Album Challenge - 1968 pt. 2 - Janis

Album Challenge continues with 1968 pt. 2. Another album from 1968 that greatly influenced my taste in music was Cheap Thrills from Big Brother & The Holding Company which of course featured the late great Janis Joplin. I went up on Chelten Avenue and bought this album right when it came out in the summer of 1968. I loved the raw live sound of this record and her amazing voice and songs. I also liked the R. Crumb cartoons on the cover and spent many stoned moments pondering this album. Those underground comics were really a thing back then... especially his.

I saw her perform for the first time at the Quaker City Rock Festival at The Spectrum in October 1968 along with the Chambers Brothers, Moby Grape, Vanilla Fudge and the Buddy Guy Band. A month later I would see Big Brother & The Holding Company again at the small downtown rock club The Electric Factory. That was an awesome show. In 1969 I would see Janis with her new Kozmic Blues Band at the Atlantic City Pop Festival. Then I saw her a last time in an outdoor park concert in Chicago in 1970 with the Full Tilt Boogie Band shortly before she died. It's sad to think about what she could have accomplished had she not had such a short life and was still putting out albums like this one.

Janis Joplin albums in my collection:

• Big Brother & The Holding Company, 1967
• Cheap Thrills, 1968
• I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, 1969
• Pearl, 1971
• Janis Joplin's Greatest Hits, 1972
• Janis Box Set (3 CD), 1993
• Live at Winterland '68, 1998
• Janis Joplin: The Woodstock Experience, 2009
• Janis: Little Girl Blue (Soundtrack), 2016