Cheap Thrills (Big Brother and the Holding Company album)
| Cheap Thrills | |||||
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Cover art by Robert Crumb
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| Studio album by Big Brother and the Holding Company | |||||
| Released | August 12, 1968 | ||||
| Recorded | March 2 – May 20, 1968 | ||||
| Genre | Blues rock, acid rock | ||||
| Length | 37:11 | ||||
| Label | Columbia | ||||
| Producer | John Simon | ||||
| Big Brother and the Holding Company chronology | |||||
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| Janis Joplin chronology | |||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Retrospective reviews | |
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| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |  |
| Encyclopedia of Popular Music |  |
| Entertainment Weekly | A– |
| Q | |
| The Rolling Stone Album Guide |  |
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.
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". 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 original 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.
The cover was drawn by underground cartoonist Robert Crumb after the band's original cover idea, a picture of the group naked in bed together, was dropped by the record company. Crumb had originally intended his art for the LP back cover, with a portrait of Janis Joplin to grace the front. But Joplin—an avid fan of underground comics, especially the work of Crumb—so loved the Cheap Thrills illustration that she demanded Columbia Records place it on the front cover. It is number nine on Rolling Stone's list of one hundred greatest album covers. Crumb later allowed prints of the cover, some of which he signed before sale.
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