Country Joe & The Fish – Electric Music For The Mind and Body

More Country Joe and the Fish

More Psych Rock

  • This outstanding pressing on the early Stereolab label boasts Double Plus (A++) sound or very close to it on both sides
  • The overall sound here is rich, full-bodied and lively, with solid and present vocals, as well as excellent clarity all around
  • A very difficult record to find with good sound and clean surfaces, which is why we rarely have them on the site
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Their full-length debut is their most joyous and cohesive statement and one of the most important and enduring documents of the psychedelic era …”
  • If you’re a fan of Country Joe, a Hot Stamper pressing of their classic release from 1967 might just belong in your collection.

Vintage covers for this album are hard to find in clean shape. Most of them will have at least some amount of ringwear, seam wear and edge wear. We guarantee that the cover we supply with this Hot Stamper is at least VG, and it will probably be VG+. If you are picky about your covers please let us know in advance so that we can be sure we have a nice cover for you.

First, a little background on the general sound of Electric Music For The Mind and Body, the band’s debut and an album that is widely considered a true psych masterpiece. Most copies of the album have an unfortunate tendency to be boosted in the midrange, and on top of that they are often veiled and lack space.

Both sides here do a much better job in these areas than most of what we played, which, frankly, was not too good. These sides may not be perfect but they communicate the music well and that counts for a lot in our world.

And to be fair some of the album is actually quite well-recorded, “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine” being probably the best sounding (and best arranged) track on the record.

What The Best Sides Of Electric Music For The Mind and Body Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

  • The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
  • The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1967
  • Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
  • Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
  • Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.

What We’re Listening For On Electric Music For The Mind and Body

  • Less grit — Smoother and sweeter sound, something that is not easy to come by on this album.
  • A bigger presentation — More size, more space, more room for all the instruments and voices to occupy. The bigger the speakers you have to play this record, the better.
  • More bass and tighter bass — This is a psych record but it’s also a ROCK record. It needs weight down low to rock the way the artists, engineers, and producers wanted it to.
  • Present, breathy vocals — A veiled midrange is the rule, not the exception.
  • Good top-end extension to reproduce the harmonics of the instruments and details of the recording including the studio ambience.
  • Last but not least, balance — All the elements from top to bottom should be heard in harmony with each other. Take our word for it, assuming you haven’t played a pile of these yourself, balance is not that easy to find.

Our best copies will have it though, of that there is no doubt.

A Must Own Rock Record

We consider this album the band’s Masterpiece. If you are going to own one Country Joe and the Fish album, this would be the clear choice, both sonically and musically.

TRACK LISTING

Side One

Flying High 
Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine
Death Sound Blues 
Porpoise Mouth 
Section 43

Side Two

Super Bird 
Sad and Lonely Times 
Love 
Bass Strings 
The Masked Marauder 
Grace

AMG 4 1/2 Star Rave Review

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… 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.