Consumer Guide Album

Country Joe & the Fish: Country Joe and the Fish [Vanguard, 1967]
There is only one first-rate song here--"Flying High," the far-out tale of a lucky hitchhiker--and while it is possible to become permanently accustomed to the slow instrumentals and songpoems that are this band's psychedelic signature, their rhythms and melodies are as unfocused as a bad light show. All this is salvaged, theoretically, by the politics, but the cocky, petulant, yet strangely attractive vocals never quite succeed in making callow belligerence seem an unmitigated virtue. C