In September of 1969, just weeks after a blistering set at the
\noriginal Woodstock Festival, Janis Joplin made her solo debut in
\nthe record store bins with her new group, the Kozmic Blues Band.
\nBringing only guitarist Sam Andrew from the Big Brother fold,
\nJoplin’s first solo album
\nI Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!<\/i> showed Joplin
\npartially embracing the blues roots that Big Brother began to
\nexplore on
\nCheap Thrills<\/i> while delving into a new world for Joplin –
\nr&b\/soul music. In some ways, this album was an improvement,
\nbut it also showed that this group was to be short-lived.<\/p>\n
Where Joplin’s vocals sounded ragged and frayed on parts of
\nCheap Thrills<\/i>, her overall sound is a major improvement on
\nthis disc. It almost seemed like Joplin knew what kind of material
\nwas best suited for her vocal style, and now that she was solely in
\ncommand, she had the freedom to pick those songs.<\/p>\n
And, in a way, the r&b bend to the music turned out to be a
\ngood move for her. The opening track “Try (Just A Little Bit
\nHarder)” is a perfect example of this. While this isn’t pure
\nr&b like other songs were on this album, it has a bluesy feel
\nwithout being mired in 12-bar, and is a tune you can naturally
\ngroove to. The fact that it allows Joplin to set her vocals at full
\nshred after the intro doesn’t hurt matters either.<\/p>\n
But Joplin was to delve further into r&b on
\nI Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!<\/i>. On tracks like “As
\nGood As You’ve Been To This World” and “Work Me, Lord,” Joplin’s
\ntrue range as a musician and a singer begins to truly come into its
\nown. Anyone who might have been tempted to write Joplin off as a
\nproduct of the hippie generation without listening to these
\nperformances would be making a terrible mistake.<\/p>\n
That isn’t to say that there aren’t mis-steps on this album. The
\ncover of “To Love Somebody” is a song that was not meant for vocal
\noomph – something that Joplin and a few other vocalists would learn
\nover time. Other tracks like “Maybe” and “One Good Man” are okay,
\nbut are nothing special.<\/p>\n
The three bonus tracks on this remastered edition both help and
\nhinder the original. The studio outtake “Dear Landlord” is a great
\ntrack, and I can’t help but wonder why it didn’t make the cut for
\nthe original album. The two live tracks from Joplin’s Woodstock
\nperformance are hit-and-miss. Joplin is able to breathe some life
\ninto “Summertime,” a song I wasn’t particularly enamored with on
\nCheap Thrills<\/i> – but I don’t like the more Otis Redding-like
\narrangement of “Piece Of My Heart”.<\/p>\n
There is a bonus if you listen right after “Piece Of My Heart”
\nfades out – but for once, I’m not gonna spoil the surprise. (Kudos
\nto Bob Irwin and the gang at Legacy for finally getting the concept
\nof a bonus track right; they didn’t make me sit through 10 minutes
\nof silence or 200 three-second tracks to get to the gold.)<\/p>\n
\nI Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again, Mama!<\/i> showcased Joplin as
\nthe artist in transition; the band would disintegrate at the end of
\n1969. But while this album still showed some weaknesses, it was an
\nimprovement over the last effort from Big Brother & The Holding
\nCompany – and was proof positive that Joplin could hold her
\nown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27941,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6230],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-39331","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-janis-joplin","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39331"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39331"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}