The Original Country Joe Band: Turned Up and Turned On

"I don't feel so comfortable with today's push and shove/I find myself wanting to be back in the Summer of Love." So sings Country Joe McDonald, but with that halcyon era now a full four decades in the rearview mirror, it may be time to finally put to rest the notion that its glories can ever be recaptured. Recorded in 2004 in Southsea, England, The Original Country Joe Band: Turned Up and Turned On finds four of the founding members of the band once known as Country Joe and the Fish (guitarist Barry Melton had the good sense to sit this one out) together again. The musicianship here is amateurish; in fact, the band comes across like a superannuated garage group who haven't picked up their instruments in years (in Melton's absence, the guitar playing, by McDonald and David Bennett Cohen, is particularly lame). The presentation is perfunctory at best (way too much time is wasted tuning and standing around on stage), the audience response is appropriately tepid, and while the show may have been digitally filmed, the direction is unimaginative and the picture is too dark. As for the songs, McDonald's principal claim to fame was his appearance at the original Woodstock festival, where he led the muddy throng in a profane chant ("Gimme an F…") before launching into "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag," a silly but catchy anti-Vietnam War rant. Both are performed here in Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, as are many other relics of the hippie-protest epoch (the sentiments of which are, in sum: down with war, up with weed, the city's a bummer but the country's cool, the establishment sucks, love your brothers and sisters, save the whales). Quite honestly, however, it's hard to imagine that even committed nostalgists will want to sit through this overlong performance in need of serious editing. DVD extras include an interview with McDonald. Not recommended. Aud: P. (S. Graham)