Country Joe McDonald, The Country Store Backroom

T H E B A C K R O O M
Rare Items for the Serious Collector

Woodstock package | First EP | Second EP | Third EP | Oracle Facsimile edition

Woodstock Photograph and Guitar

An 8 1/4 x 12 1/2 fine art print of the famous Woodstock moment by legendary rock photographer Jim Marshall, matted and signed on both the print and the matte. Plus, a Yamaha FG-150 acoustic guitar just like the one I played at Woodstock, no longer made. Both the photo and the guitar can be autographed as you request.
$300 for the Marshall photo alone, or $1000 for both photo and guitar. E-mail for more information. More about the Woodstock moment.

Serial no. 20219370. Advice on buying Yamaha guitars.

Original Copies of the First EP
Country Joe & the Fish / Peter Krug

Original package Rag Baby Talking Issue No. 1 was the first recording of "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag." The original "Volume 1, Issue A, October 1965, Talking Issue Rag Baby" was a 7 1/2" x 10 1/2" manila envelope, with a picture of demonstrators in Berkeley stopping a train filled with troops heading to Vietnam, that contained tear sheets from Rag Baby Magazine with music for the four songs and a 7-inch 33 1/3 LP. View the whole package.

Side 1: "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" and "Superbird" by Country Joe and The Fish (in its very first incarnation): Carl Shrager, Joe McDonald, Barry Melton, Bill Steele, and Mike Beardslee.
Side 2: "Fire in the City" and "Johnny's Gone in the War" by Peter Krug, solo.

The original pressing was 100 copies. There is a copy in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. We are asking $2500 for one of the few remaining complete packages.

There also remain a few vinyl discs, in a plain brown sleeve. Asking price is $500 for the disk and plain sleeve only.

E-mail for more information. All about the Rag.

Original Copies of the Second EP
Country Joe & the Fish

EP#2 cover, first version

EP#2 cover, second version
The second Rag Baby EP was a 7-inch 33 1/3 EP in a black-and white sleeve, recorded on June 6, 1966. There were 1000 copies of the first cover version, and an unknown number of the second.

Side 1: "Thing Called Love" and "Bass Strings"
Side 2: "Section 43"
Joe McDonald: vocals, electric guitar, harmonica
Barry Melton: vocals, electric guitar
David Cohen: electric guitar, Farfisa organ
Bruce Barthol: bass, harmonica
John Francis Gunning: drums
Paul Armstrong: tambourine, maracas

First cover design (group shot in middle). $1800.
Second cover design (group shot at top, Country Joe & the Fish on bottom). $1500.

E-mail for more information.

Original Copies of the Third EP (Resist)
Country Joe McDonald

3rd EP The third and last Rag Baby EP was a 7-inch 33 1/3 LP in a 7 1/2 by 10 1/2 inch evelope with artwork by Jane Fonda, recorded April 1971 in connection with the FTA Show. View the whole package.

Side 1: "Kiss My Ass" and "Tricky Dicky"
Side 2: "Free Some Day"
Joe McDonald: vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar
Anna Rizzo: vocals
John Rewind: electric guitar
Richard Sussman: piano
Nacho Dewey: harmonica
Vic Smith: bass
Greg Dewey: drums

$100
E-mail for more information.

ABOUT THE RECORD
In 1971 my daughter Seven Ann’s mother Robin Menken became friends with Jane Fonda. Jane sent her daughter Vanessa to the Blue Fairyland Nursery School in Berkeley. The Blue Fairyland was run by the leftist commune the Red Family. I worked in the nursery school as a volunteer and Seven went there for several years. So Jane Fonda became a regular in our life at the time.
She, along with Robin Menken and Nina Serrano got this idea for a show called "Free The Army" or FTA, after the GI Movement saying "Fuck The Army" -- in underground code, FTA. Since I had a history of EPs in the past it seemed natural to make a 7 inch EP for the occasion and as a benefit fund raiser for Jane Fonda’s organization in Los Angeles raising money for her anti-Vietnam War activities.
My mouthpiece and partner Bill Belmont coordinated the recording of the three songs with local San Francisco Bay Area musicians. We recorded in the Haight-Ashbury at Funky Features. a recording studio run and engineered by "Funky Jack" Leahey.
Memory now is fuzzy but Bill Belmont’s cousin Chris did most of the art work on the envelope sleeve except for the cover design which I developed from the helmet fist design from a GI anti-war newspaper. Jane Fonda was over at the house the day of working on the cover design talking about the FTA shows with Robin and asked if she could do some inking in of the design; I said sure and she did. I then wrote "cover design by Jane Fonda" below the helmet. She didn’t seem to mind.
I went out with the FTA show with Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Ben Vereen, Robin Menken, and Nina Serrano at several GI coffee houses: Mt. Home Idaho, The Olio Strutt (which mysteriously burned down after we left with some of the records inside) …. Killeen, Texas outside Fort Hood was another show I remember. I played also in Seattle at a GI coffee house, and perhaps a few others.
The cast, plus a teen-age Holly Near and others, went on to the Philippines and Japan and made a movie titled FTA! which after a brief opening disappeared from commercial venues and exists only now as a legendary bootleg video.

The San Francisco Oracle Facsimile Edition

All twelve issues of the legendary Haight-Ashbury newspaper from the "Summer of Love" era are reproduced in full color on archival paper in this 440 page hardbound 11" x 14" volume with slipcase. The Collector's Edition was limited to 200 copies. It is signed and numbered by the editor, Allen Cohen, on the title page, and by Rick Griffin on the reproduction of his cover (right). Also included are separate full-color reproductions of all twelve covers on heavy stock suitable for framing. Fewer than 50 copies of the Collector's edition remain.
Exclusive Backroom Offer: Copies purchased from the Backroom will have the full-page ad for the first Country Joe & the Fish album that appeared in Issue 8 signed by Country Joe McDonald and the artist, Tom Weller.

* This item is sold out; but if you e-mail me, I might be able to find one for you and tell you what the price is.

If you are looking for specific item not shown, e-mail me; I might have one.

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