Janis Joplin - Live at Winterland '68
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CD Details
Artist: Janis JoplinEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
CD Release Date: 2008-02-01
Music Label: SBME SPECIAL MKTS.
Soundtracks:
- Down on Me [#]
- Flower in the Sun [#]
- I Need a Man to Love [#]
- Bye Bye Baby [#]
- Easy Rider [#]
- Combination of the Two [#]
- Farewell Song [#]
- Piece of My Heart [#]
- Catch Me Daddy [#]
- Magic of Love [#]
- Summertime [From Porgy and Bess][#]
- Light Is Faster Than Sound [#]
- Ball and Chain [#]
- Down on Me [#]
Music reviews of Live at Winterland '68
Music Review: This May Be The Final Word on This Lineup
Rating: 4 Stars
If you took Myra Friedman's empathetic biography of Janis Joplin to heart, you wondered for lo those many years whatever happened to the complete concert tapes that were thought to have been the original plan for "Cheap Thrills," given producer John Simon's assessment that Big Brother and the Holding Company were a far better performing than recording band. "What they should have had," he was quoted as saying, "was a John Lomax field recording." Indeed, what worked best on "Cheap Thrills" were the three concert cuts and "Turtle Blues," a surprising Joplin original featuring none but herself, Simon at an appropriately battered-sounding piano, and Big Brother bassist Peter Albin playing some very elemental and effective acoustic guitar.
Likewise, if you took Simon at his quoted word, if Joplin really was the most serious and hardest-working member of the group in the studio (with perhaps Sam Andrew running a close second), it should have been all but predictable that it wouldn't be a question of whether but when she would leave Big Brother behind. (She would tell the band just that three months after the album was finished, as things turned out; she also took Sam Andrew with her to anchor her Kozmic Blues Band project, though he would return to Big Brother after that aggregation's lone album and tour.)
That said, "Live at Winterland '68" has all the earmarks of the intended "Cheap Thrills" tapes, particularly when you arrive at "Ball and Chain," the Big Mama Thornton number that was Joplin's earliest calling card and the no-questions-asked high point of "Cheap Thrills." And you realise now that James Gurley---whose feedback orgy of blues was as much the performance's trademark as Joplin's astonishing dismantling and reassembling of the song---dubbed a different introductory solo onto the "Cheap Thrills" track. You can understand why he might have wanted to, or why Joplin might have wanted him to; this introduction is a little jagged and a little nervous---Gurley isn't as confident or composed here as he shows himself in the classic middle break or on the intro he dubbed (which also veils a little Joplin wail as the solo finishes) to the "Cheap Thrills" version.
Otherwise? It's exactly as Simon's quote suggests. Here's where Big Brother should have been captured and presented. (Their first studio album, for Mainstream Records, was produced so thin and played so on the fly, so it seemed, as to render most of it unlistenable in spite of a few interesting songs, a couple of interesting licks, and Joplin's hints of what was to come in due course; and, other than "Turtle Blues," the studio cuts on "Cheap Thrills" seem either to be smothered ["Oh, Sweet Mary"] or overmodulated ["Piece of My Heart"].) Often accused of being sloppy, out of tune, and reckless in the lesser sense of the word (and often as not all three), Big Brother plays for the most part as if their lives depend on it and Joplin sings likewise; the booklet recollections wedded to previously published material indicate that, for this Winterland show, finishing a major tour by the band, it was as though the band all but spent the tour tightening up a little and rehearsing almost overtime to get it right by their lights.
If that was so, the net result speaks for itself. But it also amplifies the band's inconsistency as songwriters. Of their best compositions, "I Need a Man to Love," (the best of their original songs, written by Joplin and Sam Andrew, and it could have been something Stax came up with); "Catch Me, Daddy," the group-reimagined blues beater (they rewrote it based on an obscurity, "Brownsville," that Joplin introduced when she joined the band in the first place) that was once their set opener (Gurley shines brightest here, outplaying the quicksilver-distorted solo he took on the studio version intended for "Cheap Thrills" and unearthed for "Farewell Song"); Peter Albin's almost satiric-psychedelic "Light is Faster than Sound" (which bears more than a passing resemblance to the garage rock classic "Liar, Liar," including Albin's slightly nervous-sounding vocal); and Joplin's classic "Down on Me," get solid and better than credible performances here. The band's energetic style and genuine feeling in this performance is probably better than "Flowers in the Sun," "Easy Rider," "Combination of the Two," and "Farewell Song" deserve.
Of the band's other signatures, "Piece of My Heart" seems a little less energetic, "Summertime" bristles with feeling (and a rather crying pair of guitar solos that amplify the contrast between the experimental Gurley and the becalmed Andrew), and "Bye, Bye, Baby," the St. John composition that B-sided "Down on Me" as the band's first single, sounds far more alive than the Mainstream studio side, even if drummer Dave Getz (who wasn't quite as ramshackle as he was accused of being and, at his best, could cut just the right groove, if not the deepest and widest) occasionally seems the forgotten man trying to anchor the whole wash.
Is this the final word on Janis Joplin's edition of Big Brother? Very possibly. There's no question but that the band had the wind knocked out of them when she departed (though they would make some interesting music in the years to follow; find, especially, their final Columbia album, "How Hard It Is"), even as there's no question but that Joplin left too many unanswered questions as to her potential with her death at 27. They may have had too much, too soon together as things turned out. "Live at Winterland '68" catches them when they were thinking not of the unexpected storm of fame but of being home again and lost in the sheer pleasure of making music, even ragtag music, even in the middle of trying to make what became a million-selling album. It's that pleasure that animates and elevates these performances, to the point where you shouldn't draw derisive laughter if you want to call this their absolute zenith.
Description of Live at Winterland '68
This belated collection of Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company tracks features 14 performances, a dozen of which debut here. Of the two familiar selections, the version of "Ball and Chain" here is the same one that graces Cheap Thrills, and "Bye Bye Baby" can be heard on In Concert. No matter if it's not quite the definitive Big Brother album; it is nonetheless a hell of a lot of fun. Big Brother's playing is intense and relatively tight. A magnificent moment is heard in "I Need a Man to Love" when Joplin urges the band on. "C'mon boys, play," she prods, and a stunning Sam Andrews guitar solo ensues. If you've never heard Joplin do "Summertime," grab this album. If you have, grab it anyway. It's wonderful. --Myra FriedmanClassic Rock CDs
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