Together in Bloomington, MN

Together
,
Country Joe & the Fish
's third album, was the group's most consistent, most democratic, and their best-selling record. Unlike their first two albums, which were dominated by
Country Joe McDonald
's voice and compositions,
featured the rest of the band -- guitarists
Barry Melton
and
David Cohen
, bassist
Bruce Barthol
, and drummer
Chicken Hirsh
-- almost as prominently as
McDonald
. That's usually a formula for disaster, but in this case it gave the album more variety and depth:
tended to favor droning mantras like the album-closing
"An Untitled Protest,"
which worked better when contrasted with the likes of
Melton
's catchy anti-New York diatribe,
"The Streets of Your Town,"
and the group-written
"Rock and Soul Music."
Songs like the latter cast the group as a
soul
revue, true, and they couldn't quite pull that off, but
had the charming quality of unpredictability; you never knew what was coming next. Unfortunately, what came next in the band's career was a split.
Barthol
was out by September 1968,
Cohen
Hirsh
followed in January 1969. Thereafter,
fronted various
Fish
aggregations, but it was never the same, even when this lineup regrouped for
Reunion
in 1977. ~ William Ruhlmann