Janis Joplin

I am reading a biography of Janis Joplin. It turns out her band Big Brother and the Holding Company was keeping her down. She wanted to do more soul music, but they wanted to rock and roll.  I listened to live version of Janis singing Down On Me. Her voice is beyond perfect, but the loud jarring guitar riffs ruined the the song. I read on Wikipedia Big Brother and the Holding Company felt maligned, and this is not without reason. They needed to find a rock singer and let Janis be in a band that played in a style that was compatible to her voice. I read she liked Otis Redding. Can you imagine listening to Sitting On a Dock of Bay and suddenly a loud grunge guitar starts playing? This is what Big Brother the aptly named band does to Janis’s music. Janis was just too nice a person who did not want to say no. She had an offer to make a record without them, but she turned it down. They split the money all ways not giving her what she was due. Worst of all she had so little time to live. The Holding Company sounds like someone trying to be cute using the name holding for drugs. Holding means you have drugs on you. I knew it when I first heard of her band. It sounds so moronic. Bands with esoteric names are always terrible because an overly long or difficult name is a reflection on a poor decision making process. The name of the band is the most important choice a band has to make.

Another interesting fact about Janis is she fell in love with a con man who promised to marry her, but he living with another woman who was having his child. He hit her family up for money while lying that he was coming into an inheritance. Even after they broke up he wrote her letters. It was crazy.