Published on Aug 30, 1999
Wow… if you’ve read this far, you might feel like you’ve been
in a marathon. (You can imagine how your intrepid reviewer feels –
trying to balance reviewing this set and a hyper-active three year
old all at the same time.)
After four discs and nearly 3 1/2 hours of Janis Joplin, you’d
think there’d be nothing more to day. Not quite… included with
the
Box Of Pearls set is a five-song EP,
Rare Pearls, which you can’t buy elsewhere. So, to complete
our review of the box set, we’ll briefly talk about this disc.
The first two tracks on this disc are studio outtakes from Big
Brother & The Holding Company during the recording of
Cheap Thrills. One listen to “It’s A Deal” and you know why
it didn’t make the cut. The other track, “Crazy Once You Know How,”
is a marked improvement, but with other songs on
Cheap Thrills that had the same kind of rhythmic attack, I
could understand why this one wasn’t originally included. It’s not
a bad song at all, but had it been included, I would have nailed it
for being too repetitive.
The last three songs feature the Kozmic Blues Band. Ironically,
the track recorded in Amsterdam – a cover of “Maybe” – blows the
doors off of the two tracks recorded six months later at the
Fillmore, which sound incredibly muddy. “Maybe” is the track that
makes this special disc all the more worthwhile, but “Raise Your
Hand” and a cover of “Bo Diddley” don’t add much to the collection.
(A more telling snippet comes after “Bo Diddley” has faded out, and
features Joplin talking to her bandmates about the reaction she saw
in the audience. You can hear the all-out joy in her voice.)
If the producers of
Box Of Pearls really wanted to have done something special
for the people who shelled out their hard-earned money for this
set, I would have suggested they include the remainder of the July
1970 Full Tilt Boogie Band show in Calgary, which featured Joplin
and her bandmates sounding at the peak of their game. (I know I
suggested in a previous review that Legacy release that in the
future, but I think it would have been a more tempting offer to
have put it in this set rather than just five songs.)
To the average listener, over three hours of non-stop Joplin
might seem like a lot – and in a sense, it is. But for any
afficianado of Joplin’s or a fan of ’60s music,
Box Of Pearls does seem to be the way to go, especially if
you’re looking at replacing the beat-up vinyl copies in your
collection. (One word of warning, especially if you’re looking at
just buying the single albums on cassette: Many of them do not come
with all the bonus tracks that are on the CDs. Buyer beware – and
drop the lousy three bucks to up it to CD.)