CoronaVinyl Day 100 (Haight-Ashbury): Big Brother and The Holding Company by Big Brother and The Holding Company

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For today's century ride on the CoronaVinyl journey, we take a trip to the epicenter of the '60s counterculture:  Haight-Ashbury.  Located in San Francisco, the Haight-Ashbury intersection and surrounding neighborhood gave birth to the nation's first head shop, the Grateful Dead, and Flower Power.  In addition to the Dead, bands like Jefferson Airplane and Big Brother and The Holding Company called Haight-Ashbury home.  My gift to you, dear readers, is Big Brother's eponymous debut album.

I have never known a world without Janis Joplin, likely due to the fact that she died seven years before I was born.  This album was essentially the world's introduction to one of the greatest rock singers of all-time.  Recorded in late 1966, but not released until August 1967 -- after the band's breakthrough set at the Monterey Pop Festival -- this album is a nice selection of blues-based rock, but it was a band trying to find itself, showing glimpses of what their lead singer would become.  It was by no means a smash.  The album It topped out at #60 on the Billboard album charts, and its biggest hit ("Down On Me") didn't even make the Top 40, stalling at #43 on the Billboard Hot 100.  That said, the album set the table for their next one, Cheap Thrills, which topped the charts and featured Janis's signature song, "Piece of My Heart."  Janis went solo after Cheap Thrills and then killed herself with heroin and booze a couple years later, leaving us with an incomplete collection of what could have been.

Favorite song from Side 1:  "Call On Me"
This is a slower, bluesier, soulful song that's almost like a '50s doo wop ballad.  Janis is perfect on this song, and you want to come running back to her, letting her envelop you in a big hug, even if you know it ain't gonna last.

Favorite song from Side 2:  "Down On Me"
If you needed a glimpse of what kind of energy Janis Joplin could bring to the stage and your ears, this is the song.  It's a rearranged version of a traditional freedom song, and with Janis sounding not like a 24-year-old white woman, but like a middle-aged blues singer, it worked.