Big Brother & The Holding Company
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Big Brother And The Holding Company: Cheap Thrills (CBS KCS 9700)
Review by Simon Frith, Let It Rock, April 1975
JANIS JOPLIN was an awkward Texan girl with a rough voice who became one of the major idols of the sixties 'counter culture'. Why? ...
Audio interviews
Big Brother's Peter Albin (1984)
Interview by Gene Sculatti, Davin Seay, Rock's Backpages audio, 1984
With a little help from bandmate James Gurley, Big Brother's bassist recalls growing up in San Carlos; the scene at 1090 Page Street; meeting his future bandmates; Chet Helms and the Family Dog; Big Brother's debut show at the first Trips Festival; the mutual influence of the San Francisco bands; developing the group's material; the arrivial of Janis Joplin; getting stranded in Chicago and recording the eponymous first album; playing the Monterey Pop Festival; signing with manager Albert Grossman and recording Cheap Thrills...
File format: mp3; file size: 66.4meg, interview length: 1h 09' 09" sound quality: ***
List of articles in the library
Big Brother & the Holding Company
Interview by Greg Shaw, Mojo Navigator, 5 October 1966
GS: Can you tell us about your recent visit to Chicago? ...
San Francisco: The Flourishing Underground
Report and Interview by Richard Goldstein, The Village Voice, 2 March 1967
SAN FRANCISCO — Forget the cable cars; skip Chinatown and the Golden Gate; don't bother about the topless mother of eight. ...
At Monterey Fairgounds: 1st Pop Music Festival Draws Large Crowds
Report by Pete Johnson, Los Angeles Times, 19 June 1967
MONTEREY — Thirty thousand people swelled the city of Monterey over the weekend for the first International Festival of Pop Music, held in the outdoor ...
Keith Altham Planes West to Cover America's Monterey Pop Festival and Cables This Day-By-Day Report
Report by Keith Altham, New Musical Express, 24 June 1967
WE DROVE to London Airport in Animal manager Mike Jeffery's Rolls-Royce while he dictated a few last minute instructions to assistant Tony Garland — "Ring ...
Monterey Pop Festival: The Hip Homunculus
Report by Richard Goldstein, The Village Voice, 29 June 1967
"The West is the best: Get here and we'll do the rest!" — The Doors ...
Chet Helms: Hurok of Haight Street
Report and Interview by Richard Goldstein, Los Angeles Times, 27 August 1967
HIS DESK looks impressive. A clean blotter is piled high with correspondence. A vertical file bulges with memos. A calendar and a trash can are ...
Loraine Alterman on Records: New Albums from Vanilla Fudge, Big Brother et al
Review by Loraine Alterman, Detroit Free Press, 3 September 1967
Vanilla Fudge: Exciting Album ...
Albums from Bobbie Gentry, Aretha Franklin, Big Brother, Captain Beefheart and the Animals
Review by Pete Johnson, Los Angeles Times, 10 September 1967
New Album From Bobbie Gentry ...
Report by Nick Jones, Melody Maker, 25 November 1967
NICK JONES SORTS OUT THE NEW U.S. SOUNDS ...
Big Brother & the Holding Company, B.B. King, Aluminum Dream: Anderson Theater, New York NY
Live Review by Robert Shelton, The New York Times, 19 February 1968
Janis Joplin Is Climbing Fast In the Heady Rock Firmament ...
Report by uncredited writer, The Warren-Forest Sun, 1 March 1968
DETROIT IS turning into ROCK CITY before our eyes, and we love it! All over the country groups are being "discovered, " and cities like ...
Big Brother: James Gurley Talks to the Sun
Interview by uncredited writer, The Warren-Forest Sun, 29 March 1968
SUN: LET'S TALK some about the old Detroit, before the days of LSD 25. When did you leave Detroit? ...
16 Hours of Rock in Dismal Surroundings
Report by Philip Elwood, The San Francisco Examiner, 20 May 1968
SIXTEEN HOURS of the same thing gets to be an enervating experience even if one is a super-rock fan and many of the nation's outstanding ...
Big Brother & the Holding Company, Ten Years After, the Staple Singers: Fillmore East, New York NY
Live Review by Robert Shelton, The New York Times, 3 August 1968
FILLMORE EAST HEARS GOSPELERS 2,500 in Audience Cheer a British, 2 U.S. Groups ...
Janis Joplin: Lock Up Your Sons
Interview by Karl Dallas, Melody Maker, 17 August 1968
SHE WEARS a micro-length dress with a neckline plunging down to the navel. She swoops around the stage like some kind of female bat about ...
Big Brother & the Holding Company: Cheap Thrills (Columbia KCS 9700)
Review by Pete Johnson, Los Angeles Times, 18 August 1968
Big Brother Album Out ...
Top Tunes: Big Brother's Janis Joplin
Interview by Michael Oberman, Evening Star, The (Washington DC), 24 August 1968
SOUL IS where it's at, and Janis Joplin has more than her share. ...
Janis Joplin and the Boys in the Band
Report by Judith Sims, TeenSet, September 1968
IT WAS beginning to dawn on me. Janis Joplin was a Superstar, complete with her photo in Vogue magazine (which must be some sort of ...
Live Review by Pete Johnson, Los Angeles Times, 9 September 1968
Big Brother in Concert at Bowl ...
Janis Joplin Has Superstar Status
Profile by Mike Jahn, Pop Scene Service, 14 September 1968
NEW YORK — It has finally happened. Janis Joplin, the ghost of a hundred female blues singers, has become a superstar. ...
Janis Joplin: Singer With The Bordello Voice
Profile and Interview by Al Aronowitz, LIFE, 20 September 1968
IF YOU HAVEN'T heard of Big Brother and the Holding Company by now, you're going to miss your chance. ...
Big Brother & The Holding Company: Cheap Thrills (CBS)
Review by Miles, International Times, 4 October 1968
Janis Joplin (lead voc); Peter Albin (bass, voc); San Andrew (lead & rhm gtr); James Gurley (lead & rhm gtr); David Getz (Drms, voc). ...
Big Brother & the Holding Company: Cheap Thrills (CBS)
Review by uncredited writer, Disc and Music Echo, 12 October 1968
BIG BROTHER: FRESH MAGIC, CAPTURED LIVE! ...
Big Brother & The Holding Company: Hunter College, NY
Live Review by Mike Jahn, The New York Times, 17 November 1968
BIG BROTHER and the Holding Company, which played before a packed auditorium at Hunter College Friday, has less than one month before Janis Joplin leaves ...
Report by Michael Lydon, The New York Times, 24 November 1968
SAN FRANCISCO — In the heady first days of the "San Francisco Sound," someone dubbed the city the "Liverpool of the USA." The title, though ...
Profile and Interview by uncredited writer, Flip, December 1968
A YEAR AGO, Flip's Hollywood Editor (Carol Deck) and Flip's London Editor (Keith Altham) met at the now legendary Monterey Pop Festival. It was the ...
Big Brother & The Holding Company: Where They're At
Profile and Interview by Jim Delehant, Hit Parader, February 1969
BIG BROTHER and the Holding Company exploded on the national scene in the summer of 1967 at the Monterey Pop Festival when Janis Joplin, feet ...
Report and Interview by Ben Edmonds, Circus, October 1970
THE EXPLOITS OF Janis Joplin in her post-Big Brother days are inevitably front-page material, but what of the band she left behind? Big Brother & ...
The Frustrations of Janis Joplin
Obituary by Philip Elwood, The San Francisco Examiner, 6 October 1970
FIDGETING NERVOUSLY, singer Janis Joplin edged toward the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival mike, squinted up at a slim break in the fog overhead, reared back ...
Buddy Miles, Big Brother & The Holding Company: Fillmore East, New York NY
Live Review by Mike Jahn, The New York Times, 10 January 1971
Buddy Miles Group And the Holding Co. Heard on Rock Bill ...
Janis Joplin: Pearl/Big Brother and the Holding Company: Be A Brother (CBS)
Review by Charlie Gillett, Cream, May 1971
THEY ALL AGREED, the people who went to see her on stage, that Janis had something special. The effect of her personality didn’t come over ...
Review by Ben Edmonds, Rolling Stone, 30 September 1971
IT HAS RIGHTEOUSLY ranked my ass to see the shabby treatment accorded Big Brother and the Holding Company over the course of the past four ...
Chet Helms: Rockin' back to the 60s scene
Profile and Interview by Philip Elwood, The San Francisco Examiner, 29 September 1978
CHET HELMS was the great visionary of the innocent early days of San Francisco's rock music and hippie scene. ...
Festival remembers the Summer of Love
Report by Charles Bermant, The Globe and Mail, 14 September 1987
SAN FRANCISCO – The first cosmic occurrence was before noon, when Jesse Colin Young sang the last chorus of 'Get Together'. He let the crowd ...
Retrospective and Interview by Michael Goldberg, Rolling Stone, 23 August 1990
"My eyes were opened. There's a new world and a new society and a new spirit." ...
Big Brother and the Holding Company
Live Review by Richard Younger, Midtown Resident, 25 July 1997
"Four gentleman and one great, great broad."Watching Big Brother and the Holding Company at Manny's Car Wash a few weeks back, I couldn't help but ...
A Shot From The Heart: Janis and Cheap Thrills
Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, September 1998
IT'S 30 YEARS ago today since Cheap Thrills was released, but as soon as the needle touches the surface of the record (I’m sentimental about ...
Big Brother & The Holding Company: Do What You Love
Review by Steve Roeser, Goldmine, 25 September 1998
THIS IS an album that's been a mighty long time comin', and one which you may have to attend the band's live show to readily ...
Big Brother & The Holding Company: Do What You Love
Retrospective and Interview by Steve Roeser, Goldmine, 25 September 1998
"All of a sudden someone threw me in this rock 'n' roll band. They threw these musicians at me, man, and the sound was coming ...
Retrospective and Interview by Ernesto De Pascale, Rock's Backpages, April 2001
On the eve of the premiere of off-Broadway show Love, Janis, Big Brother’s Sam Andrew remembers his friend and musical soulmate. ...
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 17 May 2002
A recent documentary reminds us that Janis' bandmates mattered too ...
Report by Charles Bermant, Rock's Backpages, October 2007
Things aren't what they used to be, but they never were in the first place ...
Big Brother & The Holding Company in The Summer of Love
Retrospective and Interview by Richie Unterberger, MOJO, Summer 2007
THE RELEASE of Big Brother And The Holding Company's self-titled debut album in the summer of 1967 should have been a highwater mark in both ...
School of Rock: Monterey to Altamont
Guide by Barney Hoskyns, iTunes, 2008
BETWEEN 1966 and 1970, there was a seismic change in British and American pop. Within a few short years "pop" became "rock", and teenagers who'd ...
Report and Interview by Larry Jaffee, The Word, 12 September 2008
The world of R. Crumb – where every record sleeve wishes it was still 1920. ...
Frisco, Where Art Thou: Reassessing the Musical Legacy of the '60s Psychedelic Capital
Retrospective by Gene Sculatti, Rock's Backpages, September 2010
LAST SATURDAY, paging through an article on Robert Plant in the September issue of MOJO, I learned that, upon their initial meeting in a Dublin ...
Janis Joplin And Her "Big Brothers" Come Back Live And Raw
Interview by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press, 13 March 2012
A BOON FOR classic-rock fans in recent years has been an increased activity in vault-mining, as record labels are discovering, polishing up, and releasing a ...
Retrospective and Interview by Sheila Weller, Vanity Fair, July 2012
It was billed as "the Summer of Love", a blast of glamour, ecstasy, and Utopianism that drew some 75,000 young people to the San Francisco ...
Big Brother: John Simon in Woodstock and Bearsville
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Small Town Talk' (Faber & Faber), 2016
Two excerpts from Small Town Talk that tell part of the story of John Simon, producer of The Band and Janis Joplin… plus one excerpt ...
Book Excerpt by Holly George-Warren, 'Janis: Her Life and Music' (Simon & Schuster), 2019
Playing is the "mostest" fun there is – feeling things and really getting into it. That's what it's all about. – Janis Joplin ...
see also Janis Joplin
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