all flowers and light, think again:
The joy of life she dresses in black With celestial secrets engraved in her back And her face keeps flashing that she's got the knack, But you know when you look into her eyes All she's learned she's had to memorize And the only way you'll ever get her high Is to let her do her thing and then watch you die, Sweet Lorraine, ah, sweet Lorraine.
The joy of life, indeed. But if you want to really find joy, as in "Now I've just found joy", look no further than Nat King Cole, Ray Brown, Oscar Peterson, Ray Ellis, and the incomparable Coleman Hawkins for the one and only original "Sweet Lorraine."
And, ya know, sometimes it just all comes together, as in this issue of Nick Fury, Agent of Shield, with CJ & the Fish singing the verse from "Not So Sweet Lorraine" that got it LitRock status, with its reference to one of the greatest books of any culture, The I Ching:
Nick, uh, didn't like 'em so much. Nuff said.
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This week's feature, two poems from Lilliput Review, #64, December 1994. Enjoy.
Who Is To Be Master
Time to let the husky words you wrestle pin you down.
Tom Riley
Calculated Risk
Some poems never get written: living them through was enough.
Kate Stewart
And, in the same spirit, a gentle reminder from Issa:
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