Cheap Thrills

When the Album art has R. Crumb doodles you know it's gonna be a *freak out* All of a sudden, it's 1968. Vietnam. Nixon. Motown. Psychedelia. And screaming atop that Mountain is Janis Joplin. Such voice, such energy. I like to imagine Janis at the Crossroads with Robert Johnson, selling her very soul for her voice. That growl, that twang. It's unmistakable and irresistible. Especially on my new favourite version of "Summertime". The guitar tone is fuzzy and the temp is funky and soulful. There's solos, call and response. The piped in crowd noise before each track adds a wonderful electricity to each. These are the hymns of the counterculture, sung by their troubled high priestess and burned into our collective memory of the late 60s. Take a piece of my Heart, Janis. Just take it.

Honestly, I had no idea that Janis Joplin fronted a band until this album came up. I always thought she was a solo act only. I also found out today that Congress has several subway trains connecting their buildings. So not to brag, but I learned two things today! Janis has a voice that shouldn’t work, but is just right for theses songs. It’s gravelly. It sort of sounds like what happens the day after a night of drinking and screaming too many songs. It sounds like the after effect of smoking too many cigarettes. Maybe she drunkenly screamed too many songs while smoking gravel cigarettes. Nothing would surprise me here. The guitar distortion during the first minute of Ball And Chain reminds me of her voice. Maybe she has a distortion pedal in her throat. The point is Janis’s voice is perfectly imperfect. I like the songs on this album, I don’t love them. There is a bit too much jamming for my taste that’s better saved for the live show.

Janis Joplin kills it in the vocals, strong blues roots, great guitar

Let's fucking party! Lo-fi and wild, and Janis sounds amazing. Great fun all round.

OKAY JANIS

This was made for me. I loved this. Also I kept thinking of 30 rock when Jenna has the fake Joplin doc.

Incredible album, I love it. Janis Joplin is timeless.

Cracker. Surprise Janis Joplin gem.

Dripping in acid haze and California heat wave, so damn cool and confident

Not a big Janis Joplin fan. There are some things I can appreciate - Piece of My Heart is a classic and deservedly so, but in a lot of cases her voice grates on me. For example, her rendition of Summertime is supposed to be a classic but I couldn't stand her voice on it and even the fuzz guitar was annoying me. I liked a bit of the first track, "Combination of the Two" - it was half good sixties heavy rock and half hippy time. "I Need a Man to Love" had some good funk going on, but it also made me feel that this album is very much of its time. The best albums are timeless. I found Joplin's voice grating again on Ball and Chain, which is a shame because I really like Big Mama Thornton (her original version of Hound Dog blows away Elvis). Not sure if a link will work, but here's how Ball and Chain SHOULD sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbdUjHmCHA4 ...take it away Big Mama. Have to call this album a 2, unfortunately.

The vocals were grating, like Robert Plant scraping a dying budgie down a blackboard.

Is Janis Joplin the greatest singer of all time? No, but damn if she isn’t great

A classic. Raw, powerful, soulful. And that voice.

The cover art could’ve been beautiful but instead it’s just straight up racist. I know the maker of it was a satirist, but I’m not sure that compensates for that. The music is great though. Janis Joplin has an amazing and unique voice which in my opinion reflects a lot of emotion.

Janis Joplin’s vocal cords might have mothered Axl Rose’s. Years ago, during my loud "never trust a hippy" phase my dad, not a man in whom I've noted more than an atom of hippy, told me that actually, they did some great stuff, and I shouldn't be so dogmatic. Without disaggregating the whole bursting of restrictive social norms and segregation that they contributed, I'll tip my hat to my dad for the necessary corrective. The sort of disorganised, bold and restless spirit I associate with the movement is present in this record. This list has resurrected my fondness for messy '60's blue-rock recordings, off-the-cuff albums with a bunch of covers thrown in to make up the numbers, production carefree and murky, audience sounds dubbed in, echoes thrown into odd places, and a sense of wanting to capture a moment before moving on, who cares if it isn't perfect, the next one will be better, though the next one often never came. The bass sometimes is off hidden in some corner of a club, stoned and noisily planning some sort of revolutionary arts happening to a bunch of comrades, probably outnumbered by FBI spies, the guitar sometimes is just inappropriately blitzed out in a way that you'd never hear on a contemporary record, they've raided the party, swept the canapés into a bin bag, and have blazed off down the canyon. Anyway, pretty good. Now I'd probably add a star to each of those Doors albums that were thrown at us early in the run.

Incredible album, I love it. Janis Joplin is timeless.

The arguable peak of blues rock, Janis Joplin’s voice is absolutely vibrant and aggressive. You can almost smell the late 60s on this record. 👍

This is a gem! I'm slightly embarrassed to have never even heard of the band or album before, but grateful for the tip, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Pure class.

Definitely has a raw, faux-live energy that is both fun but a little bit grating at the same time. Songs are solid though, and everything has a pretty loose and jammy feel to it. All the players here are great, but compared the Janis they are like candles to a torch, which really holds back the songs where she isn't in the spotlight. Overall a very fun time, and Janis is always a pleasure, and its flaws are many but minor.

J'ai profité d'une heure durant laquelle je devais surveiller une élève pendant qu'elle rédigeait son devoir de français pour écouter cet album. Bien que je l'aie globalement apprécié, deux moments ont bien failli gâcher son écoute. En plein milieu de l'album, l'élève en question eut l'impolitesse de me demander comment "langweilig" se disait dans ma langue. J'enlevai mes écouteurs et allai écrire le mot "ennuyeux" au tableau avant d'éclater la craie au sol d'un geste d'humeur et de me rasseoir. Enfin, alors que mon écoute en était à la dernière piste, si proche du but, l'élève crut bon de m'annoncer qu'elle avait terminé son devoir. J'entrai alors dans une colère noire. Les tables volèrent, les chaises voltigèrent, les fenêtres se fracassèrent... Une note de quatre sur cinq bien méritée en attendant de finir incessamment les trente secondes restantes.

Zeppelin couldn’t copy if they tried.

Big brother and the holding company if they didn’t have Janice Joplin: 💀📉😭

“Psychedelic blues” is not a combination of words that I like to hear, but leave it to Janis Joplin to overcome that and then some. I love the way the band kinda sucks. They sound like they’re about to fly off the rails from the first few measures of the first song, right up until the end, but they never really do. And Joplin herself was never on the rails to begin with. Everything she did was good to me, but this is the best. Sounds like her in a natural state, whereas later albums sound a bit reigned in. Love Cheap Thrills, always have always will.

Loved it.

Amazing record, those live track are huge and this is the record that has Sumertimw in it. As great of a record as Pearl

Brilliant album. Nice bit of Janis screeching away!

This was simply great! The vocals, the guitar, the drums, the bass, the whole band, the album cover. Even not liking too much the "live" inserts in the middle of the songs, this still is a great piece of modern music. Enough said!

Enjoyed more than I thought I would.

Good would listen again

I’d never listened to this. Amazing

Janis is so good.

Another mistake of judging a book by its cover. Loved this way more than I expected. I had never heard of this album or Big Brother & the Holding Company, yet I actually knew some of the songs (and had wrongly thought they were solo Janis Joplin songs). I think the obvious runaway star of this album is Joplin’s voice but a close second is the absolutely stunning guitar solos. I confess to not having listened to much 1960s rock at all but can hear how this album has influenced Stevie Nicks, Sheryl Crowe and Lady Gage to name a few. Probably not one to listen to on earphones for future repeat listens as the sound quality didn’t hold up great there - my fault though!

What a voice. There was a time In my teenage years when she was one of my all time Favourite vocalists. I’ve listened to her less over the proceeding years but whenever I hear her I remember how powerful she is. She had a punk aesthetic that I would imagine influenced the likes of Patti smith. The album as a whole is good, the band is ok.

One of the joys of this project has been discovering Janis Joplin Not discovering really as I was always aware of her but this has been the first time I’ve really listened to her Hell of a voice. One of a kind

Hello, it’s me, the broken record. Just wanted to stop by and remind you that literally every band in the late 60’s San Francisco psych scene were better songwriters, better musicians and more engaging performers than the Grateful Dead. Why you would listen to the Dead when Big Brother and The Holding Company could harness more focused intensity in the first 45 seconds of this record than the Dead were capable of in their entire career? I am not one for conspiracies, usually, but I do believe that when MK Ultra shuttered, the CIA allowed the Dead to traverse the US giving out LSD as a means to further study the effects of the drug on the population. They may not have been involved directly, but i can't imagine that they weren't watching the results intently. Think about it, they no longer had to worry about the risks of CIA involvement in dosing civilians when there was a band who was traveling town to town doing it for them…There's no way they weren't more than happy to let it go on unfettered. Anyway… On “Cheap Thrills”, Big Brother and the Holding Company are in fine form. The band is tight, with an excellent rhythm section, guitar leads that are fuzzy and frenetic and Janis Joplin at the top of her game. I highly recommend it.

Love that Jackie Jormp Jomp voice.

This album gets so much worse when someone besides Janis does vocals

Who let Marge Simpson join Jefferson Airplane?

One from my Dad's record collection - I would gaze at the cover art but never got to playing the actual vinyl. So, good to get it here! Unfortunately pretty generic 60's blues/rock with some histrionics. Also features that weird 60's 'live but not really' anomaly. R Crumb remains the highlight

we love

Finally, the first great album of this year! Cheap Thrills is Janis Joplin's last album with Big Brother & The Holding Company and includes her signature song “Piece of My Heart.” It features a slightly overexcited Janis (during her solo career she developed an even stronger, somewhat clearer voice) and the well-known Hendrix-style band. This makes me think once again that it would have been only natural for Janis and Jimi to team up - if they had only lived through the 70s...

Fantastic vocal and guitar

I actually enjoyed this album, my favorite song is piece of my heart

I love listening to Janis Joplin hooting and hollering

Classic

Awesome album, crazy Janice Joplin voice Song I like most: Summertime, Piece of my heart, I need a man to love, Ball and Chain

A lot of bombast despite the age. Sounds like it was a lot of fun to record

Album #1,008 Janis Joplin is either a great or terrible singer depending on your tastes. I kind of like it. I gave her solo album a 5/5. The stuff on here is sometimes really good, and then sometimes rambles on aimlessly. All in all, above average, plus it's got Piece of My Heart. I think I like their first album a bit better.

Nice female rock voice

Can't say I enjoy Janis' voice too much when she tries to force it and scream about, but the music was really good and an album very much worth of its reputation.

38/1089 4.4439* Another classic Janis album, this time with big brother and the holding company. Summertime pushes this up 1* full star by itself. A true top 50 all time song in any genre, any century. This song would have made Mozart weep. Piece of my heart bumps it another .23* because it was on the mix tape my senior year girlfriend made for me. Amazing musicianship throughout and retains the feeling from the decade it was created. I could smell the hippie from where I was sitting and it was a delight to the senses. Hits...summertime, piece of my heart.

weno, es como musica de auto o pa limpiar la casa

Joplin and great electric guitar sound

A lot of fun, I love Janis Joplin's voice and how wild it can get. The cover art is frustrating because I love the pulpy comic book art style in itself but the couple of racist caricatures on it are 🤮

A rough, almost lo-fi set of songs that perfectly mix psychedelic and blues rock. The guitar tone is trippy, but the songs are not meandering or loose. Instead, they're mostly meaty blues rockers. Janis Joplin provides excellent vocals, carrying the couple of blues tunes included here. The highlight is "Piece of My Heart," but "Oh, Sweet Mary" is also great and is the most psychedelic of the bunch. The album is not without its drawbacks though. The rough mix can bury Joplin's vocals at times, making them lose their power (this is especially true on the first track, which to be fair was recorded live). And I can't help but wish the nine minute closer had some of the guitar freakouts that the opener has instead of being one long blues cover. But overall the album has enough energy and variety to make it worth coming back to.

Janis Joplin has a helluva voice!

Both Joplin and the band are raw and powerful. The cover versions are incredible. Album art by Robert Crumb. Not sure about the audience sound effects, but a great album nonetheless.

I wasn’t a fan of the opener but after that it got good fast “I Need A Man To Love” and “Summertime” show a bit more of Joplin’s softer vocals and “Piece Of My Heart” is obviously amazing and shows off her fantastic vocals. The next two tracks were also very good and “Ball And Chain” was a fantastic closer

Cool instrumentals, I think the effect of making it sound like a live album despite not being one is very cool. But Janis' voice is pretty grating, made me think of Marge Simpson at times lmao. Regardless, I managed to enjoy a fair few tracks and the short total length works in it's benefit. Very solid.

This is just good music, also helped me to find out janis joplin sounds like robert plant when she wants and can sing really well when she wants

Engrossing listen, well-produced. Fake crowd noises are kind of a crutch but interesting. Classic late-60s heavy hippy stuff.

This was a delightful, if unpolished, musical romp. I love Janis and I love her bluesy band but parts were uneven.

Janis is the best thing that has ever happened to Big Brother. an artist with an incredible voice and immense talent – she is the only thing I hear when listening to this album and it's more than enough

Incredibly strong album. The hooks are on point, Joplin kills it vocally, and there is no filler. Only complaint is that the band aren't as interesting as the vocalist.

Blues is not usually my jam. I think this is the second time listening to this album; the first time through I was not grabbed at all...this time definitely moreso. Summertime is my personal favorite and the one two punch of that song and Piece of my Heart is worth the price of admission. Though I find the gutar on Ball and Chain heavy handed Janis' vocals are tour de force. And there are other incredible vocal performances. I'm giving it a 4 which after my first go through I would have never thought would happen. Maybe it will increase still on my next listen (hard to find to listen to anything but the next two on the list (yeah I'm doing 2 per day.

That's rock bottom, when this life makes you mad enough to kill That's rock bottom, when you want somethin' bad enough to steal That's rock bottom, when you feel like you've had it up to here 'Cause you mad enough to scream, but you sad enough to tear

i have never really liked janis joplin’s voice. nails on a chalkboard to me.

Janis Joplin’s vocals carried this or else everything would have blended together.

What a shame that her talent didn’t get to have more time. I’m surprised with how much I enjoyed listening to this

Ball and chain, summertime are my favorites. Love Joplin thorough enjoyed every song

super fun! good energy, needed it for a time like now.

Combination of the Two I Need a Man to Love Summertime Piece of My Heart Turtle Blues Ball and Chain

Quintessential Joplin.

This really gets you movinnn wooooooo

Ball and Chain alone earned this 5 stars.

I really liked this album, love the blues and the guitar work. Janis is always amazing. Piece of my Heart is so amazing. Not sure I loved the pipped in crowd noise, but it does make an impact. I'm torn between a 4 and a 5 on this one, but I haven't had a good album in a while, so It's going to get the 5.

Best rock album! Janis Joplin is a legend. Her voice is a definition of rock

Amazing album. Great vocals, I love the emotion in her voice. Great album cover as well.

Great album

That voice! Tracks I thought were Joplin solo works and very cool instrumentation. Amazing stuff, especially for the time.

Stunning debut. Janis Joplin, unforgettable shooting star

Yeah sick fucking record.

This is a classic. One of the best of the psychedelic era. Just too much good songs.

I honestly have never heard of this one before, which I’m somewhat ashamed of. I’ve been meaning to actually, like, listen to some Janis Joplin albums, though, and this is her, so I’m glad this one was generated. The album cover is the first thing that really jumps out at me—I mean, how can it not? It seems like a huge inspiration for Green Day’s Dookie—I mean, they did both come from the Bay Area—this one’s just a bit…edgier, I guess. The vocals are amazing. Really impressive range and energy. The whole album feels like it was recorded live—which, apparently, it partly was. It’s definitely somewhat of an acquired taste, but I like most of it. I also think anyone interested in music history should listen to this one—or anything else with Janis Joplin, obviously. Also shout out to the guitar solos. Specifically the one in Summertime. The influence of this album is immediately recognizable—Amy Winehouse, Alanis Morissette, Joan Jett, Fiona Apple, Hole.

Wow! New fav loves Janis Joplin’s Summertime

The powerhouse vocals, the bass, the guitar… it’s all perfect and a true testament to Janis’s passion for music and life. Such an important piece of music history!

Amazing album. Joplin was more of a presence than just a voice. It’s also a solid blues rock band that almost feels like they could stand on their own without Janis. Until Oh, Sweet Mary, which leans into psychedelic rock and doesn’t utilize Joplin much at all. The flaw there, however, is less not using such a powerful singer and more straying away from what makes them a good band. But man, Janis, what a voice.

Raw, powerful and one of the best album covers of the decade

Didn’t realize that those songs were from that album. Stacked track list. 10/10 would recommend

When I get hold of a time machine, I am going to go back to 1968 to watch these performances live. I will also bring Narcan and mess up the timeline. I'd never heard this before but it's going into my regular rotation for a while. Amazing.

The 60s sound of Big Brother/San Francisco sound just outstanding. And on top of that, Janis Joplin to scream/wail her soul to the heavens. I've done a trip or 3 listening to this album plus a few other jam bands which are perfect music to allow the mind to meander into the wide wide universe. Happy time and happy trails. 5 trippin' stars

This was amazing, not sure what made it so good but a truly amazing album.

Absolute gem. Never heard of them before!

peak

I had no idea that Janis Joplin was in a band. I always thought she was a solo artist. The music is a perfect blend of funky blues and Janis has the perfect voice to sing these songs. Favorite song: Piece of My Heart

She’s got soul

JANIS! here is the first member of club of 27. c

Janis! Piece of My Heart alone gets this album 5 stars. But the mix of Janis’ bluesy vocals and the band’s 60s psychedelic rock is fantastic throughout.

Janis Joplin was amazing.

Classic 60s soul/blues/rock. There is no other voice that compares to Janis. Simply stunning.