Cheap Thrills

Cheap Thrills is a studio album by American rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company. It was their last album with Janis Joplin as lead singer. For Cheap Thrills, the band and producer John Simon incorporated recordings of crowd noise to give the impression of a live album, which it was subsequently mistaken for by listeners. Only the final song, their cover of "Ball and Chain", had been recorded live at The Fillmore in San Francisco.

Record history

Big Brother obtained a considerable amount of attention after their 1967 performance at the Monterey Pop Festival and had released their debut album soon after. Cheap Thrills was a great success, hitting #1 on the charts for eight nonconsecutive weeks in 1968. Columbia Records offered the band a new recording contract, but it took months to get through since they were still signed to Mainstream Records. The album features three cover songs ("Summertime", "Piece of My Heart" and "Ball and Chain"). The album also features Bill Graham, who introduces the band at the beginning of "Combination of the Two". "Ball and Chain" is the only song on the album recorded entirely live, and even though the cover credits assert that the live material was recorded at Bill Graham's Fillmore Auditorium, it was actually taken from a concert at the Winterland Ballroom in 1968. The album's overall raw sound effectively captures the band's energetic and lively concerts. The LP was released in both stereo and mono formats with the monophonic pressing now a rare collector's item. The album had been considered for quadraphonic format in the early 70's and eventually in 2002, was released as a Multichannel Sony SACD. The original quadraphonic mix remains unreleased.

Janis Joplin

Janis Lyn Joplin (/ˈdʒɒplɪn/; January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer-songwriter who first rose to fame in the mid 1960s as the lead singer of the psychedelic/acid rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company, and later as a solo artist with her own backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band.

Her first ever large scale public performance was at the Monterey Pop Festival, which led to her becoming very popular and one of the major attractions at the Woodstock festival and the Festival Express train tour. Joplin charted five singles; other popular songs include: "Down on Me," "Summertime," "Piece of My Heart," "Ball 'n' Chain," "Maybe," "To Love Somebody," "Kozmic Blues," "Work Me, Lord," "Cry Baby," "Mercedes Benz," and her only number one hit, "Me and Bobby McGee."

Joplin was well known for her performing ability and skill as a multi-instrumentalist. Her fans referred to her stage presence as "electric"; at the height of her career, she was known as "The Queen of Psychedelic Soul." Known as "Pearl" among her friends, she was also a painter, dancer and music arranger. Rolling Stone ranked Joplin number 46 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time in 2004 and number 28 on its 2008 list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. Joplin remains one of the top-selling musicians in the United States, with Recording Industry Association of America certifications of 15.5 million albums sold in the USA.

Turtle

Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines (or Chelonii) characterised by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs and acting as a shield. "Turtle" may refer to the order as a whole (American English) or to fresh-water and sea-dwelling testudines (British English).

The order Testudines includes both extant (living) and extinct species. The earliest known members of this group date from 157 million years ago, making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups and a more ancient group than snakes or crocodilians. Of the 327 known species alive today, some are highly endangered.

Turtles are ectotherms—their internal temperature varies according to the ambient environment, commonly called cold-blooded. However, because of their high metabolic rate, leatherback sea turtles have a body temperature that is noticeably higher than that of the surrounding water.

Turtles are classified as amniotes, along with other reptiles, birds, and mammals. Like other amniotes, turtles breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, although many species live in or around water.

Blues

Blues is a genre and musical form that originated in African-American communities in the "Deep South" of the United States around the end of the 19th century. The genre developed from roots in traditional African music, combined with European American folk music. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. The blues form, ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues and rock and roll, is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. The blue notes (or "worried notes") which are often thirds or fifths which are flatter in pitch than in other music styles, are also an important part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect called a groove.

Blues as a genre possesses other characteristics such as lyrics, bass lines, and instruments. The lyrics of early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current structure became standard: the so-called AAB pattern, consisting of a line sung over the four first bars, its repetition over the next four, and then a longer concluding line over the last bars. Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating troubles experienced within African American society.

Holding company

A holding company is a company that owns other companies' outstanding stock. The term usually refers to a company that does not produce goods or services itself; rather, its purpose is to own shares of other companies to form a corporate group. Holding companies allow the reduction of risk for the owners and can allow the ownership and control of a number of different companies.

In the United States, 80% or more of stock, in voting and value, must be owned before tax consolidation benefits such as tax-free dividends can be claimed. That is, if Company A owns 80% or more of the stock of Company B, Company A will not pay taxes on dividends paid by Company B to its stockholders, as the payment of dividends from B to A is essentially Company A transferring cash from one company to the other. Any other shareholders of Company B will pay the usual taxes on dividends, as they are legitimate and ordinary dividends to these shareholders.

Sometimes a company intended to be a pure holding company identifies itself as such by adding "Holdings" or "(Holdings)" to its name.