The record
At a glance
- Artist
- Country Joe and the Fish
- Released
- 1968
- Album
- Third studio album
- Original tracks
- Eleven
- Label
- Vanguard
- Duration
- Approximately thirty-four minutes
Why it matters
The band becomes plural without losing its argument
Together reverses the authorship pattern of the first two albums. McDonald has only two sole compositions, while Hirsh, Melton, Barthol, Cohen and several combinations shape the rest.
That redistribution changes the lead voice as well as the credits. David Cohen attacks Mojo Navigator; songs by Hirsh and Melton introduce other emotional and satirical angles.
Rock and Soul Music begins with nearly seven minutes of collective aspiration. The group tries on the physical language of a soul revue before the album breaks into smaller authored pieces.
The record remains political. The Harlem Song confronts racism, Bright Suburban Mr. and Mrs. Clean Machine satirizes respectable conformity, and The Streets of Your Town addresses urban hostility.
Its quieter forms are equally specific. Waltzing in the Moonlight uses flamenco colour, Away Bounce My Bubbles becomes pastoral daydream, and An Untitled Protest closes as an anti-war death mantra.
The Fish Moan is a twenty-eight-second hinge, not a substantial separate composition. Its placement is part of the original comic architecture.
Together is the last studio album completed by the classic McDonald-Melton-Cohen-Barthol-Hirsh lineup before departures began later in 1968. Its value comes from unpredictability with accountable authorship: each change in style reflects a named writer or group decision rather than generic psychedelia.
New York, 1967–68
After two McDonald-led albums
The first two Vanguard LPs appeared in 1967 and established McDonald as the dominant writer and singer. Together was recorded at Vanguard's 23rd Street studio in New York during sessions in December 1967 and February 1968. Samuel Charters again produced, Ed Friedner engineered and handled special effects, and Barry Melton also received a production credit. The eleven-track LP lasts about thirty-four and a half minutes, with a six/five side division when the short Fish Moan is counted.
Rock and Soul Music carries a five-member credit. Individual and paired credits then redistribute the album among Hirsh, Melton, Barthol and McDonald.
McDonald is reported absent from performances on Susan through the Good Guys/Bad Guys sequence, making the democratic idea audible rather than merely contractual.
The album became the group's best-selling LP. Its success did not prevent Bruce Barthol leaving by September 1968.
Cohen and Hirsh departed around the beginning of 1969, making Together the closing studio statement of this particular five.
The classic five
Five writers, singers and instrumental strategists
McDonald's relative absence from the early middle sequence opens room for genuinely different lead voices rather than imitations of his style. Melton becomes the strongest alternate writer, moving from suburban satire to urban hard rock and moonlit acoustic colour. Cohen's organ and aggressive Mojo Navigator vocal reveal a front-person energy previously secondary to his instrumental role. Barthol turns bass motion into the engine of Rock and Soul Music, then supplies the stranger Cetacean.
Hirsh is both rhythmic anchor and melodic writer. Susan and Away Bounce My Bubbles show tenderness far from drummer stereotypes.
The many sound-effect credits belong to specific arrangements, especially Cetacean, rather than proving the album is a continuous collage. Robin McDonald's finger cymbals are precisely bounded supporting colour, not membership in the core band. Charters and Friedner keep the rapidly changing styles legible through clear, compact production.
Collective variety
Soul motion, satire and sound collage
Rock and Soul Music builds from Barthol's danceable bass into group vocals and extended electric release. Susan changes to a measured Hirsh love song with organ-centred space. Mojo Navigator compresses Cohen's hard vocal and guitar attack into the album's shortest full song. Bright Suburban Mr. and Mrs. Clean Machine turns polished respectability into clipped satire.
The Good Guys/Bad Guys Cheer recruits participation before The Streets of Your Town drives into Melton's urban accusation. The Fish Moan punctures the side division with comic bodily sound. The Harlem Song frames racism through a false travelogue and increasingly serious musical weight. Waltzing in the Moonlight uses acoustic and flamenco-like gestures instead of psychedelic electronics.
Away Bounce My Bubbles floats through Hirsh's pastoral imagery. Cetacean moves from rock song toward odd noises and a returning fragment. An Untitled Protest reduces the finale to organ drone, voice and finger-cymbal punctuation.
Track guide
Eleven collective and individual statements
Rock and Soul Music
All five members share the credit and perform as an imagined soul revue. Barthol's bass supplies bodily momentum while voices and guitars expand the form. The album begins by defining togetherness as coordinated excess.
Susan
Hirsh follows the opener with a private love song. The steadier pulse and organ space replace collective display with careful address, demonstrating that the drummer's authorship changes the emotional scale.
Mojo Navigator
Cohen's attacking lead vocal gives the album a new front person. Guitar and organ push a compact form toward hard rock, making navigation sound combative rather than mystical.
Bright Suburban Mr. and Mrs. Clean Machine
Hirsh and Melton compress social satire into neat surfaces and sharp edges. The respectable couple become a mechanism, and the arrangement's order is precisely what makes it threatening.
Good Guys/Bad Guys Cheer / The Streets of Your Town
A cheer reduces morality to teams before Melton's song exposes the hostility of urban division. The transition turns audience participation against simplistic categories, then releases the band's hardest side-one drive.
The Fish Moan
Twenty-eight seconds of group sound interrupt the album's argumentative momentum. It works as punctuation between larger statements and should not be inflated into a hidden jam.
The Harlem Song
McDonald uses a spoof travelogue opening to expose racist observation. As the music acquires weight, the joke turns back on the supposed guide. Satire becomes indictment rather than local colour.
Waltzing in the Moonlight
Hirsh and Melton exchange city pressure for acoustic intimacy. Waltz motion and flamenco-like guitar make the moonlit scene formally distinct, not merely a softer psychedelic song.
Away Bounce My Bubbles
Hirsh's daydream rises through light melody and pastoral sound. Its apparent innocence offers rest after the album's social arguments while preserving the author's peculiar imagery.
Cetacean
Barthol begins with a firmer rock shape before the arrangement dissolves into unusual noises and returns as a fragment. The whale-associated title invites scale, but the form deliberately refuses stable proportion.
An Untitled Protest
McDonald closes with voice against a drone-like organ field and finger cymbals. By withholding a descriptive title, the death mantra resists conversion into slogan. Protest ends as mourning.
Together and divided
Community, bigotry, love and protest
Together names a process, not harmony without conflict. Distributed authorship creates productive disagreement.
Soul community in the opener contrasts with social division in the cheer and Streets of Your Town. Harlem Song and Clean Machine attack racism and conformity through different comic frames. Susan, Waltzing and Away Bounce My Bubbles form three unlike private refuges. Mojo Navigator and Cetacean make movement unstable through aggression and dissolution.
The Fish Moan uses bodily sound to mock the seriousness of album architecture. The closing protest strips collective spectacle away and returns to death. The record's democratic method is its main concept: every member can alter subject, voice and form.
Vanguard 9277 / 79277
Together as title, process and uneasy promise
Vanguard issued the album in mono and stereo configurations under the 9277 / 79277 catalogue pairing. The title presents the five musicians as a collective at the moment authorship actually became most widely distributed. Package material also referenced McDonald's marriage to Robin, who contributes finger cymbals and percussion.
The original sequence counts the twenty-eight-second Fish Moan among eleven bands. Later compact-disc presentation should not blur the specific classic-lineup boundary.
1968
The classic lineup's commercial high point
Together appeared in 1968 as the third Vanguard LP in roughly a year. It became the group's best-selling album, confirming that broader authorship did not prevent commercial recognition. Critical responses have valued its variety and questioned its consistency, often according to how strongly they prefer McDonald's dominance.
The album's political writing remained direct even as alternate singers and writers changed the surface. Its success coincided with personnel strain rather than stability. Later reappraisal benefits from hearing it as the classic lineup's own collective experiment.
The third album
A democratic peak before departures
Together is the only original-era studio album where all five members shape authorship so visibly. Its best-known legacy is democratic rather than tied to one anthem. The Harlem Song preserves McDonald's satire while the surrounding record proves the band had other writers. Melton's Streets of Your Town anticipates his larger role after the lineup changed.
Hirsh's melodic pieces complicate any account of him as only a drummer. Cohen's Mojo Navigator vocal captures a front-line role not obvious from the debut. The departures after release make the title historically poignant without turning it into a documented breakup concept. Its eleven rapid changes remain a strong argument for ensemble identity over brand consistency.
Original programme
Eleven original bands without bonus leakage
The original programme contains eleven tracks and lasts about 34:29. The Fish Moan is an original twenty-eight-second band. Rock and Soul Music has a five-member credit. McDonald has two sole compositions: The Harlem Song and An Untitled Protest.
Tracks two through five are reported without McDonald performance. Robin McDonald contributes percussion but is not a core band member. This is the last studio album by the classic five before departures. Do not import later live or reunion performances into the LP.
A listening path
Track the changing author and voice
- Identify the collective authorship of the long opener.
- Follow Hirsh, Cohen and Melton as separate voices through tracks two to five.
- Treat The Fish Moan as punctuation.
- Hear The Harlem Song's joke harden into indictment.
- Use Waltzing and Away Bounce My Bubbles as distinct refuges.
- Follow Cetacean's dissolution into the closing drone.
- Then compare the album's voices rather than ranking them against McDonald.
Research trail
Sources and further reading
- Together programme and historical essay — Ace Records / Vanguard
- Album, credits and review — AllMusic
- Country Joe and the Fish artist history — AllMusic
- Institutional band discography — MusicBrainz
- Country Joe McDonald discography — CountryJoe.com
- Vanguard label discography — Both Sides Now Publications