Big Brother and the Holding Company personalized fan favorites with original and new members. (Tom O'Dell).

Two-thirds of the way through “The Heroes of Woodstock” show on April 25, it was time for a little cheerleading.

“Give me an ‘F’!” yelled counterculture legend “Country” Joe McDonald, and the Kendall Main Stage Theatre audience followed his lead. “Give me a ‘U’! Give me a ‘C’! Give me a ‘K’! What’s that spell?”

And the seated audience, a mix of students and adults, gray-haired or otherwise, loudly shouted back the obscenity.

A moment later, McDonald launched into one of the 1969 Woodstock’s most memorable tunes, the anti-Vietnam War “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag.” McDonald, with his acoustic at hand, jangled his way through the verses and hit the line “Whoopie! We’re all gonna die!” with his old sardonic pep. By the last refrain, the audience was singing the lyrics for him.

The “Rag” was one of McDonald’s several appearances Sunday night. As host of the “Heroes” showcase, which featured classic bands Big Brother and the Holding Company, Canned Heat and Jefferson Starship, he performed a number of intermediary songs — including the anecdotal “Entertainment Is My Business” and a cover of Neil Diamond’s “Red Red Wine.”

Some might say his duties as emcee were a little different Sunday, considering the venue. Although older fans constituted the majority of the audience, there was a notable presence of 20-somethings and teenagers.

“I’m surprised to see young people that want to hear ’60s music, but that’s great, you know?” McDonald said. “Back in the ’60s, of course, we were college-aged ourselves, playing college campuses.”

The gravity of the music started to kick in as McDonald introduced Big Brother with his own “Janis,” a song he wrote for Janis Joplin, the band’s late singer, when the two were boyfriend and girlfriend. But the transition began with a rendition of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land,” on which the members of Big Brother joined in.

Then the band took the helm and ran straight into the groovy, mid-tempo “Down On Me.”

Only one member of the band, guitarist and singer Sam Andrew, had performed at Woodstock, and two of the members — guitarist Ben Nieves and singer Sophia Ramos — are relative youngbloods. Nevertheless, the veterans rocked and Nieves and Ramos added their own flavor to crowd-pleasers like “Summertime,” “Piece of My Heart” and “Ball and Chain.”

Nieves, who has been sitting in with bands since age 16, worked flawlessly with Andrew. The two doubled up for a huge psychadelic guitar solo on the band’s first single, “Blindman,” and the guitars clashed and meshed wildly throughout the set.

Yet the greatest burden was on Ramos, tasked with carrying on Joplin’s revered vocal tradition. The singer’s performance exceeded expectations — her expressive approach and extraordinary, Joplin-esque squeals and sustain earned the audience’s admiration.

Ramos and Nieves were playful on the dramatic “Ball and Chain,” enacting a stage confrontation and having a joke tiff when the guitarist threw a water bottle in her direction after one particularly long note. In the song’s monologue she joked, too.

“It’s so hard to find love, d’you know what I mean? That’s why when you find it, you gotta get knocked up,” she said, rubbing a progressively pregnant tummy. “Corrupting the baby already,” she added as the crowd laughed.

According to Andrew, though, the young musicians are “much better than we were.” The collective talent, younger and older, converged in a final blasting finish.

Next it was the blues-rock band Canned Heat, whose hits “On the Road Again” and “Going Up the Country” are ’60s staples.

“Going Up the Country,” what the band called “a Woodstock theme song,” seemed more seasoned than the sprightly version immortalized in the “Woodstock” film. Drummer Adolfo “Fito” de la Parra took over vocals in the place of the original singer and airy harmonica replaced the flute, giving the song a more reflective sound.

Canned Heat drove through egalitarian anthems and no-nonsense blues, laden with pounding bass and howling guitars. On “So Sad (The World’s In a Tangle)” an environmental song, recent addition Dale Spalding sang with a swagger and a smooth tenor about “too much smoke, too much gas” while Harvey “The Snake” Mandel’s guitar wailed like a big, fuel-burning machine.

Following Canned Heat, McDonald and the members of Jefferson Starship joined for a performance of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth.” In his effort to rile the audience, the host confused many by cheering on Princeton University. As McDonald and the band sang the famous lyrics, the crowd joined in with enthusiasm.

Starship worked the audience up with the hits of its former incarnation, Jefferson Airplane. Despite a sound imbalance — the rhythm guitar overwhelmed the mix in certain spots — the band’s big riffs and bigger songs resonated with the crowd.

Darby Gould took the place of singer Grace Slick, proving her robust vibrato on psychdelic classics “Volunteers,” “Somebody to Love” and, especially, “White Rabbit.”

On that song, Gould swung around in a dress and pumped her fist as she sang the monumental line, “Feed your head!”

On “Somebody to Love,” perhaps the Airplane’s best-known song, original guitarist Paul Kanter and the rest of the band timed their riffs like clockwork. Singer David Freiberg, who joined the band a few years after Woodstock, closed his eyes and seemed lost in a different world.

“The Heroes of Woodstock” tour began last year in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the festival and included Quicksilver Messenger Service, Ten Years After and a number of other classic artists.

“I knew all of those people before any of us were known, when we were, indeed, ‘indie bands,’” Andrew said. “So it’s kind of like a high-school reunion.”

Andrew said that “there’s sort of a retro-wrinkle these days.” Indeed, concerts at college venues show that bands like his still have a youth following, at least amongst the handful of students who bravely stood and danced at their seats.

“I appreciate the ones that were here because it’s been so many years,” de la Parra said. “For a young person to go to a Canned Heat show is an act of rebelliousness. Anything related to that is okay with us.”

As far as the future of the tour is concerned, Andrew is humorously skeptical. “What’re you gonna call it next year, the ‘Wounded Veterans of Woodstock?’” he joked.

De la Parra, by contrast, was morbidly optimistic. “We’re older and it’s harder on us to tour. As far as playing the gigs, it’s the same as always. We enjoy playing, we enjoy making the people feel,” he said. “When you’re older, it’s a lot more difficult, you know. But we’re still doing it and I guess we’ll do it until we drop dead.”

“Heroes of Woodstock” was the highlight of the 14th season of Celebration of the Arts, which is co-funded by the College and the Student Finance Board.