And I realize once more

That things gone before

Have no ending.

But Country Joe and the Fish are not dropouts in the usual sense--they are really not dropouts at all. "We've got everything we need, except love, but that's available," Joe said Friday night. "There's a way to relate to each other, to be nice."

Talking to Joe MacDonald, you get the feeling that he may be right--that it may be possible to "turn on" the whole world. "Sure, we can turn on everybody, and I don't mean drugs," he said. 'Go back home and relate with your parents. Eat dinner with them. You don't have to turn them on to drugs. My parents don't take drugs, but that's all right. It doesn't make much difference. We know something that they don't know. We gotta help them out.

"Start being a family again. Start talking to older people. It's a bummer to be old in this country. What a bummer. But we can all get together and talk. It's a big job but it can be done."

Beneath the facade of idealism, Joe also recognizes the reality and harsh truth around him. "There's something wrong with this country," he said. "The War is just a manifestation of everything else that's happening." That is why he has been planning the Chicago festival. "It's an attempt to polarize the country, to establish ourselves as a political froce. It's a matter of life and death."

"WE have to turn the tide of history," he continued, "turn it into a global community, disarm the world, feed everybody. There's a way to approach things, you know. You can reach people by approaching them intelligently."

Joe is not convinced that music is the way to reach these people. "Music is nice," he said, "but it's not gonna solve the problems of the world."

On other groups, Joe's ideas are as outspoken as his political views. "The Beach Boys," he said, "are like a bunch of fraternity brothers who took LSD and have really gone beserk. Some of their effects are nice, but their lyrics..."--and a grin spread over his face--"wow."

He said that he had heard the Boston Sound "doesn't exist," and that he was "in love with Ed Sanders of the Fugs."

"I turned into a homosexual when I started playing rock and roll," Joe said, "and now I'm kind of in love with several guys."

In particular, he said tha the was in love with Jimi Hendrix as well as Sanders. "The best music in this country is Negro pop music. It just comes out," Joe said. "We're now trying to learn to play it."

Together for two years, with two albums so far and a third due fairly soon, Country Joe and the Fish have successfully managed to be irreverent and different. 'We don't intend to have a method at all," Joe says of the future. 'We'll just try different things and keep trying to have a good time making music."