Bay Area music legend, who performed at Woodstock, dies at 84

"The singer-songwriter will be long remembered for the Country Joe and the Fish favorite "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag," which originally came out in 1965 and went on to become a counterculture anthem. The song was usually accompanied by the "Fish Cheer" - spelling out the word F-I-S-H - but was sometimes altered to spell an expletive instead."

"The most famous rendition of the altered "Fish Cheer" occurred when McDonald performed in front of hundreds of thousands of members of the hippie movement at the Woodstock music festival in 1969."

"Born in Washington D.C. on New Year's Day 1942, McDonald grew up in Southern California and moved to Berkeley in the early '60s with the hopes of becoming a folk singer. As the story goes, he began busking on Telegraph Avenue, appeared on legendary local public radio station KPFA and become heavily involved in the Free Speech Movement."

Country Joe McDonald, a Berkeley-based singer-songwriter and frontman of psychedelic folk-rock group Country Joe and the Fish, passed away at age 84 due to Parkinson's Disease. Born in Washington D.C. in 1942, McDonald moved to Berkeley in the early 1960s to pursue folk music, eventually co-founding Country Joe and the Fish with guitarist Barry Melton in 1965. The group's 1967 debut album "Electric Music for the Mind and Body" became a pioneering psychedelic-rock work. McDonald is best remembered for "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag," a counterculture anthem accompanied by the "Fish Cheer." His most iconic performance occurred at Woodstock in 1969, where he performed before hundreds of thousands. Throughout his decades-long career, McDonald released over 30 albums and wrote hundreds of songs.

Read at The Mercury News