Sometimes you start a magazine and end up with a band.

Country Joe McDonald made his presence felt all over the underground scene in and around the Bay Area in the early to mid-60’s. One of the original hippies — with his long hair, leftist leanings, and membership in a jug band — McDonald, while attending Berkeley, founded and published a little magazine for his fellow travelers which covered your typical counter-culturisms of the day: free speech, the war in Vietnam, how to be groovy.

In 1965, McDonald met Barry Melton kicking around the folk scene, and when he decided to publish a “talking issue” of his magazine, he brought Melton in on guitar. With the release of two songs on an EP which served as an aural edition of the magazine, the first incarnation of Country Joe and The Fish was thusly spawned. They still identified as primarily acoustic and folk-driven, but Dylan going electric and the surge of rock bands in San Francisco inspired them to put together a full-fledged, full-time electric group.

After a long gestation period, the debut album of Country Joe and The Fish, Electric Music For The Mind And Body, finally saw release in May of 1967, just in time for the psychedelic Summer of Love and the explosion of attention on San Francisco. “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine,” the leadoff single, barely poked into the Hot 100, peaking at #98, but it did poke — the only appearance on a chart for the band. But then again, they weren’t really designed for the charts — some bands are designed more for the arts.

So run across the pages like some tiny elf … with Country Joe and The Fish.

Gimme an F! No, wait…..

Country Joe and Company would probably be a little-remembered cult band today, a fringe outfit overshadowed by the big names from the San Francisco scene (Jefferson Airplane, The Dead, Santana), if it weren’t for Joe’s solo appearance at the Woodstock music festival in 1969, immortalized in the film of the same name (a film which I’m contractually obligated to recommend to you every time Woodstock gets mentioned — if you haven’t yet, go watch it). Needing to fill time, the organizers thrust Joe onto the stage with only his acoustic guitar for protection. He played a couple of songs and then decided it was a perfect setting for some audience participation. The band’s second album opened with what they called “The Fish Cheer” — Gimme an F! Gimme an I! etc. — before it segued into “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die-Rag.”

But for this performance, Joe didn’t use the word F-I-S-H.

Now, using a four-letter word that didn’t spell F-I-S-H carried a lot more weight back then, and inciting nearly half a million youngsters to swear at the top of their lungs followed by an anti-war singalong turned Country Joe into a counter-culture hero. [Warning: if you play the video below you are going to see and hear nearly half a million youngsters gleefully swearing at the top of their lungs.]