Fish cheer: I-feel-like-I ’m-fixing-t o-die-rag

The song “Fish Cheer: I- feel- like- I’m- fixing- to- die- Rag” by Country Joe and the Fish was the anthem for the Woodstock generation. This song even opens the film version of the “Woodstock festival” billed as three days of peace, love and music. Country Joe sang the song with such conviction in the movie that you couldn’t help, but get on board. The message was powerful and reached inside and forced people to take stock in what they believed in. After the movie came out, everyone in my high school sang it like it was a religious song. “And it’s one, two, three, four/What are we fighting for?” The song has so much meaning for me I was a teenager at the time. I was on the verge of planning the rest of my life, yet so much was going on in the world. VietNam was happening and then there were people protesting the war. Our youth were routinely being shipped to VietNam to get killed. Politics were changing the face of the world while the youth movement opposed the Establishment’s views.  Marijuana became increasingly  popular at this time and the drug culture for the first time came out in the open. People who beforehand hid their recreational drug use now did it out in the open and seemed proud of it. Peace signs were everywhere and flower power was in full swing. When I hear Country Joe’s fish cheer, I get angry. I believe the song was meant for one to question their own moral convictions and it certainly accomplished that for me. I think of many things: politics, the peace movement, the anti-government movement, the Black Panthers, the Poor Man’s March, but mostly all the incredible music that emerged during this period.