Activist Country Joe "Fish Cheer" McDonald wonders where the rage has gone

Hey Canada mind your own F*!@ing business.

He stole from Kid Ory??? Stealing "Muskrat Ramble" is enough to get Louis Armstrong mad at him.

Rock and Roll PING! email Weegee to get on/off this list (or grab it yourself to PING the rest)

The "rage" switched sides. We realize that Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, and others in the mainstream media are partisan liars who fabricate news items entirely. Bias indicates a partisan presentation of the facts.

These scum outright lie. THIS is where the outrage is today. It is why more people came to the polls for Bush than all "anybody but Bush" candidates combined.

And than you grow up and realize your heros were nothing more than drug addicts and total losers.

There are close to a million people in the Edmonton area. According to this article, which is much more entertaining than the excerpt would indicate, Country Joe sang -- for free -- to 120 people. BTW, the re-election of George W. Bush has depressed Marxists (a group which includes Joe McDonald's entire family)around the world. Check out the details.

Sparsely attended peace rally hearkens back to Vietnam era

Woodstock performer Joe McDonald leads crowd in singing 1960s antiwar songs


Jim Farrell
The Edmonton Journal

Sunday, November 14, 2004

CREDIT: Ed Kaiser, the Journal

Activist Country Joe McDonald wonders where the rage has gone.

CREDIT: Ed Kaiser, the Journal

Four-year-old Adrianne Gaa attended the Saturday peace rally in Gazebo Park with her grandmother.

EDMONTON -- A folk-singing icon of the 1960s who performed at Woodstock took centre stage at Gazebo Park on Saturday and wondered where the rage has gone.

Country Joe McDonald stood in the Gazebo near Whyte Avenue, strummed his flat-top guitar and sang an antiwar protest song.

McDonald brought hundreds of thousands of young people to their feet in 1969 to jeer the Vietnam War at the Woodstock festival.

On this sunny afternoon, his presence attracted about 120 people to decry the American assault on Fallujah and the ongoing Iraq war.

Like Jerry Hill, the majority of crowd members were middle-aged. Many were admitted old hippies.

"Do we need a draft again to inspire political protest?" asked Hill, a recently retired investment broker. "There certainly is a great deal of apathy among the younger people."

Most of the younger set admitted they'd never heard of McDonald or his infamous "Fish Cheer."

Thin, clean-shaven, balding and slightly stooped, the 62-year-old McDonald says he's still a socialist but confesses he's now part of the middle class.

Some organizers of the 1 p.m. free concert and subsequent protest parade excused the sparse attendance. Perhaps it was the lack of advertising and advance publicity. Edmonton's Muslim community hadn't shown up.

Organizers had tried to get people out. Groups involved in the protest included the Edmonton Coalition Against War and Racism, Marxist organizations, non-Muslim supporters of the Palestinian cause, members of the Unitarian Church and the occasional Vietnam war draft evader and army deserter.

McDonald's sound system was handled by Mike Tulley, an American army draftee who arrived in Canada in April 1971 after fleeing Fort Lewis, Wash. "The Vietnam war was raging. I didn't want to go," Tulley said.

McDonald had warned about the fate that awaited draftees like Tulley when he took the stage at Woodstock to sing Feel Like I'm Fixing to Die Rag.

"One, two, three, what are we fighting for,

"Don't ask me, I don't give a damn.

"Next stop is Vietnam."

When McDonald sang the song again on Saturday, older members of the crowd remembered the lyrics and sang along.

Most younger members, like 22-year-old Amber Larson couldn't. She'd never heard it before, just as she had never heard of the famed Berkeley band, Country Joe and the Fish.

Larsen admitted she hadn't even seen the movie Woodstock as she lit a sprig of sage. "I'm doing this for clarification," she explained. "I want to clear the energy auras."

After several speeches condemning genocide, the bombing of cities, international oil cartels and American imperialism as well as a half-dozen songs, the crowd paraded out of the park.

As they moved down 83rd Avenue and onto Whyte Avenue to tie up Saturday afternoon traffic, a march organizer chanted the familiar leftist mantra into a bullhorn: "The people, united, will never be defeated. ..."

jfarrell@thejournal.canwest.com

I like how the writer seems surprised that Edmonton's Muslim community didn't show up. You know how Muslims are generally such huge fans of 1960s American folk singers.

THE PARTY IS OVER!

I missed it all but I was big into the 60s during the 70s and 80s. "Electric Music for the Mind and Body" is one of my favorite albums of all time!

Smells like dead fish........

"I want to clear the energy auras."

Don't we all?

Activist Country Joe McDonald wonders where the rage has gone.

Can you say "arthritis?"

"...slightly stooped..."

Make that 'very stooped'. First time I've seen it spelled that way - maybe it's a typo. :^)

Joe, you old marxist, your two minutes of fame were up in the summer of 1969. That was thirty five years ago.

Your remaining thirteen minutes were rained out.

Not to worry though, you can still sing and be a star, for the folks at your socialist retirement home.

I thought that Country Joe had died of an overdose by now...

David Crosby died of dehydration. One to many lesbians asked for a favor.