Country Joe’s Time Warp

Even with two decades to buffer the change, it has to be a spirit-wrenching experience for Country Joe McDonald to have gone from galvanizing half a million people at Woodstock to playing before less than 1/10,000th that number (we’re talking about 40 persons here) at Huntington Beach’s Nightmoves on Saturday.

But the psychedelic veteran opened a solo acoustic show with his “Entertainment Is My Business,” and, rather than the cynicism or hackdom such a title might suggest, McDonald’s ensuing performance defined the song as a tenacious statement of purpose.

Despite the tiny, and in some quarters noisily inattentive, audience, the singer-guitarist still tried as hard to connect as he did in the days when the “Fish Cheer” was a controversial counterculture rallying cry. Several of his other ‘60s works--including “Janis,” “Here I Go Again” and “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine”--held up well.

But those pleasingly nostalgic whiffs of patchouli aside, McDonald remains a potent topical troubadour, bringing out the timeliness in Woody Guthrie’s “Talking Dust Bowl Blues” and responding to current ills with his own “Cocaine” and “Go Go Johnny Rambo.”

McDonald has been active in veteran’s causes, and the latter song was a biting slap at the Stallone interpretation of the Vietnam vet’s experience.