Piece of my heart (Big Brother and The Holding Company) (LP 462)

Big Brother & The Holding Company  Cheap Thrills (Vinyl, CBS, 1968) *****

Genre: American pop/rock 

Places I remember: Marbecks Records

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Ball And Chain

Gear costume:  Turtle Blues  

Active compensatory factors: For me, Janis Joplin's finest hour. Before the crazy histrionic downward slide towards her early exit, her work as just one of the band on this album features her most inspired vocals. 

It's most definitely of its time, 1968, though in terms of the Holding Company's sound. It's the psychedelic guitar attack of Sam Andrew (who died in 2015) and mostly James Gurley (died 2009) that established and now dates the sound - freak out guitar wig outs.

Janis didn't stick around too long after this album and its subsequent tours, so by 1969 she'd started up the Kozmic Blues Band and the slide to her death in 1970 was underway.

Where do they all belong? Well, it's a starkly tragic, cautionary tale - heroin and alcohol doesn't lead to a long happy life. Duh! So remember her this way, young and vital - singing Turtle Blues.

I close my eyes and remember the days of a blood red sky and a purple haze (Starship)

The final theme centres on the arty farty world of the album cover. In practice this is a bit of a mixture of comic book art, drawings, and paintings used to sell an image - Commander Cody as a Flash Gordon type character, Conan the Barbarian style warriors used on the southern boogie band Molly Hatchet and so on.

I have many favourites in this category - here are the first 10.

By the way - the Big Man's passing will be marked in the appropriate way in a post to come soon. In the meantime suffice to say the world got a little less flamboyent and a little less exciting as a result of his passing.