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Big Brother & The Holding Company with Janis Joplin - Cheap Thrills (1968) [MFSL Remastered 2016]

Posted By: Designol
Big Brother & The Holding Company with Janis Joplin - Cheap Thrills (1968) [MFSL Remastered 2016]

Big Brother & The Holding Company with Janis Joplin - Cheap Thrills (1968) [MFSL, 2016]
EAC | FLAC | Tracks (Cue&Log) ~ 236 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 100 Mb | Scans included | 00:37:25
Blues Rock, Psychedelic Rock, Hard Rock | Label: Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab | # UDSACD 2172

In many facets, Big Brother and the Holding Company's Cheap Thrills is the quintessential album to spring from the outcome of the Summer of Love. Best known as Janis Joplin's major-label debut, the 1968 set arrived when the countercultural movement was in full swing and before co-optation, drugs, and violence signaled the fall of the era. Ranked #338 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, it puts a female singer in the prominent position traditionally given to a male and showcases a band pouring a potent cocktail of fiery psychedelic, blues, and folk sounds that informed the unfettered creativity of the San Francisco scene. Produced by John Simon, Cheap Thrills also features one of the most iconic and elaborate album covers in history.

The iconic audiophile label's SACD reissue intensifies the quintet's storied sophomore effort, enhancing airiness, punch, energy, pacing, and dynamics. Joplin's hurricane-force singing reverberates with texture, grittiness, and volume. An arresting array of instrumental colors and tones comes on with clearer separation and depth. While previous pressings find the band and Joplin's voice in competition with one another for room, both emerge as distinct entities. Always noted for its rawness, Cheap Thrills sounds as close to live as it gets, an unadulterated portrait of nervy rock n' roll delivered with exuberant enthusiasm and all-out determination. This is music at is most visceral.

Having drawn national attention for their legendary performance at the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967, Big Brother and Joplin faced huge expectations to deliver a studio set that would convey their onstage vibrancy and potency. Cheap Thrills does this and more, becoming one of 1968's most commercially successful releases that remained on the charts the week Joplin announced her separation from the ensemble. Contrary to popular belief, only one of the album's songs, "Ball and Chain," was recorded live. Everything else owes to the unhinged, spirit-elevating performances and true collaboration between vocalist and band that manifests itself throughout the record's 37-minute-plus running time. Merging biker-babe ruggedness with wounded-bird poignancy, Joplin's expressive belting, mega-watt moaning, and sensitive crooning take center stage. Yet her bandmates match every step with explosive rhythms, heavy guitar-driven blues, and assertive solos that take inspiration from free-form jazz.

Indeed, Cheap Thrills still exhilarates not only due to Joplin's almighty singing but because of boundary-shredding arrangements that reflect the period's anything-is-possible mindset. More so than any other musicians Joplin encountered, the members of Big Brother pushed limits on convention via soirees into acid-dipped psychedelia and its orbiting sonic galaxies. Together, they aim and achieve an aural mythos that makes a permanent connection between artist and audience by way of eliminating traditional divisions. Such communal power is evident on the mind-bending version of Big Mama Thornton's "Ball and Chain" and insistent, sinewy "I Need a Man to Love." It's also obvious during quieter moments, whether the tripped-out, twisted, and curvaceous contours of George and Ira Gershwin's "Summertime" or restrained, throwback acoustic blues of "Turtle Blues."

Yes, Joplin presents – and rallies against – loneliness and desperation in a cathartic language few had heard before or since. What's even more significant is the fearlessness, toughness, synergy, and sexual danger pulsing through every song, including the take-on-all-comers challenge "Piece of My Heart," which the collective attacks with career-making ferocity. Like Robert Crumb's daring pop-art illustrations that grace the cover, they simultaneously lure and dare the listener to enter a space where outsiders run free and where outlaws are heard above the mainstream din.

Cheap Thrills, the major-label debut of Janis Joplin, was one of the most eagerly anticipated, and one of the most successful, albums of 1968. Joplin and her band Big Brother & the Holding Company had earned extensive press notice ever since they played the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967, but for a year after that their only recorded work was a poorly produced, self-titled album that they'd done early in their history for Mainstream Records; and it took the band and the best legal minds at Columbia Records seven months to extricate them from their Mainstream contract, so that they could sign with Columbia. All the while, demand continued to build, and they still faced the problem of actually delivering something worthy of the press they'd been getting – Columbia even tried to record them live on-stage on the tour they were in the midst of when the new contract was signed, but somehow the concert tapes from early March of 1968 didn't capture the full depth of their work. So they spent March, April, and May in the studio with producer John Simon and, miraculously, emerged with something that was as exciting as anything they'd done on-stage. When Cheap Thrills appeared in August 1968 – sporting a Robert Crumb cover on its gatefold jacket that constituted the most elaborate album design ever lavished on a rock album from Columbia Records, as well as a pop-art classic rivaling the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's jacket – it shot into the charts, reaching number one and going gold within a couple of months, and "Piece of My Heart" became a Top 40 hit and helped to propel the LP to over a million sales. Joplin, with her ear- (and vocal cord-) shredding voice, was the obvious standout. Nobody had ever heard singing as emotional, as desperate, as determined, or as loud as Joplin's, and Cheap Thrills was her greatest moment. Not that everything was done full out – there were relatively quiet moments on the album that were as compelling as the high-wattage showcases; her rendition of George Gershwin's "Summertime" was the finest rock reinterpretation of a standard done by anybody up to that time (though, in an incident recalled in his autobiography Clive, when Columbia Records president Clive Davis played it to Richard Rodgers to give him an example of some of the sounds that younger audiences of the late '60s were listening to, the 66-year-old Rodgers stomped out of the Columbia corporate offices in fury, vowing never to write another song); and Joplin's own "Turtle Blues" showed that she and the band could turn down and do credible acoustic blues, in something like an authentic period Bessie Smith (or, more properly, Memphis Minnie) sound. Big Brother's backup, typical of the guitar-dominated sound of San Francisco psychedelia, made up in enthusiasm what it lacked in precision. But everybody knew who the real star was, and Joplin played her last gig with Big Brother while the album was still on top of the charts. Neither she nor the band would ever equal it. Heard today, Cheap Thrills is a musical time capsule and remains a showcase for one of rock's most distinctive singers.

Review by William Ruhlmann, Allmusic.com

Big Brother & The Holding Company with Janis Joplin - Cheap Thrills (1968) [MFSL Remastered 2016]



Tracklist:

01. Combination of the Two (5:49)
02. I Need a Man to Love (4:56)
03. Summertime (4:03)
04. Piece of My Heart (4:20)
05. Turtle Blues (4:24)
06. Oh, Sweet Mary (4:17)
07. Ball and Chain (9:36)


Exact Audio Copy V1.3 from 2. September 2016

EAC extraction logfile from 17. July 2017, 16:12

Big Brother & The Holding Company / Cheap Thrills (2016 MFSL)

Used drive : PLEXTOR CD-R PREMIUM Adapter: 1 ID: 1

Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No

Read offset correction : 30
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Gap handling : Appended to previous track

Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 768 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\FLAC\FLAC.EXE
Additional command line options : -6 -e -p -V -T "ARTIST=%artist%" -T "TITLE=%title%" -T "ALBUM=%albumtitle%" -T "DATE=%year%" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%tracknr%" -T "GENRE=%genre%" -T "PERFORMER=%albuminterpret%" -T "COMPOSER=%composer%" %haslyrics%–tag-from-file=LYRICS="%lyricsfile%"%haslyrics% -T "ALBUMARTIST=%albumartist%" -T "DISCNUMBER=%cdnumber%" -T "TOTALDISCS=%totalcds%" -T "TOTALTRACKS=%numtracks%" -T "COMMENT=%comment%" %source% -o %dest%


TOC of the extracted CD

Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 5:48.39 | 0 | 26138
2 | 5:48.39 | 4:56.15 | 26139 | 48353
3 | 10:44.54 | 4:03.34 | 48354 | 66612
4 | 14:48.13 | 4:20.19 | 66613 | 86131
5 | 19:08.32 | 4:24.05 | 86132 | 105936
6 | 23:32.37 | 4:17.16 | 105937 | 125227
7 | 27:49.53 | 9:35.54 | 125228 | 168406


Track 1

Filename C:\tmp\00_RIPS\01 - Combination Of The Two.wav

Pre-gap length 0:00:02.00

Peak level 97.6 %
Extraction speed 9.1 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC DFE401AC
Copy CRC DFE401AC
Accurately ripped (confidence 3) [1C29B24F] (AR v2)
Copy OK

Track 2

Filename C:\tmp\00_RIPS\02 - I Need A Man To Love.wav

Peak level 95.4 %
Extraction speed 10.1 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 4D409BB5
Copy CRC 4D409BB5
Accurately ripped (confidence 3) [E18B9A5F] (AR v2)
Copy OK

Track 3

Filename C:\tmp\00_RIPS\03 - Summertime.wav

Pre-gap length 0:00:02.89

Peak level 69.8 %
Extraction speed 10.8 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC D6D9A423
Copy CRC D6D9A423
Accurately ripped (confidence 3) [117BFB16] (AR v2)
Copy OK

Track 4

Filename C:\tmp\00_RIPS\04 - Piece Of My Heart.wav

Pre-gap length 0:00:03.00

Peak level 86.0 %
Extraction speed 10.0 X
Track quality 99.9 %
Test CRC E4A001AB
Copy CRC E4A001AB
Accurately ripped (confidence 3) [C8A209B9] (AR v2)
Copy OK

Track 5

Filename C:\tmp\00_RIPS\05 - Turtle Blues.wav

Pre-gap length 0:00:04.76

Peak level 77.3 %
Extraction speed 12.2 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC CEED1213
Copy CRC CEED1213
Accurately ripped (confidence 3) [D03BCCF7] (AR v2)
Copy OK

Track 6

Filename C:\tmp\00_RIPS\06 - Oh, Sweet Mary.wav

Pre-gap length 0:00:02.90

Peak level 68.9 %
Extraction speed 12.8 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC B790DF5B
Copy CRC B790DF5B
Accurately ripped (confidence 3) [931BA533] (AR v2)
Copy OK

Track 7

Filename C:\tmp\00_RIPS\07 - Ball And Chain.wav

Pre-gap length 0:00:02.97

Peak level 81.0 %
Extraction speed 12.2 X
Track quality 99.9 %
Test CRC 01085AC6
Copy CRC 01085AC6
Accurately ripped (confidence 3) [64362E03] (AR v2)
Copy OK


All tracks accurately ripped

No errors occurred

End of status report

–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6

[CTDB TOCID: 8lF1SWdewbZct1OWvJyBW9iHdcE-] found
Submit result: 8lF1SWdewbZct1OWvJyBW9iHdcE- has been confirmed
Track | CTDB Status
1 | (4/4) Accurately ripped
2 | (4/4) Accurately ripped
3 | (4/4) Accurately ripped
4 | (4/4) Accurately ripped
5 | (4/4) Accurately ripped
6 | (4/4) Accurately ripped
7 | (4/4) Accurately ripped


==== Log checksum 7E8D7346336C97E00A61F9414F67FC25976F1C7D655A3CC315B7204071C0A2B6 ====

foobar2000 1.2 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1
log date: 2017-07-23 19:11:07

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Analyzed: Big Brother & The Holding Company / Cheap Thrills
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

DR Peak RMS Duration Track
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
DR11 -0.20 dB -14.21 dB 5:49 01-Combination of the Two
DR10 -0.40 dB -13.81 dB 4:56 02-I Need a Man to Love
DR10 -3.11 dB -17.53 dB 4:03 03-Summertime
DR10 -1.31 dB -13.68 dB 4:20 04-Piece of My Heart
DR11 -2.23 dB -16.27 dB 4:24 05-Turtle Blues
DR10 -3.24 dB -15.27 dB 4:17 06-Oh, Sweet Mary
DR11 -1.82 dB -16.03 dB 9:36 07-Ball and Chain
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Number of tracks: 7
Official DR value: DR10

Samplerate: 44100 Hz
Channels: 2
Bits per sample: 16
Bitrate: 793 kbps
Codec: FLAC
================================================================================

Big Brother & The Holding Company with Janis Joplin - Cheap Thrills (1968) [MFSL Remastered 2016]

Big Brother & The Holding Company with Janis Joplin - Cheap Thrills (1968) [MFSL Remastered 2016]

All thanks to original releaser

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