Product Description

Janis Joplin's PEARL, from 1971, is a bluesy, organ-drenched benediction for the flower-child sound of the free-and-easy 60's. It is also one of great singer's most consistent andrepresentative efforts. Gone are the ear-shattering sonics of Big Brother and the Holding Company, and Full Tilt Boogie, the backing band here, steps in to offer a degree of polish and control that frames Joplin's vocals nicely. Yet the band still grooves hard with the fierceness her voice demands.Guitarist John Till's riffs, chords, and solos, in particular, are exciting and tightly executed.
"A Woman Left Lonely" and Bobby Womack's "Trust Me" are rain-on-the-windows ballads that come alive with Joplin's gritty vocal brilliance,while the burbling "Move Over" and "Half Moon" are among her funkiest, most driving cuts. The dramatic "Cry Baby" is offset by the tongue-in-cheek a cappella number "Mercedes Benz", while Joplin's version of Kris Kristofferson's "Me and Bobby McGee" went on to become her signature song. Joplin diedduring the sessions for PEARL, making these tracks the final word on her towering talent and a superb addition to her enduring legacy.

Track Listing

1. Move Over
2. Cry Baby
3. Woman Left Lonely
4. Half Moon
5. Buried Alive In The Blues
6. My Baby
7. Me And Bobby McGee
8. Mercedes Benz
9. Trust Me
10. Get It While You Can
11. Tell Mama
12. Little Girl Blue
13. Try (Just A Little Bit Harder)
14. Cry Baby

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5576 in Music
• Released on: 1999-08-30
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

Bring back Big Bro & the Holding Co.
For me Janis's albums (not bootlegs or compliations) split down the middle - those with Big Bro & the Holding Co and those without. Those with are the better, the happier, where she felt part of something. They're guitar based psychedelic rock at its best. They're raw, earthy, exciting, naive and bursting with energy. Cheap Thrills is best (live) and the studio Big Brother & the Holding Company an interesting, quirky innocent debut album.
Those without, Pearl & Kozmic Blues, are the unhappy Janis, full production, no band, orchestrated, brass and keyboard albums. They lack the passion and excitement and raw energy. I still play them often and love them dearly but they're not the best. The spark has gone. That said, Pearl is the better of the two.

Hard Candy
This is truly a quite fantastic album. Aesthetically, conceptually and for the first time in Janis's career, technically, near unimpeachable, it succeeds where 'Cheap Thrills' fails; i.e. in transmitting her particular intelligence and insouciance, albeit indirectly, to the audience that could appreciate them best; an audience largely constituted, perhaps ironically, of middle class men. The smell of sex and money still lingers, but it is now, brilliantly and paradoxically, the function of reasonably judged 'excess', and so has been neutered to a degree that biographical fallacy could only confuse our understanding of.
The antagonistic symbiosis that forms the crux of Janis's relationship with the Full Tilt Boogie Band, is the centre piece of a series of contradictions and counterpoints implicit in the album as a whole. Lyrically, the salient theme of high expectation/low return relationships, is enlivened by the interplay between stridency regarding her perceived

'masculinity' and nervousness regarding her femininity. Sonically, sparse drumming points up the conspicuous rhythm guitar, and Janis's voice now sounds equal parts 'black' and 'white'. Less specifically, the album's crescendos anticipate its diminuendos, and ultimately its pathos acticipates and defeats its ennui. The excellent choice of covers serves to highlight the thouhtfulness and pace of a very substantial and disarmingly inviting album.

Still sounds fresh today
What struck me about Pearl upon listening to it again recently, is the authenticity of the music. Some reviewer once claimed that rock merely gets stale whereas pop music rots with time. There is nothing stale about Joplin and her band on this all-time classic. After all these years, it remains a magnificent listening experience because of the quality of the songs, the band's tight playing and the impressive emotional range of Joplin's vocals. Unlike on Cheap Thrills, where there was mostly a cosmic battle between her voice and Big Brother's heavy metal onslaught, here the voice is the star. My favourites on an album of classics include the incredible Me and Bobby McGee, the tender A Woman Left Lonely, the nervous Half Moon, the emotional Cry Baby, the buoyant Get It While You Can and the plaintive/humorous Mercedes Benz. Perfect arrangements, brilliant playing and masterly vocalization combine here to create a timeless masterpiece.