The 500 - #125 - Pearl - Janis Joplin

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album: #125
Album Title: Pearl
Artist: Janis Joplin
Genre: Blues Rock, Soul Blues
Recorded: Sunset Sound, Hollywood, California

Released: January, 1971

My age at release: 5
How familiar was I with it before this week: Several tracks
Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #259, dropping 134 spots
Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Me and Bobby McGee

There are certain lyrics and fragments of poetry that have stayed with me from the moment I encountered them. They drift through my mind at unexpected times and, like familiar memories, return again and again. When they do I turn them over in my brain, pondering new layers of possible meaning. Somehow the words always offer more. Sometimes it is a nuance I missed, or an idea I hadn’t picked up on…perhaps because of my youth.

A handful have come from the lyrical mind of Neil Peart, whose lines were etched in my consciousness as a teen. Other examples have arrived courtesy of Bruce Springsteen, The Beatles, Leonard Cohen, and the sharp insights of poets T.S. Eliot and Robert Frost. Of course, Ol' Billy Shakespeare has a few nuggets cloggin' my noggin'. After all, who else writes words that can shadow you for a lifetime and still feel startlingly alive each time they surface?

One of several Peart quotes I have evaluated
differently over the past 38 years.

Another lyric that sporadically runs laps through my head comes from Kris Kristofferson's pen. I was first introduced to his writing through the scorching vocals of Janis Joplin on Pearl, her second and last solo record. Her 1971 hit, Me and Bobby McGee, is a compact narrative. It follows two drifters, the narrator and the free-spirited Bobby McGee, as they sing their way across the American South. Hitching a ride from a truck driver, they wind their way west to California. Somewhere near the Monterey County town of Salina, the pair part ways, and the narrator is left alone, with the aching melancholy and regret that only a powerful song can instill.

Record label for the single of Me and Bobby McGee by Janis Joplin.

Because the name “Bobby” sits comfortably in the gender‑neutral middle ground, the tune has been recorded by an impressive cast of artists over the years, including Gordon Lightfoot, Roger Miller, Jerry Lee Lewis, Charley Pride, Olivia Newton‑John, The Grateful Dead, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash and Pink. Each performer shifts the emotional centre of gravity just a little, proof that a memorable story can find new interpretations with different tellings.

Gordon Lightfoot had a #1 hit in Canada in 1970 with
Me and Bobby McGee.

 Kristofferson’s penetrating refrain,  "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose" occurs at the end of the first verse and repeats throughout Me and Bobby McGee.

Typically associated with celebration and liberation, freedom can also result from the loss of everything -- possessions, relationships, obligations and expectations. It is a paradoxical form of liberation. It is a double-edged sword of liberty, cleaving you from all things, but leaving you alone.

Existentialist philosophers, such as Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, wrote extensively about freedom, loss and what remains of self when all things are stripped away.

Kristofferson may have been cribbing from their works when he penned Me and Bobby McGee and wrote that powerful thought-provoking lyric that I still work to fully understand.

Sartre wrote; “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.” The narrator, like us, is responsible for every choice he makes. He can not blame gods, fate, society or circumstance for his life and his (and, by proxy, our) freedom is inescapable and terrifying.

By contrast, Camus reflected on freedom through the lens of absurd nihilism in his play Caligula. To him, a man becomes completely free when he recognizes that "life has no higher purpose, the universe is indifferent and any longing for meaning will not be resolved". The titular 'Bobby' is free because he/she carries nothing -- no money, no obligations and, most importantly, no expectations. The narrator, after losing Bobby, inherits that absurd freedom; however, it is a freedom soaked in grief – a "terrifying burden" of true liberation for the first time.

Like I said earlier, Me and Bobby McGee is one of many songs that contain a lyrical gem that has taken up residence in my brain...and refuses to pay rent. It'll probably be there until those synapses stop firing and, as Camus postulates, its meaning, like my many questions about life, will never be resolved.

On a cheerier note, my research into this incredible Joplin record revealed that the backing musicians who support her, The Full Tilt Boogie Band, hail from my neck of the woods. Five of the band's six members are from Stratford and Woodstock, Ontario -- both fewer than 60 kilometers (40 miles) from my hometown of London. The band comprises John Till (guitar); Richard Bell (piano); Brad Campbell (bass); Ken Pearson (organ); and Clark Pierson (drums). Only Pierson is not from Southern Ontario, being a Californian.

Back cover of Pearl, featuring The Full Tilt Boogie Band.

The 500 - #338 - Cheap Thrills - Big Brother And The Holding Company

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

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Album: # 338

Album Title: Cheap Thrills

Artist: Big Brother And The Holding Company

Genre: Blues Rock, Acid Rock

Recorded: Columbia Studios, California. One track live at Winterland Ballroom

Released: August, 1968

My age at release: 3

How familiar was I with it before this week: One song

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, #372, dropping 34 places

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Piece Of My Heart

Cheap Thrills was the second studio release from the American blues and acid rock band Big Brother and The Holding Company. It was also their last record with singer Janis Joplin, who went on to launch a solo career. Her second and final record, Pearl, appears at #125 on The 500. 

Pearl - Janis Joplin (1971)

Originally, Cheap Thrills was to be called Sex, Dope & Cheap Thrills, but the record label considered the title too controversial in 1968. The 50th anniversary version, released in 2018, restored the formerly contentious title

50th Anniversary Release of the record (2018)

Times have changed. The word "sex" raises few eyebrows nowadays and the term "dope", a colloquialism for recreational drugs, seems quaint and even amusing. Interestingly, the original album artwork generated more controversy with modern audiences than the title itself did half a century previously. Created by underground comic artist and satirist Robert Crumb (aka: R. Crumb), one panel features an African-American woman with a crying baby, now considered (and with good reason) racist.

Close up of a panel on the Cheap Thrills record sleeve

Crumb was a well known contributor in the world of underground comix, which grew in popularity in the 60s and 70s. Unlike mainstream comics, these pulp-publications displayed explicit content, including nudity, drug-use, sexuality and violence. Crumb is best known for several counter-culture characters, such as Mr. Natural, Fritz The Cat, and the iconic Keep On Truckin' comic panel, which was ubiquitous in the 70s, appearing on t-shirts, belt-buckles and posters.

R. Crumb classics

My introduction to both Janis Joplin and the work of R. Crumb came in the late 70s. At the age of 13, I began purchasing National Lampoon magazines and underground comics while starting to pay attention to more mature film releases. As a pre-teen, I was interested only in mainstream comics and blockbuster flicks (e.g. Jaws, Star Wars), although I did buy the occasional edgy MAD Magazine or Wacky Pack from the local convenience store.

Wacky Packs (a staple among 70s Tweens)

The movie The Rose, starring Bette Midler, was released in 1979 and it was the first time I heard the name Janis Joplin. The movie was a popular topic of discussion in my high school cafeteria, particularly among the decidedly cool seniors.

Originally, the movie was to be called Pearl and was written as a biopic about Joplin, but the screenplay was revised after Joplin's family declined the right to use her name. Nevertheless, the plot was still loosely based on Joplin's meteoric rise and ultimate self-destructive struggles with fame.

Joplin was found dead in a hotel room on October 4, 1970, from a heroin overdose. She was 27.

Despite the passing years, she remains a legendary figure among rock performers. Her distinctive and powerful mezzo-soprano voice was rivaled only by her electrifying performances and her volcanic stage presence. In the Janis Joplin: Biography, she was described as throwing herself "into every syllable...testifying from the very core of her being." (website)

I was five when she died, so I didn't have the chance to see her perform in her prime, only on film. However, in one of those other-worldly dreams that you feel actually happened, I had my Joplin moment.

Joplin in concert (1969)

In the summer of 2005, my wife and I were in New York City. We had heard about a weekly event called "Rock and Roll Karaoke" that was held on Monday nights at an unassuming bar called Arlene's Grocery, located in the hip Lower East Side. At the show, members of the audience signed up to join a band on stage and perform one of hundreds of songs listed in a large book at the bar.

Arlene's Grocery - Lower East Side Manhattan

My wife had once worked at a karaoke bar, but this was like nothing we had experienced before. Live Karaoke, with a band to accompany the performer rather than the traditional pre-recorded instrumental soundtrack, is far more common now, but was a revolutionary concept nearly 17 years ago.

Because it was a Monday night when many Broadway theatres are "dark" , this was not going to be a typical tone-deaf karaoke fling. The wanna-be headliners were no pretenders, but "ringers" (veteran stage performers), and this was going to be a show to remember.

A shot I took at Arlene's Grocery that night

One of the first to take the stage was a twenty-something who looked a bit like a Vanilla Ice impersonator, complete with spiked blonde pompadour. When he launched into a strong performance of the vocally challenging Guns N' Rose's classic Sweet Child O' Mine, the game was on. (I even have a clip I recorded from that performance here)

Midway through the evening, an unassuming young woman took the stage and the band began to play Piece Of My Heart from this week's record, Cheap Thrills. This soulful love song is a Joplin classic and there is no way to perform it only part way. This heart-wrenchingly powerful bluesy number demands a full-throated commitment and, on that hot August night in New York City, this singer delivered.

It was one of those riveting, goosebump-inducing, live performances that elicited raised eyebrows from the visibly impressed backing band. Though no strangers to exceptional karaoke performers, the on-stage musicians made it clear that, "this one was in a league of her own."

I like to think that in a roundabout way my dream of seeing Janis Joplin perform in real time was channeled through another singer on that memorable occasion in a dreary-looking, but hipster-cool bar in the Big Apple. So, if you ask me if I've seen Janis perform...I might say "Yes."

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