Janis Joplin: Joplin In Concert (Columbia C2X31160)

I'LL NEVER forget Big Brother & the Holding Company. Christ, I must've seen them a hundred times between early '66 and the time Janis left. For months before they took her on, they were the most spaced-out bunch of weirdos you could find on a stage anywhere in San Francisco. Pete Albin would take the vocals, trying to be John Lee Hooker, Getz and Andrew would play awkwardly but enthusiastically like a couple of kids from down the street, and Jim Gurley would stand off in the corner in a vortex of mad energy, sharp nose protruding from his Sphinx-like face as his long fingers wrenched torrents of notes in devastating sheets of fuzzed thunder from that tortured guitar of his.