In September 1966, Big Brother signed a contract with Mainstream Records, and recorded four of the songs for the album 'Big Brother & the Holding Company', with the remainder of the songs being recorded in Los Angeles later in the year. Mainstream was known for its jazz records, and Big Brother was the first rock band to appear on the label, and this may have influenced the final result, since the album sounded very different from what the band expected, being acoustic and folky instead of heavy acid rock. The band's historic performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967 attracted national and international attention, and they signed a contract with Columbia Records which was able to buy out their contract from Mainstream. The band's first album for Columbia was due to be recorded during the spring and summer of 1968, and released later that year, and was eagerly anticipated after the first record had been largely ignored. Initially it was planned as a live album, with the band recording two concerts at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, but the results were considering not good enough, and so the live album was scrapped and Columbia decided to re-record most of the songs in the studio. The album was initially named 'Sex, Dope and Cheap Thrills', but Columbia asked them to shorten it to just 'Cheap Thrills', and the group was photographed by Richard Avedon for the cover, but the pictures were not used. Dave Getz suggested that the band hire underground comic-book artist R. Crumb whom he knew through a mutual friend, and what was originally meant to be the back cover art became the classic front cover of the album. Crumb's first effort was a picture just of Joplin, but this was also rejected, and so I've resurrected it for this album. Sessions for the record produced way more material than was needed, and although some of the songs have since surfaced, they've been scattered over various posthumous Joplin anthologies, but they were finally released in one place on the deluxe 'Cheap Thrills' re-issue, and by extracting the best takes we can construct a companion record to 'Cheap Thrills' which contains some superb songs in excellent sound quality.
01 Catch Me Daddy
02 Farewell Song
03 Flower In The Sun
04 Magic Of Love
05 Roadblock
06 Harry
07 Misery'n
08 Easy Once You Know How
09 It's A Deal
10 How Many Times
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