Cheap Thrills

Big Brother & The Holding Company, Janis Joplin - Cheap Thrills

Cheap Thrills
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Music CD Cover

Artist: Big Brother & The Holding Company, Janis Joplin
Brand: JOPLIN,JANIS
Edition: Music CD
Format: Extra tracks, Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 1999-08-31
Music Label: Sony
Soundtracks:
  1. Combination of the Two
  2. I Need a Man to Love
  3. Summertime
  4. Piece of My Heart
  5. Turtle Blues
  6. Oh, Sweet Mary
  7. Ball and Chain
  8. Road Block [Studio Outtake][#][*]
  9. Flower in the Sun [Studio Outtake][#][*]
  10. Catch Me Daddy [Live][#][*]
  11. Magic of Love [Live][#][*]

Free Music Notes for Cheap Thrills

Free Music Review: One For the Time Capsule
Hit: 5 Stars

Janis Joplin has been gone for more than 32 years. That's a timespan five years longer than she actually lived! (She died, as did Hendrix and Morrison, at age 27.) In the intervening years, there has been some debate among critics,as well as the listening public, regarding her actual contribution to popular music. Did she single-handedly reinvent the role of the female popular singer, and if even she did, does that make her recordings still listenable 30 years hence. Or was her music in fact a "you-had-to-be-there" phenomenon?

You'll find plenty of people in both camps, to say nothing of all the adjacent camps in between. But Janis Joplin was just as controversial in her own day. For every listener who hailed her as "the greatest white blues singer of her generation," there were plenty who found her "screaming" unmusical and, basically, intolerable, just as they do today! The more things change, the more they stay the same.

As for the notion that "you really had to be there...," well, I kinda was and kinda wasn't. I grew up in the sticks and never saw Janis perform live, much to my regret. But I listened intently to all her records and watched her on TV and film. And I did GET IT, but not right away. Having read about Janis before I ever heard her, I imagined her having some dark, rich soulful voice. The raw, cracked "whiskey voice" evidenced on CHEAP THRILLS came as something of a surprise and, admittedly, took some getting used to, but eventually I acquired the taste, and then some. Janis's voice was indeed huge, but it was also raw, scorching and often painful.( I did eventually hear that dark, soulful voice too, by the way, but it belonged to another singer entirely--Mother Earth's equally great, but decidedly diferent Tracy Nelson.)

So CHEAP THRILLS, the first fully realized album featuring Janis Joplin, remains controversial to this day. Is it the best expression of Janis' (and Big Brother's) inspired amateurism? Or is it a sloppy, slapdash affair that only suggests what Joplin and the band were capable of in concert? I think it's the former and would maintain that no subsequent Joplin effort captured the exuberence and kinetic energy that she embodied. In fact, few other albums define the late 60s as well as this one. I love the fact that it was still a BAND at this juncture, and that Janis did not necessarily sing lead on every track (including the album's classic opener "Combination of the Two"). OK, she still overpowers when singing back-up, but the point was that this band was NOT ust Big SISTER and the Holding Co.

In fact, as others have noted, the unique, stuttering, almost manic guitar work of James Gurley and Sam Andrew is like nothing you've ever heard before. The opening for "Ball and Chain" alone sounds like Demiurges awakening from the bowels of the earth. No wonder, Janis is inspired to almost unheard of vocal pyrotechnics in response: she had all that beautiful noise to compete with.

The only caveat for neophytes with the "expanded tracks" version is to keep in mind that those extra tracks are a mixed blessing. Longtime fans may welcome the addition of the newly available stuff, but in some ways they do detract from the album's power. "Ball In Chain" ended the original LP on a stunning note: the four extra tracks here have their moments, but they were "outtakes" for a reason. As "put-ins" they actually lessen CHEAP THRILLS' considerable impact.

Cheap Thrills Poster

No Description Available
No Track Information Available
Media Type: CD
Artist: JOPLIN,JANIS
Title: CHEAP THRILLS
Street Release Date: 08/31/1999
Domestic
Genre: ROCK/POP
One of the most eagerly awaited albums in rock history, Big Brother & the Holding Company's 1968 major label debut (they'd previously released one thinly produced collection on the small Mainstream label) made good on all the hype generated by Janis Joplin's amazing performance at the Monterey Pop Festival the year before. Crowned by its hit single, a churning remake of Aretha Franklin's sister Erma's "Piece of My Heart," the album also contained Joplin's Monterey showstopper, Big Mama Thornton's "Ball and Chain," as well as the Gershwin classic "Summertime," on which Joplin's always underappreciated band (especially guitarists Sam Andrews and James Gurley) match her vocal intensity with their own ferocious playing. This expanded reissue includes two previously unissued outtakes ("Roadblock" and "Flower in the Sun") and a couple of heretofore unheard live cuts ("Catch Me Daddy" and "Magic of Love"), all from 1968. --Billy Altman

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