tracks musicians credits notes related releases

Something Borrowed, Something New

Country Joe McDonald

Initial release : May 1998

Rag Baby RAG 1030 (Big Beat 180)

An anthology of tracks taken from Country Joe McDonald recordings issued on the Rag Baby label. Includes two tracks that feature Garcia, both taken from the Superstitious Blues album. Also includes one track that features Mickey Hart and Bob Weir taken from the Peace On Earth album.

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cover

Tracks

  • Entertainment Is My Business (McDonald)
  • Who Am I? (McDonald)
  • Kiss My Ass (McDonald/Melton)
  • Free Some Day (McDonald)
  • Standing At The Crossroads (McDonald)
  • Your Last Few Records Just Didn't Make It (McDonald)
  • Power Plant Blues (McDonald)
  • Thinking Of John Fahey (McDonald)
  • Sunshine (McDonald)
  • War Hero (McDonald/Van Ronk)
  • Mourning Blues (McDonald)
  • Here I Go Again (McDonald)
  • Hold On It's Coming (McDonald)
  • Starship Ride (McDonald)
  • Blues for Michael (McDonald)
  • Carry On (McDonald)
  • Got It All Together (McDonald)
Musicians

Garcia plays on two tracks on this compilation album, both of which are taken from the 1991 Country Joe album, Superstitious Blues;

Starship Ride;

  • Country Joe
  • Jerry Garcia - acoustic guitar
  • Barry Flast - bass, vocals
  • Kirk Felton - snare, hihat
Blues For Michael;
  • Country Joe
  • Jerry Garcia - acoustic guitar
War Hero;
  • Country Joe McDonald - vocals, mouthbow
  • Jack Lancaster - lyricon II (pipes)
  • Mickey Hart - gourd drum, big drum
  • Bob Weir - percussion
Sunshine;
  • Country Joe McDonald - vocals
  • Chris Kovacs - piano
  • Tom Coster - moog
  • Greg Douglass - lead electric guitar
  • David Hayes - bass
  • Tom Donlinger - drums
  • Raul Rekow - congas
  • Mike Herbick - syndrum
Musicians on the other tracks include;
  • Country Joe McDonald - guitar, harp, vocals
  • Greg Douglass - guitar
For full musician information see the pages for the source albums.

Credits

For the compilation album;

  • Producer - Country Joe McDonald, Bill Belmont
  • Mastering - Nick Robbins
  • Liner Notes - Alec Palao
  • Package design - Philip Lloyd Smee at Waldo's Design
  • Front cover photograph courtesy of Rag Baby
Notes

This is a compilation of tracks taken from the seven albums that Country Joe McDonald has released on the Rag Baby label - the label that released his earliest recordings in the mid-1960s and which was restarted by Country Joe and Bill Belmont in 1980.

Country Joe's notes for the Superstitious Blues album give a brief piece of information about each song. Two of these include comments on Garcia's involvement.

Starship Ride is very Bay Area psychedelic rock and roll, and it's fun; it's about romance, a date, the future - a science fiction love song. It's a double entendre, a titillating song but it still has some Mom and Pop in there. It was a perfect vehicle for Jerry Garcia because it sounds so much like a Grateful Dead song, and the Grateful Dead don't do those songs anymore. It's the kind of song I like to write - a one chord, one rhythm, straight ahead rock and roll pop song with a little twist of the futuristic.

Blues For Michael is just a blues. I wanted to write the simplest, easiest song - when you're young, you want to write the most difficult forms because you want to prove you can do it. But sometimes doing the simple is really hard. This one goes back to Country Joe and the Fish stuff, the really slow simple stuff we did. The chords are simple, the lyrics are simple, it means exactly what it says. And I hoped Jerry would play this song with me because we both knew Michael Bloomfield, we both know how easy it is to disappear, to die. It's real sentimental - Jerry Garcia and Country Joe, singing about Michael Bloomfield, a very famous blues musician with a drug problem who died under mysterious circumstances about ten years ago. Sometimes a song has to be really personal, about your real life. This song is about me and how I feel about the fact that this friend of mine is gone.

Related releases

The tracks on this compilation are taken from the following Country Joe McDonald albums;

Kiss My Ass and Free Some Day;

Standing at the Crossroads and Your Last Few Records Just Didn't Make It; Who Am I?; Entertainment Is My Business, Here I Go Again, Hold on It's Coming and Got It All Together ; Power Plant Blues; Sunshine and War Hero; Mourning Blues; Starship Ride and Blues For Michael were originally released on; Carry On; Thinking of John Fahey is a previously unreleased instrumental recorded in 1997.


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