Country Joe McDonald – Paris Sessions

When the COVID lockdowns finally ended and vaccines made travel less risky, I was anxious to get back to Troy, NY. Yes, I desperately wanted to see my child, whom I hadn’t seen since December 2019. But I also wanted to visit some record stores, including The Beat Shop, which has been on River Street since long before vinyl became cool again. I’ve picked up some real treasures there over the years. Even in the days when I wasn’t really collecting any new vinyl, it was not hard to walk out of the shop with something in hand. So I was thrilled to get to go back and rummage through the bins again.

Well, this thing popped up. As is very clear, I’m a huge fan of Country Joe McDonald, and have been since discovering those ’60s Country Joe and the Fish discs back in 1979, around the same time I saw him perform with The Fish and the whole band at J.B. Scott’s in Albany. These days, I play and sing several of his songs, which still really resonate. I found this 1973 release and it looked wholly unfamiliar, but I was absolutely getting it – and when I took it to the counter, Jimmy said, “Oh, that’s a real good one.” I trust Jimmy, he’s never steered me wrong.

However, I don’t have a lot of his solo stuff – he released quite a bit through the ’90s – and only started finding it in recent years. “Hold On, It’s Coming” looked and felt like a soundtrack to an indie film that didn’t exist, and while it’s perfectly good, it didn’t really engage me that much.

“Paris Sessions,” on the other hand, I’ve found incredibly engaging. It opens with “Fantasy,” which is still a lament for our times, 50 years later. There’s some silliness about turning the record over when you hear the band make a certain sound – the kind of joke that people did on records back then but that could wear thin after hundreds of plays. There’s “Movieola,” a fun sorta honky tonk lament of the stock predictability of movies but also of the shock cinema of the day. “I’m So Tired” has a real Leon Russell soul feel. “Zombies In A House of Madness” incorporates poetry by Michael Beasley, who was, according to the liner notes, in Lompoc prison at the time. (A short film shot inside jail in 1972, by the same title, was released in 1975.) “Sexist Pig,” again, still resonates when I wish it didn’t. “Coulene Ann” was Joe’s attempt to write from a woman’s point of view and becomes an early feminist revenge fantasy song. (Atypically for the time, his All Star Band that played on this record featured three women in the five-person lineup.)

Overall, I put this on a few days ago to give it a listen before writing about it – and just kept playing it over and over and over. It’s really good. I just wish more people had discovered and were into it – because then I wouldn’t have to transcribe the lyrics to “Fantasy” myself in order to cover it.

After all that time in lockdown, unable to venture beyond the boundaries of my town, Troy may as well have been Paris.