View attachment 9664
Big Brother & the Holding Company - Cheap Thrills - 1968
The way things are going, I'm not going to let this slip any further. You guys are mean...and I really want this album on my island.
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
9 Flower in the Sun
10 Catch Me Daddy
11 Magic of Love
It's the 60s in Sacramento. Two hours away, the allure of SF calls to us. It's where things are happening all the time. Wondrous things. Magical things. There are comedy clubs like the Purple Onion and the Hungry Eye. There's Chinatown. There's Haight-Ashbury. And then there's the music.
What can I say about the music? It was like nothing we'd ever heard before. It spoke to us. It beckoned to us and drew us like moths to a flame. Between Winterland and the Fillmore, there was something going on every weekend. I won't drop any band names but suffice to say there were TONS of groups to savor and enjoy.
I can still remember seeing the poster for Big Brother and the Holding Company at Tower Records. We went on a whim, not really expecting too much. We all piled into the 1953 Chevy the one guy with a license had and headed across the causeway and into The City. I don't remember a lot of the details but even after all these years I still can recall the crowd when Joplin started to sing. There aren't words to adequately describe the feeling.
Janis Joplin rocked my world. The passion, the raw emotion, the "I don't give a ****" attitude. Seeing her in person is impossible to describe. The electricity in the air was spine-tingling. She owned the music, she owned our souls. I'd like to say I remember every moment, but age takes its toll. I'll never forget the feeling, however. Another artist taken much too soon...
Here's my favorite review from allmusic.com - "The debut album for Big Brother & the Holding Company was a long time coming, but once it arrived it showed why the record had been so anticipated, namely singer Janis Joplin. Led by the most fiery and unpredictable female vocalist anyone had ever heard, the group had already earned near legendary status the year before with their appearance at the Monterey International Pop Festival, thus much of this album includes live records from various concerts recorded in the interim between Monterey and the record's release. These live moments are bristling with the intensity which had brought the band so much attention, but it is really the studio recordings which offer the best material from a songwriting standpoint. The live material can be rambling and the sound uneven. Subtlety was never the group's strong point, but the studio recordings feature the band, particularly Joplin, at a perfect cross section of raw emotion and restraint, resulting in fascinating recordings like Joplin's heart-stopping rendition of the standard "Summertime" or the psychedelic soul stomper "Piece of My Heart." Cheap Thrills is far from the best hard rock record of the late 1960s, but it is an important one from a historic perspective, and it features some of the key performances from a legendary performer."