Dear Friends,                                                                                     What’s that smell!?!

Country Joe McDonald died yesterday from Parkinson’s Disease. He was 84. I love his music, maybe most of all with Country Joe and the Fish, but he did so much more, he has a great album of Woodie Guthrie covers. He was also a really good guy, a Mensch.

And he wrote I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag. Of all the anti-war songs it was the one that most embodied our feelings, the ones who opposed the war but were eligible for the draft or had been drafted. The crazy exuberance matching the ad campaign form bringing out all the more the harshness of the words. The last verse is harsh to an almost unheard of level. Listen to it if you want to know. I’ve met people who are appalled by it, I don’t think they were liable to be drafted. We found power not only in the words but the crazy enthusiasm with which they’re sung. That’s the climax, but it’s like that all the way through, and that’s the way we felt, or tried to feel, braving the monstruous and overwhelming reality with a cynical laugh, “the situation is hopeless but not serious”. And we were right to feel that way, and right to find inspiration in Joe’s song:

“Ain’t no time to wonder why

Whoopee! We’re all gonna die!”

Joe volunteered to join the Navy and served for three years before beginning his music career. His anti-war conviction always was for those fighting in Vietnam as much as for anything else. He feared that the anti-war movement would turn against the soldiers themselves, and that idea was used against anti-war demonstrators at the time and after by the government and by the media. It wasn’t like that, at least not where I was. We all had friends who had been drafted, many deployed to Vietnam. We wanted to bring them home.

By sheer dumb luck I avoided the draft, legally. I never had to decide between complying and resisting. Friends of mine resisted, some went to jail. Those of us lucky enough more than ever opposed the war in any way we could think of, singing I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag as we did so.

I hope we’re not right now at another moment when the call will be, again:

“Yeah, come on all of you, big strong men

Uncle Sam needs your help again

He’s got himself in a terrible jam

Way down yonder in …”

But if it is that moment some at least of us old geezers will stand with those who are now the age we were then.

In case you didn’t know, the Fish Cheer introduced all Country Joe and the Fish performances:

The Fish: Gimme an F!   The audience: F!      Gimme an I!       I! , etc.

At Woodstock, where I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag went viral (as we now say), the word spelled was a different four letter word beginning with f, and that was great. But the original Fish Cheer has another feature beloved by many (including me and my daughters), you can hear it on the album. After the word is spelled the Fish shout, twice,

What’s that spell! What’s that spell!, but the third time … go back to the post’s title.

Country Joe and the Fish forever!

Love and solidarity,

            Bobby

The Federal government no longer exists.