Global Ganja Report

"Country Joe” McDonald of the band Country Joe & the Fish, immortalized as an icon of the 1960s counterculture through his proudly subversive performance at the Woodstock festival, died March 7 at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 84. In the defining moment of his career, he led a crowd of nearly half a million at the 1969 Upstate New York mega-concert in the "Fish Cheer" (spelling out the word FUCK) before launching into his satirical anti-war anthem "I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin'-to-Die Rag."

Born Joseph Allen McDonald on Jan. 1, 1942, in Washington DC, the future Country Joe grew up in El Monte, a city in the Los Angeles area, where he played trombone with dance bands on the weekends. He joined the Navy as a youth, serving from 1959 to 1962, before returning to LA to attend state college. He moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1965, where he teamed up with fellow guitarist Barry Melton (the eponymous Fish) in Berkeley. The two played in the old-timey Instant Action Jug Band and other acoustic outfits before catching the psychedelic wave as Country Joe & the Fish, which quickly became a luminary ensamble of the booming Bay Area music scene.

Country Joe would ultimately release more than 30 albums, including six studio LPs and two live albums with Country Joe & the Fish. While "Fixin'-to-Die" was their signature song, their repertoire also included the frankly named "Marijuana." (New York Times, Variety, The Guardian)

Image: Bear Family Records via New York Times