Country Joe McDonald — Hold On It’s Coming
Going through the bins at the Forever Changes pop-up, and what the hell is this? A Country Joe record I’ve never seen before? Indeed. At first I thought it was a movie soundtrack – entirely possible as we had just run across a very forgettable performance by Country Joe and the Fish in a similarly forgettable Roger Corman movie called “Gas-s-s-s” (featuring baby Ben Vereen and baby Cindy Williams). But no, it’s just one of those ’70s things that looks like a movie soundtrack. In a sense, it didn’t matter, it was from 1971, after the original band had come apart and the attempt to reconstitute it hadn’t amounted to much.
The good news is this is a pretty good Country Joe album – no surprises, but much more solid than C.J. Fish was. It’s got some blues, rock, folk rock — just what you’d expect. A very pleasant listen, in fact. He does make the odd choice to open and close the album with the title song, and the versions aren’t terribly different, to be honest. Not entirely sure it needed a reprise, but it’s fine. Overall, quite a nice little record.
Hold On It’s Coming gatefold 
Hold On It’s Coming gatefold 
Hold On It’s Coming label
Originally published 4-17-21
Is this movie available? I had the pleasure of sitting across country Joe while he did an acoustic gig at the freight and salvage in Berkeley. I requested this song and he did it. There was a movie that went with it from what I understand but I haven’t been able to track it down anywhere.
Sorry it took so long to see this question! I was on vacation. I wondered, but it’s not clear to me from the album whether there really was a movie, and it doesn’t appear on Joe’s website. https://countryjoe.com/movies.htm
One of my favorite albums. A lost gem. though it did receive quite a bit of airplay on hippie FM radio stations in it’s day. Fleetwood mac founder Peter Green plays uncredited electric guitar on a few songs. He’s credited as “Rockhead” on “Mr. Big Pig”, and I think that’s him on “Only Love Is Worth This Pain” where he isn’t credited at all.
There’s no movie to go with this album, though Joe did appear, along with acoustic versions of some of his songs, a few years later in a seldom seen movie called “Que Hacer”. The full movie is up on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuUuJqQ0W6I
Wow! Did not know about the Peter Green of it, and I wasn’t aware of that film so thanks, I’ll check it out!
I’ll admit that not too long ago I watched an otherwise difficult-to-get-through Roger Corman movie (not unusual for me) called “Gasss” because Joe had a speaking part as a radio announcer and provided some of the music.