Wiki
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Release Date
12 August 1968
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Length
7 tracks
Cheap Thrills is the second album from Big Brother and the Holding Company and their last album with Janis Joplin as primary lead vocalist.
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. Despite their newfound success, the album was a modest hit reaching only number 60, though the single Down On Me nearly broke the Top 40. Columbia Records offered the band a new recording contract, but it took months to get through since they were still signed to Mainstream Records. By early 1968, they began work on what was the most eagerly anticipated record of the year. The album features three cover songs ("Summertime," "Piece of My Heart," "Ball and Chain"). The album also features Bill Graham who introduces the band at the beginning of "Combination of the Two". "Combination of the Two," "I Need A Man To Love," and the nearly ten-minute "Ball And Chain" are the only live recordings. The album's overall raw sound effectively captures the band's energetic and lively concerts.
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. The cover was originally meant to be the record's back picture but the band did not like Crumb's original front drawing. It is number nine on Rolling Stone's list of one hundred greatest album covers.
Initially, the album was to be called Sex, Dope and Cheap Thrills, but the title was not received well by Columbia Records.
A variation of the title on the cover is used as the logo for the Cheap Thrills record label, owned by British DJ Hervé.
The album was released in the summer of 1968, one year after their debut album, and reached number one on the Billboard charts in its eighth week in October. It kept the number one spot for eight (nonconsecutive) weeks while the single, "Piece of My Heart," also became a huge hit. By the end of the year it was the most successful album of 1968, having sold nearly a million copies. The success was short-lived however, as Janis Joplin left the group for a solo career in December, 1968. In 2003, the album was ranked number 338 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. They previously ranked it #50 on their Top 100 Albums of the Past 20 Years list in 1987. It is often regarded as one of the key recordings of the late 1960s.
Outtakes originally to have appeared on the album have since been released on Janis Joplin compilations such as Farewell Song (In which Big Brother's original instruments were replaced with studio musicians from 1983, angering the band) and the Janis compilation box set featuring all original studio songs and live recordings. The 1999 re-release of Cheap Thrills features the outtakes "Flower in the Sun" and "Roadblock" as well as live performances of "Magic of Love" and "Catch Me Daddy" as bonus material.
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