Janis Joplin - Pearl (Legacy Edition) (2005)

Janis Joplin has been dead since October 1970, since then we can only listen to archive recordings from her. After the better (The Essential Janis Joplin) and worse (Super Hits) compilation albums, her best album is now re-released in a two-disc special edition - complete with bonus songs and a complete 1970 concert recording!

Even according to the most generous calculations, Janis Joplin's career lasted a maximum of four years. Despite this, she managed to secure her permanent place among the greatest female figures in pop history. Before anyone thinks this is some kind of hippie nostalgia mask, here are three bona fide rock? whose name is still pronounced with the greatest respect: Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth), Chrissie Hynde (The Pretenders) and Debbie Harry (Blondie). They are all Americans. No wonder, Janis Joplin herself was very American. He came from the state of Texas, performed at the Monterey festival, was a star in California, especially San Francisco, and played the raw blues with vocal chords marinated in Southern Comfort and Jack Daniel's whiskey.

The American psychedelic acid rock hippie scene of the late 1960s was mainly for men, really only the really big women got a place in the elite. Janis Joplin shared the reigns with Jefferson Airplane singer Grace Slick. Was Grace Slick the king of acid? Joplin was the crown of cosmic folk-blues. Of the two, Joplin is the bigger mystery. She wasn't pretty, but she looked amazingly cool when she wore it to the hippie king? costume. When he died, he was still only 27 years old, but already at the beginning of his career, his voice and appearance were so mature that it seems unbelievable how he was? once a little girl. He was never the real countercultural prophet - he sang in a bar, got into the circle, then drifted with the events and what? didn't survive either.

Janis Joplin never had to find her voice and style, right? band all the more. First? his two albums called Big Brother & The Holding Company? he hired her as a singer in the band, in 1969 he was already at the head of the Kozmic Blues Band. Pearl, recorded in 1970, was his last album, on which he is accompanied by the Full Tilt Boogie Band. Here he found the band and producer that best suited him (besides the Doors, he made a name for himself in the person of Paul A. Rotchild), and here he could really soar. It ended up being his best and most successful album, but this? he no longer lived. He died of a heroin overdose on October 4, 1970, the album was finished without him by the band and the producer, and the posthumous album was published in January `71
for weeks it didn't get off the top of the American charts. Pearl really doesn't live in classical songs. Is Janis Joplin's first single on it? number one single, Kris Kristofferson's Me And Bobby McGee? a transcription of his song, then the touchingly naive Mercedes Benz, the epic Cry Baby and the hot Move Over. The musicians are quite excellent, the singer? his voice is confident and the whole album is very collected, without any particular weak points.

Classic. On the two-disc reissue published in the Legacy Editon series, we also get some extra material - including previously unreleased recordings. The firs? CD also included bonus tracks behind the original album (a one-minute birthday song for John Lennon, an acoustic guitar demo of Me And Bobby McGee, different versions of the title tracks Move Over, Cry Baby and My Baby, and Full Tilt Boogie an instrumental piece titled Pearl? written by Band in memory of Janis and recorded a week after her death), while the other disc contains a – live? do you also work as a bestof? – you can hear a complete Joplin concert from the legendary Festival Express tour that took place in the summer of 1970, on which the singer? among others, the Grateful Dead and the Band also participated. The participants of the tour traveled across Canada on a rented train, the musicians traveled in two cars, in the other cars you could eat, drink and jam, and of course have fun with groupies. You can imagine what went on between two stations on the speeding sex-drug-rock'n'roll express.

Pearl is really Joplin's best album, and with the bonus songs and the free concert it's even better, but even the booklet slipped into the fold-out CD case is sufficiently informative, the photos are charming and not too trite - even non-expressive fans can find pleasure in it. It might help you tune in better if you drink a double whiskey before listening to the record. Just don't do it at 8 in the morning like Joplin usually does because it won't end well!