Jan 29, 2004 09:04 PM
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(Updated Jan 30, 2004 07:44 PM)
''On stage I make love to twenty five thousand people; and then I go home alone.''
Janis Joplin
(1943-1970)
Loner in life and in death
On October 4,1970 Janis Joplin's body was found in her room at Hollywood's Landmark Hotel, face down with fresh puncture marks in her arm. The death was ruled an accidental heroin overdose. Of the 27 years that she did spend in this planet not for once did she give the impression of belonging here. Even before her death, her tough blues-mama image only barely covered her vulnerability.
The publicity concerning her sex life and problems with alcohol and drugs made her something of a legend. Of her deceased contemporaries Hendrix, Morrison , etc.
she is perhaps the least well known to younger audiences, thanks to poor P.R. representations.
By all accounts, Janis had a happy childhood, but the beginning of her womanhood was less than graceful. She gained weight as a teenager and her soft child-blond hair turned brown and unruly. She developed acne that would scar as well as shape her looks and personality. She became an unwilling member of an elite club of misfits, a woman who avoided mirrors because of pitted reflections, knowing that the scars underneath caused by the ones on the surface are the most painfully inflicted.
Rejected and made fun of by most of her peers, she sought and found solace in the works of other outcasts - writers, musicians, artists , rejecting the society that had rejected her .
Janis broke with local social traditions during the tense days of racial integration, standing up for the rights of African Americans whose segregated status in her hometown seared her youthful ideals. She pursued the non-traditional via arts and literature, especially music. They gravitated to folk and jazz with Janis especially taken with the blues.
By 1965 she was singing folk and blues in bars in San Francisco and Venice, California, had dropped out of several colleges, and was drawing unemployment checks. She returned to Austin in 1966 to sing in a country & western band, but within a few months Chet Helms , a friend from San Francisco told her about a new band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, that needed a singer in San Francisco. She returned to California and joined Big Brother. They played in the Bay area and up and down the California coast, to ever-increasing enthusiasm for their unique brand of psychedelic rock.
To her audience, Janis Joplin has remained a symbol, artifact and reminder of late Sixties youth culture. Her popularity derived more from her capacity to link her fantasies of freedom and immortality with ours. The group was actively courted by Albert Grossman, one of the most powerful entertainment managers of the day. Through his representation, they signed a three-record recording contract with Columbia Records, who bought out Mainstream's rights.
Their ''Cheap Thrills'' album was released in August, 1968 and soon went gold, presenting the hits ''Piece of My heart'' and ''Summertime''. The success that followed inevitably led to more of alcohol and drugs and less of music. Performances suffered and the band played its last gig in Christmas of 1968.
Janis moved on to form the Full Tilt Boogie Band and but the band's most successful album - Pearl was released after her untimely death which occured just a couple of weeks after Jimi Hendrix's death and a few months before Jim Morrison's ....all three attributable to drug overdoses.
Janis's albums have gone gold, platinum, and triple-platinum. And her Greatest Hits album still appears in the Billboard charts. The album is concise , definitive and represents the best of her halcyon creativity.
It opens with ''Piece of my heart.....'' one of her biggest and earliest hits that first appeared in Cheap Thrills. This song finds her rendering soul-searing screams on the lines of Led Zeppelin or Doors , which undoubtedly makes it what it is.... raw and very very ''rock''. The album then moves on to ''Summertime......'' albeit mellower but nonetheless a classic .
''Try (just a little bit harder).....'' very bluesy and very Janis .There's something about the way she rolls her tongue over the word TRY to add a few more 'R's that gives a sexy sound to this song.
''Cry baby....'' and ''Move over....'' are two sides of the same coin - a love that's over and the pain of aftermath, when all that's left is the pain. It is almost impossible to sing the blues with so much conviction if you have not lived them.
''Me and Bobby Mcgee....'' according to me is her best effort .
''Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose'' ......... The best 9 words I've ever heard in music features in this song .
''Ball and Chain....''- an emotional plea for love and understanding, or maybe a cry for help. I wonder !
To listen to the depth of Janis' alchoholic depression listen to ''Down on Me....'' .
''Get it while you can .....'' once again finds her in her raw true self . This song was recorded with the Full Tilt Boogie Band at a time in her life that saw her briefly eschewed from drugs and alcohol .
There are a couple of bonus tracks on this CD ..''Maybe'' and ''Mercedes Benz''. The former with Kozmic Blues Band and the latter with Full Tilt Boogie Band. These are nice songs at the best but nowhere near her best efforts .
That just about sums it up. But her life , intriguing and mystifying , can never be summed up by anybody. Only what she left behind is summarized in this collection. She got caught up in the climate of the times and died way too soon. Nonetheless, we were lucky to have such rare talent among us. No one since has equalled the power, the raw and piercing emotion of Janis Joplin. She represented that rare creed of poets who failed to find a direction to their lives and had to end it abruptly, leaving behind a legacy of raw iron soul.
