Electric Music For The Mind And Body

I find it very hard to get excited about an album like this. It was probably big or important in its time (67, right at the beginning of the whole psychedelic pop-rocknsummer of love shit) but this is the same crap I've heard a done much better a million times. I paid more attention to the lyrics to see if I was missing something groundbreaking - cool cats, diggin trips, fuck LBJ, nothing new to see here. And I get that these are cliches now but might not have been at the time, doesn't make them less annoying. It's raw, and I fucking love raw albums, but these guys needed a couple more takes of a few of these songs. And the bluesy track that could have been a nice song was ruined by the loudest tambourine I've ever heard in a song, followed later by the loudest maracas I've ever heard in a song. "Death sound". Maybe I'd have enjoyed it if I'd heard it before I heard Jefferson airplane, grateful dead etc. Or if I never watched ANY Vietnam movies. Or if I dropped some acid first. Other than that, great album.

Well, it’s better than the Grateful Dead, but that’s a low bar.

blues-y patchouli oil old school hippy stuff. Rugged, gritty, leftist. That classic "I recorded this in a tent" aesthetic.

Electric Music for the Mind and Body by Country Joe and The Fish (1967) McDonald’s moniker “Country Joe” is a reference to Joseph Stalin, and Barry Melton’s moniker “The Fish” is a reference to Mao Zedong (Wikipedia); you see, mommies, daddies, and managers were post-WWII socialists. This was music that was loved at the time because it was so ‘counter-cultural’. And it was loved by people who celebrated their difference from the mainstream by imitating each other. This mindset was perfectly parodied by Dick Shawn in the 1967 Mel Brooks classic “The Producers”. The ‘message’ is carried by trite lyrics that clunk along and stop just short of expressing feeling. It’s what you get when you turn red diaper babies loose in the studio. Lyrically, the album seems to be excusing itself by saying, “Since I’m stoned, I don’t have to make sense”. There’s one weeny stab at amateur political satire of LBJ (“Superbird”) that can be reduced to “I don’t like you, nyaah, nyaah”. And when a songwriter says (“Sad and Lonely Times”), “I can’t find the words to tell you how I care”, the listener can’t help but say, “Well, keep searching and get back to me”. Lead guitar has some nice moments (“Death Sound”, “Bass Strings”) with sparkling blues runs, inventive rapid tremolo and tasteful reverb, but it’s slapped against lead vocals that utterly lack soul. Plus, the bass strings on “Bass Strings” are seriously out of tune (actually, this is the case on most of the album). And there’s often an annoying mismatch between the gimmicky guitar effects (e.g., “Porpoise Mouth”) and the lyrical mood. Organ and harmonica on the pretentiously ‘psychedelic’ extended “Section 43” are strictly amateur. The closing track “Grace” (supposedly a tribute to Grace Slick) is so bad I can picture Slick saying, “Thanks, but no thanks.” It’s all about love, peace, getting high, stop the war, yada yada. And it’s all so plastic—an album that begs not to be taken seriously. 1/5

These fuckers were at Woodstock and I was served this album during Daylight Savings Time. These things are both true and more substantial than I care to admit. Drugs and drug music have gotten much better since this album was released. Yet we still can't fix Daylight Savings Time or create another successful Woodstock.

Apparently you can judge a book by its cover. My favourite part was the song that randomly played right after this album finished on Apple Music. Check out “Screamin’” by The Paul Butterfield Blue Band.

Was having a bad day. couple of beers and this CD fixed me.

Meh. Groovy, but only as a period example

Wow. A psychedelic rock album from 1967? These guys were truly innovators. There were definitely no other psychedelic rock albums from this time period! I'm sure this album belongs on the list and is not just a footnote in one of the most oversaturated music genres of all time! Country Joe should shut up and let THE FISH speak for a moment. I want to hear some blubs. Truly one of the albums ever. 2/5.

Excellent stuff. Love finding bangers on this list that I've never heard of. Loved the weirdness of it

On the whole, I liked it. Good, old-school, jazz-infused psychedelic rock. There were some things I didn't like though. The guitars were occasionally too high-pitched and whiny for my liking (although I really liked the more swamp-style twingey guitar parts) and the vocals weren't the best either. Still, a nice listen overall.

Who could forget the time that LBJ fought the Fantastic 4 and Doctor Strange? This album is on DRUGS

Great psych!

Fuzzy, loosey goosey blues and psych. A pleasant surprise, but I feel like it loses the plot near the end. I like how, at one point, they drop all pretense and just whisper the letters "LSD". Favorite tracks: "Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine", "Love"

Well that Xmas recycling is not going to sort itself, I'd better get a crack on. For some reason our yellow bin cycle doesn't really align with Xmas, so it's a bit of struggle, what with two weeks of normal recycling and then all the Xmas boxes and stuff, but then that's Canterbury Bankstown council for you. Sorry did someone say something about Country Joe and the Fish, sorry, I didn't catch that..on a par with Stephen Stills? I can't hear you over the sound of boxes being scrunched.

I Liked this a lot more than I expected I would, especially after starting it and not getting through the first song or two the first couple tries. You can tell that it was one of the albums that laid the foundation, or discovered the formula for, psych and jam bands that would follow. It seems like a more bare representation of the elements that would go on to dominate those genres. Very bluesy at times with a country and rock ‘n roll vibes with a lot of experimentation and ambience.

On the whole, I liked it. Good, old-school, jazz-infused psychedelic rock.

I really enjoyed this album, maybe the electric stuff got a little too loud but when they go folksy, yum, I liked it so much I easily listened twice

One surprise in this project is how much I like psychedelic music. Certainly wasn’t much of a thing for me when I was younger. Through this project, though, the psychedelic-laced albums more often than not appeal. This album is no exception. I listened to it three times today and each time enjoyed it more! I dig it not just as a historic album but also as a groovy listen.

Had never heard of them before but loved it. All the sounds, the twang, the catchiness of the lyrics, I probably saved half the album to my music. This is why I'm doing this project, to find things like this. And also, what a name!

swampy psychedelia? sign me the fuck up — 10/10

Really enjoyed this one, especially the dark psychedelic sound that it has.

tri bom o som

4.5/5. Might be low-key some of the best stuff from 60s Cali psych at the time

beautiful

Probably the best Country Joe and the Fish album

Absolutely loved this! Every single song was a highlight for me

On the first listen, I thought this was just kinda alright, but on the second listen I think I appreciated it a lot more. It had a flavor VERY reminiscent of early Doors with some Animals, Cream and Jefferson Airplane thrown in there too. It was obviously super psychedelic and crunchy with a bunch of catchy hooks and cool melodies. The production quality was typical of 60's psychedelic rock, which is to say that it was a little fuzzy and not super crisp and clear, but I didn't mind it at all. Listened to it twice and really dug it. Five stars.

Loved it. I love 60s psych blues. More of this pls!

Now that’s some proper 60’s psychedelia, I think these cats mighta played at Woodstock tbh

Loved this. Totally 1967!

A hidden gem. Never heard of them before but I like the music. Shame they were so short lived

the keyboard and guitar on this album feels, ELECTRIC. the end of the album takes it slow and lets you soak in tbe beauty

60's psychedelic rock from San Francisco is where it's at. I thoroughly enjoyed this album. They played Monterey Pop and Woodstock. What an awesome scene to have been involved in. Great stuff.

I LOVED this

Electric Music for the Mind and Body is Country Joe and the Fish's debut album, originally released in 1967. This might be the best psychedelic album ever. I mean, the cover alone should peak your interest. This album is so raw. The guitars are mixed so loud that they just take over. It almost has the vibe of an early acid test live performance. There's fuzz guitar, delay, tremolo, everything you'd want in a psychedelic record. The organ parts can be a bit overbearing and dated at times but there's so many cool moments on this record that it gets overshadowed. It's fantastic under certain mind altering substances. It's a shame that Country Joe & The Fish kinda got lost in music history and aren't mentioned much anymore in the psychedelic scene because they were true psychedelia at the top of their game. Fun fact: You may see old vinyl copies of this LP with messed up corners. There was a rumor upon release that they dipped one of the corners of the record sleeve in LSD, and many a hippie tried to get dosed by chewing the corner.

This shit goes hard af

One of the best psychedelic rock record that really worked with what the genre wanted to do.

Scrappy hippies are my kind of wannabee cowboys.

What a fun album

Nice album.

Amazing listen all the way through

Well, I approach this with a great deal of nervousness. Country? Ew. Is it actually country? No, thank the lord it isn't. It's psychedelic rock, which is on every measure better than country. Speaking of "country", I absolutely love the filth of "Not so sweet Martha Lorraine". Clearly a reference to Shakespeare's "Country Matters", this is a song about sex. A bookish woman has learnt about sex from books and by rote. She doesn't take pleasure in it, but uses it. She wants him "to die" is obviously, glaringly la petit mort, the little death. Wiping the tears "from his friend's eye" is sordidly descriptive. She's using sex, using it to bring him to climax even - but she's never learnt "the country ways" - she doesn't know how to take any of that pleasure for herself. And he's lamenting that. What a cracking little track and what a story it tells!

What a fantastic record.

9/10 - pretty good album

Nice

Groovy, I love it. The first tracks are perfect, the last ones are a bit less interesting to me, but still very good

Wow.

Un viaje sonoro espectacular, recomendable

Heavier and more bluesy than The Byrds, just as unmediated and pertinent as Buffalo Springfield, Country Joe & The Fish bursts in like they know they are underrated. B/c man, what a revelation, I thought they were just the most vocal anti-war activists at Woodstock. In reality, they go toe-to-toe w/ the groups I just mentioned as well as bands like Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, and Love. The music is psychedelic, but never breezing or flimsy - they have nothing to do w/ what's gossamer or insubstantial: just listen to the instrumental track 'Section 43.' Lyrically, it's outspoken but also poetic: 'In startled greens of playground grass / A child jumps rope to rhyme'; 'It's a bird it's a plane, it's a man insane, it's my president LBJ'; 'L.S.D. / L.S.D. / L.S.D.'

Seems like some heady jams from the late 60s SF psych scene and Woodstock era bands. Despite that expectation, this album was great and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Calm but interesting. Consistent.

Hippiemuziek uyt den ouden doosch, beetje blues hier, beetje peace en love daar, met z'n allen in kleermakerszit op oma's tapijtje en geef maar door die waterpijp. Op geen enkele manier verbaasde het mij dat dit uit 1967 komt. Orgeltjes, gitaar en mondharmonica, best leuk maar helaas voor de makers is deze elektrische muziek voor lichaam en geest een beetje ondergesneeuwd door ik noem een Jimi Hendrix, ik noem een The Beatles, ik noem een Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan of The Doors. Desondanks vond ik dit een vermakelijke zit.

Soms komen er in deze snoblijst van die bandjes langs, waar je echt nog nooit van hebt gehoord. Aan de ene kant is dat mooi, want daarom luisteren we deze lijst nog steeds, om verrast te worden door iets wat we nog niet kennen. Aan de andere kant worden we nogal eens teleurgesteld, omdat er een reden is dat we het niet kennen en vaak is dat omdat het ultiem kut is. Nu dus deze Country Joe, uit een periode van beatmuziek. Maar ook de psychedelische tijd van Jefferson Airplane en andere obscure bandjes uit San Francisco, lees ik op de wiki. Naast het psychedelische heeft het ook genoeg bluesy elementen, een schurend gitaartje is geen uitzondering. Het heeft af en toe wat weg van Cuby of the Doors, al is er ook af en toe carnavalesque theater of een bijzonder zenuwslopend orgel. Ik kan deze muziek altijd wel erg goed hebben merk ik, zolang het maar niet te vaag wordt en er genoeg gitaar in zit. De zang is ook niet storend en dat maakt het geheel best fijn om te luisteren. Het is zeker gedateerd, je hoort dat het uit die Woodstock periode komt, maar dat is helemaal niet erg. Vermakelijke 4 sterren.

I liked this a lot, I definitely want to listen to it again.

I only knew Country Joe from his famous anti-Vietnam War song and a vague memory from the Woodstock movie. This is considerably more psychedelic than I was expecting. But in a good way.

Classic sixties hippie counter culture anthems. How times have changed (or have they?)

Cool psych blues

3.5 Seemed like this album was either highly influential or a complete ripoff of what was going on at the time, depending on when it was released. I enjoyed it

swampy fuzzy psych rock with whiny guitars is just something that triggers something in me hahaha. I like it! These Tunes are raw and great. Enjoyed this album lots! (4.0/5.0)

A protest song with teeth! Barry Melton's been a longtime guitar hero of mine, with a liquid sound that your Jerry Garcias could only imitate. I guess Joe and David took a lot of solos on this one. No so sweet martha lorraine has a great blues bridge that is way catchier than it has any right to be. Anyway, not really a jug band like they started, but there is a lot of interesting stuff going on here.

Country, bluesy, psychodelic - very 60s!

A big slab of psychedelic country blues, reminding just how refined this could be delivered and how satisfyingly delivered by cats (or fish) who knew what they were doing. Indeed, the Summer of Love raised the floor on a certain style, a certain sound, and lots of bands – CJ&F very much included – delivered at a high level. In general, this leans. "Sad and Lonely Times" is first rate and dreamy-gently trippy "Area 43" and the similar (but darker-hued) "Bass String" are also quite strong. A weakness is that they seem to overrely on the organ late on in the record. In general, one thinks this leans more to the mental-psychological, than the bodily-physical side of the title's equation, though one's always been more of a thinker than a dancer. One's glad to have heard this which also serves as a juicy and enjoyable historical artifact.

Psychadellic brother

Back to back 60s psychedelic rock albums. This one probably not quite as good as the zombies, but I like the genre. Listened twice so definitely had something about it. 3.5 as not as good as yesterday, but worthy of a 4 I think

I do love some jangly blues guitar and im surely a sucker for organ. Love the beginnings of protest music from Country Joe. Album is good except the end song leaves me tired.

A really solid album. The instrumentals were cool & trippy. Mostly great (especially the guitar), but at times they got annoying. However, those instances were minimal. Same with the vocals. The singer is by no means great, but his voice fits well with the music. But the first couple songs were definitely a miss, vocals-wise. Glad the album got better. Side note to the singer: You didn't have to drop so many on-the-nose hints about LSD, we could tell you were already on it.

good psychedelic

Three tracks in, I am drinking this straight from the bottle. I love the crusty, blues tone infused with psychedelic goodness. And to top it off, the production and vocals are better than they have any right to be for the era (really production more than vocals). Death Sound is particularly noteworthy here; the guitar and play with echos and reverb are easy to let yourself sink into. Okay as this played out it definitely lost a lot of focus -- or maybe I did. Either way the impression I get is that this is a (typically) wonky psychedelic rock album with truly amazing production quality. While it is unfocused, I enjoyed a lot more than I didn't here and could see myself coming back for repeated listens. Low 4 / high 3 boundary.

This is a hard 4 stars for me. Never heard of these guys but it was some finger licking good guitar mixed with some fun psychedelic vibes. I enjoyed the listen.

Very cool and unexpectedly good acid rock album. Gotta love when you get caught off guard whole doing this list. Sounds like King Giz took a lot of inspiration from this when making Float Along - Fill your Lungs, which is one of my top albums by them. So no surprise this is a pretty strong 4

great 60's hard/Psychedelic rock

I knew this group and even had some songs liked. Really enjoyed this 4/5

low 4, psychedelic

dreamy, trippy, I imagine it pairs well with being high

I wasn't sure what to expect based on the title but this is really dope. Very experimental and weird for 1967. I like how it mixes country sounds with almost prog-like style at points.

Favorite Track: Super Bird

Summer of Love on an album.

It was interesting

I listened to this while walking through a storm. Literally. It really suited the mood. I’m by the sea, I was walking along the seafront at high tide, the wind was blowing heavily and the waves were crashing on the wall, occasionally spraying over onto the path. I don’t really remember much of the music, but I had a very good time listening to it against that background

i love 60s psych music and of course know country joe and the fish from their iconic performance at woodstock, but i had never actually sat down and listened to this album. there is some very cool, very 1967 psych rock here. in particular, 'not so sweet martha lorraine' is a classic of the genre and still sounds great. unfortunately with the good is a whole lot of very uninteresting, more sparce psychedelic 'jams' that really drag this album down. what could be a fun psych album just gets too in the weeds with tracks like 'section 43' and 'grace.' still, there's nothing here that i would call bad, it's just i think it could be better.

Surprisingly good

Not entirely even but god nonetheless

Classic album for the time - solid

I could see this easily being a hit back when it came out

Some of the tracks are a bit hippy dippy & of their time but a couple have agent well. 4 stars might be a tad generous, but overall I enjoyed listening to this.

just some solid, solid psychedelic rock

Esta primera grabación de Country Joe & the fisch es un magnífico fruto de la psicodelia a finales de los 60. Me sigue maravillando la apertura del disco, "Flying High", con su sugerentes texturas de guitarra y teclado, y la personal voz de Joe McDonald (Country Joe). En el disco también encontramos trazas del folk-rock inicial de la banda en "Sad and Lonely Times" y, por supuesto, la muy política "Superbird".

Funky and fun!

Interesting

She hides in an attic concealed on a shelf Behind volumes of literature based on herself And runs across the pages like some tiny elf Knowing that it's hard to find Stuff way back in her mind, Winds up spending all of her time Trying to memorize every line Sweet Lorraine, ah, sweet Lorraine Sweet lady of death wants me to die So she can come sit by my bedside and sigh And wipe away the tears from all my friends eyes Then softly she will explain Just exactly who was to blame For causing me to go insane And finally blow out my brain, Sweet Lorraine, ah, sweet Lorraine. Yeah, this is a pretty great album. 4/5

Chill, trippy, & made for a really good background listen while at work.

Cool electric guitar!

Interessantes Zeitdokument. Generation Woodstock. Passt!

Really enjoyed this one, especially the dig at LBJ for some reason

zak doesn’t like it but it’s not that bad

Twangy psychedelic rock. Good listen overall. Added to favorites

Not too much to say, asides from it being some pretty damn good Psychedelic Rock. Solid 4 for me.

I'm a big fan of the Country Joe I've heard, mostly his solo albums. My first taste of this one and from the first two tracks, I'm picking up what he's putting down. Surprised how musically similar to Doors. Ok, now I realize if you play a Hammond then it sounds like the doors in my world.

Start was very strong. Really cool blend of electronic and psych that I think is really predictive of the shape of indy and progressive music that followed. I think the second half is a little less focused and more noisy. I'll definitely revisit this. Falls just short of a 5 at the moment