Poll: Best song on Cheap Thrills? How Do You Rate It?

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, for which it was subsequently mistaken by listeners. Only the final song, a cover of "Ball and Chain", had been recorded live (at The Fillmore in San Francisco).

In a retrospective review, AllMusic's William Ruhlmann hailed Cheap Thrills as Joplin's "greatest moment" and said it sounds like "a musical time capsule [today] and remains a showcase for one of rock's most distinctive singers."[2] Marc Weingarten of Entertainment Weekly called it the peak of blues rock,[7] while Paul Evans wrote in The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004) that the record epitomizes acid rock "in all its messy, pseudo-psychedelic glory".[9] In 2003, Cheap Thrills was ranked #338 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.[13] The magazine previously ranked it #50 on their Top 100 Albums of the Past 20 Years list in 1987.[14]It is also listed in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.[15] On March 22, 2013, the album was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and thus it was preserved into the National Recording Registry for the 2012 register.[16] The album was named the 163rd best album of the 1960s by Pitchfork.

 

Ball & Chain...10

 

A fact that is often overlooked: there are four originals songs on this album, 3 of them were written/co written by Janis Joplin.

IMO, this is the best album to come out from San Francisco in the late sixties. Although I have never been much of a fan of Big Brother’s playing, I’ll always have a soft spot for this record because it was really life-changing. This is a brilliant album where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

 

Summertime is my fav. A real fine revamp of a classic tune. I prefer Faith Hill's revamp of Piece of My Heart.

Played both of those versions at a Janis tribute I was musical director and guitarist for in Oct 2017

 

I think Faith Hill’s cover is a good pop reinterpretation of the song.

 

I had never even heard it before a singer participating in a Janis tribute show I organized suggested doing it, but I loved it as soon as I heard it, and had so much fun playing it.

 

Love this album.
It’s been a part of me since I was kid.
I would stare at that cover and try to make sense of it all.
And... as an aspiring guitarist, I loved the inside stage shot of Big Brother and always wanted one of those cherry red Gibson sg’s.
Own a bunch since my youth and yes, at 62 this album still fascinates me.

 

Great cover, right?

 

Piece of My Heart but I like the guitar solo on Ball & Chain.

 

Ball and chain by virtue of that awesome fuzz intro.

Love big brother. Loathe Janis and all that goddam hollerin.

 

My vote as well.

Haha, not my opinion. I think Big Brother could be really subpar at times...

 

I think that’s why I like em.

 

That’s definitely part of their charm! Their work on Summertime is genius though.

 

None really. It's interesting to me for historical reasons, but hasn't stood the test of time well. It's not that the musicianship is amateurish, because I don't think musical virtuosity is necessity. I often prefer rawer, less polished or technically accomplished music to slick musicianship. It has charm though.

More fun that anyone had listening to it maybe? Seriously, if you're going to insist on promoting your musical efforts unsolicited, it's probably worth thinking about how you can add value to the reader while doing it.

 

"Ball and Chain", 10/10.

I'd rank the album as Janis' second best, behind Pearl. I prefer the Full Tilt Boogie Band to Big Brother, with the Kozmic Blues Band third.

 

Piece of my heart stands out like a lighthouse in a storm!

 

piece of my heart.
it has a beautiful defiance.
I have heard wimpy covers and that defeats the purpose of the song

 

Piece of My Heart, for me.

 

Need a man to love. 5 stars.
She sang every song like she meant it but is there a song more well suited to her than this one?
P.S. To these ears, Sam Andrew was one of the great Rock guitarists of his generation.

 

Can't pick, they're all superb.

 

"Piece of my Heart" is very good.
But it takes guts, determination and talent to take on Big Mama Thorntons' "Ball and Chain" and to be able to come out the other side and claim the song as her own!

 

I understand your point, but IMO Piece of My Heart (my vote) has stood the test of time very well. It was a great song then, it is a great song now. I think it doesn’t sound as dated as the others, I don’t listen to it and think “oh yeah, Haight Ashbury in the late sixties”.

 

Ball and Chain for me. No. 2 would be Piece of my Heart

 

Me too!

 

I Need A Man To Love / Piece Of My Heart (tie)