Various Artists – The Dutch Woodstock 1970 (2013)

The Holland Pop Festival, also known as the Kralingen Music Festival, was a pop and rock music festival held in the Kralingse Bos, in the Kralingen neighbourhood of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, on 26–28 June 1970.

Performing bands included The Byrds, T. Rex, Santana, Jefferson Airplane, and the headlining Pink Floyd. Approximately 100,000 attended. Festival posters show that the festival was billed in Dutch as Pop Paradijs and ‘Holland Pop Festival 70’, and that the main investor was Coca-Cola. In both English and Dutch, the festival is also known by the English name Stamping Ground, and is often billed as the European answer to Woodstock. It took place approximately one year after Woodstock, and two months before the third 1970 Isle of Wight Festival (the first two being held in 1968 and 1969).

The Festival became an influential event, as it turned out to be the actual beginning of the Dutch tolerance policy towards marijuana.[citation needed] The many present undercover cops did not arrest any of the users or small traders: it became clear that there were just too many, and all of them peaceful.

In 1971, a documentary about the festival appeared, titled Stamping Ground, created by Hansjürgen Pohland aka Jason Pohland and George Sluizer. The film was made for an international audience and is also known under the titles Love and Music, and in Germany Rock Fieber. Also, several books and exhibitions have been dedicated to the event. A triple lp-boxset was released in 2010. The Dutch Festival 1970 (Kralingen) was organized by Foundation “Holland Pop Festival” (Piet van Daal, Georges Knap, Toos v.d.Sterre, Berry Visser)

On 21 September 2013, a memorial has been unveiled in the Kralingse Bos area, to commemorate the first multi-day open air popfestival on the European continent. (wikipedia)

Holland Pop was a 3 day musical festival held at the Kralingse Bos (Kralingse Forest) in Rotterdam on June 26, 27, and the 28th, 1970. The festival was supposedly The Netherland’s version of Woodstock. This new release includes 2 cd’s and a 97 minute dvd that captures the many highs of the 3 day festival. The 1st cd is over 53 minutes, while the 2nd cd is almost 58 minutes long. An older version of this festival goes by the name of “Stamping Ground”. Although there were many good groups who played at the festival, this release is hindered by poor sound as well as poor camera work. The saving grace of the whole festival was the excellent performances turned in by most of the groups. You have to really listen hard to hear the performances, but once you do so, you will be rewarded.

Despite the rain, an estimated 120,000 stoned festival goers showed up for the big party. And party they did, as witnessed by the camera work on the dvd, which focused as much on the nude bodies, dope-smoking, and love-making, as it did on the groups, themselves. The musical highlights included a blistering set by Santana, who played “Gumbo”/”Savor” & “Jingo”. All excellently performed but hard on the ears, even with digital noise reduction. Al Stewart turned in a fine performance of “Zero She Flies”, while the rarely recorded group Quintessence turn in a fine version of “Giants”. Canned Heat, which features a rare performance by Alan “Blind Owl” Wilson doing “Human Condition”, which is then followed by Bob Hite, joining the crowd to take a few “tokes”, while performing “The World’s In A Tango/So Sad”.

Marc Bolan, just about ending his days with T.Rex, does a very good version of “By The Light Of The Magical Moon”. It’s A Beautiful Day, who perform during a rainstorm, play an excellent set featuring “Wasted Union Blues” & “Bulgaria”. Great performance by David LaFlamme playing a very trippy violin. The Jefferson Airplane perform fine versions of “White Rabbit”, “The Ballad Of You And Me And Pooneil”, and “Won’t You Try Saturday Afternoon”. Another rare appearance is turned in by East Of Eden, who play an excellent version of “The Sun Of East/Irish Theme”. From Chicago, we get an excellent version of “Big Bird”, by The Flock, who are also very rare to find in concert.

And moving into a Jazz-Prog-Rock direction, we get Soft Machine, led by Robert Wyatt & Hugh Hopper, playing a fine version of “Esther’s Nose Job”. Other groups who participated are Pink Floyd, The Byrds, Country Joe, and Family, led by the strong vocals of Roger Chapman. All in all, the performances were very good to excellent. It’s indeed unfortunate that the cd sound and poor camera work, probably done by “stoned” photographers, only undermined the fine performances by the artists. Still, however, the set captures a very special moment in time. It could have been so much better, but the original masters were not in the best of condition to begin with. Highly recommended !

Historic live recordings from the Holland Pop Festival held in the Kralingen neighbourhood of Rotterdam, on 26-28 June 1970. The attendance was anywhere from 100,000 to 150,000.

Personnel:

Tracklist:
CD 1:
01. Cuby & The Blizzard: Dust My Blues (James) 4.46
02. Canned Heat: Human Condition (Hite/Wilson) 3.09
03. Canned Heat: So Sad (The World’s In A Tangle) (Domino/Bartholomew) 5.32
04. Livin’ Blues: Big Road Blues (Johnson) 2.41
05. Al Stewart: Zero She Flies (Stewart) 2.20
06. Quintessence: Giants (Raja Jam) 2.39
07. East Of Eden: The Sun Of East (unknown) 15.49
08. East Of Eden: Irish Theme (Jig-A-Jig) (Traditional) 3.20
09. Country Joe And The Fish: Oh Freedom (McDonald) 3.54
10. Dr. John: Mardi Gras Day (Rebenack) 4.31
11. Family: Drowned In Wine (Whitney/Chapman) 4.28

CD 2:
01. Santana: Gumbo (C.Santana/Rolie) 3.58
02. Santana: Savor (C.Santana/Rolie/Areas/Brown/Carabello/Shrieve) 4.29
03. Santana: Jingo (Olatunji) 4.26
04. Jefferson Airplane: White Rabbit (Slick) 2.19
05. Jefferson Airplane: The Ballad Of You And Me And Pooniel (Kantner) 3.03
06. It’s A Beautiful Day: Wasted Union Blues (Laflamme) 7.23
07. It’s A Beautiful Day: Bulgaria (Laflamme) 4.02
08. T. Rex: By The Light Of The Magical Moon (Bolan) 3.19
09. The Byrds: Old Blue (Traditional) 3.35
10. The Flock: Big Bird (Smith/Karpman/Glickstein/Canoff/Webb/Posa/Goodman) 4.50
11. Soft Machine: Esther’s Nose Job (Ratledge/Hopper/Wyatt) 6.03
12. Pink Floyd: Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun (Waters) 3.42
13. Pink Floyd: A Saucerful Of Secrets (Waters/Wright/Mason/Gilmour) 6.22

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Country Joe &The Fish – Electric Music For The Mind And Body (1967)

Electric Music for the Mind and Body is Country Joe and the Fish’s debut album. Released in May 1967 on the Vanguard label, it was one of the first psychedelic albums to come out of San Francisco.Electric Music for the Mind and Body is Country Joe and the Fish’s debut album. Released in May 1967 on the Vanguard label, it was one of the first psychedelic albums to come out of San Francisco.
Tracks from the LP, especially “Section 43”, “Grace”, and “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine” were played on progressive FM rock stations like KSAN and KMPX in San Francisco, often back-to-back. A version of the song “Love” was performed at the 1969 Woodstock Festival.
“Grace” is a tribute to Jefferson Airplane’s lead singer, Grace Slick.

The album was recorded during the first week of February 1967 at Sierra Sound Laboratories, Berkeley, California, by Robert DeSouza, with production by Samuel Charters. It was released on May 11, 1967, on the Vanguard label.  (by wikipedia)

Their full-length debut is their most joyous and cohesive statement and one of the most important and enduring documents of the psychedelic era, the band’s swirl of distorted guitar and organ at its most inventive. In contrast to Jefferson Airplane, who were at their best working within conventional song structures, and the Grateful Dead, who hadn’t quite yet figured out how to transpose their music to the recording studio, Country Joe & the Fish delivered a fully formed, uncompromising, and yet utterly accessible — in fact, often delightfully witty — body of psychedelic music the first time out. Ranging in mood from good-timey to downright apocalyptic, it embraced all of the facets of the band’s music, which were startling in their diversity: soaring guitar and keyboard excursions (“Flying High,” “Section 43,” “Bass Strings,” “The Masked Marauder”), the group’s folk roots (“Sad and Lonely Times”), McDonald’s personal ode to Grace Slick (“Grace”), and their in-your-face politics (“Superbird”). Hardly any band since the Beatles had ever come up with such a perfect and perfectly bold introduction to who and what they were, and the results — given the prodigious talents and wide-ranging orientation of this group — might’ve scared off most major record labels. Additionally, this is one of the best-performed records of its period, most of it so bracing and exciting that one gets some of the intensity of a live performance. (by Richie Unterberger)

Personnel:
Bruce Barthol (bass, harmonica)
David Cohen (guitar, organ)
Gary “Chicken” Hirsh (drums)
Country Joe McDonald (vocals, guitar, bells, tambourine)
Barry Melton (vocals, guitar)

Tracklist:
01. Flying High (McDonald) 2.37
02. Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine (McDonald) 4.20
03. Death Sound Blues (McDonald) 4.22
04. Porpoise Mouth (McDonald) 2.47
05. Section 43 (McDonald) 7.22
06. Super Bird (McDonald) 2.02
07. Sad And Lonely Times (McDonald) 2.22
08. Love (McDonald/Melton/Cohen/Barthol/Gunning/Hirsh) 2.19
09. Bass Strings (McDonald) 4.58
10. The Masked Marauder (McDonald) 3.08
11. Grace (McDonald) 7.02

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Country Joe And The Fish – Reunion (1977)

Country Joe and the Fish was a rock band most widely known for musical protests against the Vietnam War, from 1966 to 1971, and also regarded as a seminal influence to psychedelic rock.
The group’s name is derived from communist politics; “Country Joe” was a popular name for Joseph Stalin in the 1940s, while “the fish” refers to Mao Zedong’s statement that the true revolutionary “moves through the peasantry as the fish does through water.” The group began with the nucleus of “Country Joe” McDonald (lead vocals) and Barry “The Fish” Melton (lead guitar), recording and performing for the “Teach-in” protests against the Vietnam War in 1965. Co-founders McDonald and Melton added musicians as needed over the life of the band. By 1967, the group included Gary “Chicken” Hirsh (drums) (born March 9, 1940, in Chicago, Illinois); David Cohen (keyboards) (born August 4, 1942, in Brooklyn, New York) and Bruce Barthol (bass) (born November 11, 1947 in Berkeley, California). The 1967 lineup lasted only two years, and by the 1969 Woodstock Festival, the lineup included Greg ‘Duke’ Dewey (drums), Mark Kapner (keyboards) and Doug Metzler (bass).

The band came to perform an early example of psychedelic rock. The LP Electric Music for the Mind and Body was very influential on early FM Radio in 1967. Long sets of psychedelic tunes like “Section 43”, “Bass Strings”, “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine”, “Janis” (for and about Janis Joplin) and “Grace” (for singer Grace Slick) (all released on Vanguard Records) were often played back to back on KSAN and KMPX in San Francisco and progressive rock stations around the country. Their first album charted at #39 on September 23, 1967, their 2nd album at #67 on February 3, 1968, and their third at #23 on August 31, 1968. Country Joe and The Fish were regulars at the original Fillmore auditorium, the Fillmore West, Fillmore East, and Chet Helms’ Avalon Ballroom. They were billed with such groups as Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Moby Grape, Blue Cheer, Led Zeppelin, and Iron Butterfly. They played at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and at the Woodstock Festival in 1969. In 1971 the band appeared in a Western film starring Don Johnson as an outlaw gang called the Crackers. The film, titled Zachariah, was written by the Firesign Theatre and was billed as “The First Electric Western”. They also appeared in the George Lucas film More American Graffiti and in the 1971 Roger Corman film Gas-s-s-s.

Their biggest hit was the anti-war “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag”, which debuted the same year as the band, but became best known after Country Joe’s solo acoustic performance of it at Woodstock. Country Joe was sued in 2001 by Kid Ory’s daughter, Babette Ory, who claimed McDonald’s “Fixin” Rag infringed her copyright to Kid Ory’s Dixieland jazz standard “Muskrat Ramble”. In August 2003, the court case was decided in McDonald’s favor, since Kid Ory, Babette Ory, and the Muskat Ramble publisher had all known of the song in the late 1960s, but no complaint was made for decades. Finding the complaint objectively unreasonable, the court awarded McDonald some of his attorney’s fees and costs. Due to the long delay and prejudice, including death of key witnesses, the court did not even reach the lack of substantial similarity issue. Babette Ory and her attorney appealed, and the appellate court affirmed the decision in favor of McDonald.

Country Joe’s anti-war activity led to his being called as a witness at the Chicago Seven conspiracy trial in 1969, where he recited the lyrics to “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag”.

Country Joe continued to tour and practice with other California based bands.

Barry “The Fish” Melton was later a founding member of The Dinosaurs and has recently released new recordings of that band whose members included Peter Albin from Big Brother and The Holding Company and John Cipollina from Quicksilver Messenger Service and Copperhead. Melton studied law while on the road as a musician and was admitted to practice by the State Bar of California in 1982. In 2009, Melton retired as the Public Defender of Yolo County, California, although he continues to tour internationally from time to time.

Melton and McDonald have occasionally reunited to play music in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and as recently as 2002 in support of a Christmas toy drive in San Francisco for Toys for Tots.

2004 and 2005 saw several short United States and UK tours and the release of a live CD by the Country Joe Band, at that time comprising McDonald, Cohen, Barthol and Hirsch.

Reunion is the sixth studio album by the San Francisco psychedelic rock group Country Joe and the Fish, released in 1977 by the original 1967 band. It was produced by Sam Charters for Fantasy Records and recorded between January and April 1977. The music is not so psychedelic and several tracks are Country rock. (by wikipedia)

What a great album … listen to songs like “Time Flies By”, “Insufficient Friends” or “Come To The Reunion” and you´ll know what I mean.

Personnel:
Bruce Barthol (bass, harmonica)
David Cohen (guitar, organ)
Gary “Chicken” Hirsh (drums)
Country Joe McDonald (vocals, guitar, bells, tambourine)
Barry Melton (vocals, guitar)
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Sam Charters (jug)
Bobby Keys (saxophone)
Steve Madaio (horn)
Jim Price (horn)

Tracklist:
01. Come To The Reunion (Hirsh) 3.03
02. Time Flies By (J.McDonald) 4.09
03. Stateline Nevada (Melton) 2.03
04. Love Is A Mystery (Melton) 2.04
05. Dirty Claus Rag (J.McDonald/B.McDonald/Charters/Marsh) 2.04
06. Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine (J.McDonald) 3.25
07. Thunderbird (J.McDonald) 3.42
08. Gibson’s Song (instrumental) (Cohen) 3.37
09. No One Can Teach You How To Love (Melton) 3.16
10. Insufficient Friends (Barthol/Marsh) 2.36
11. Dreams (Cohen/Richardson) 2.55

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