![]() Nothing on Pearl or Kozmic Blues equals that supreme moment of artistic largesse and it’s promise of life’s bounty. In the face of such drives, reviewers can be extraneous. And if they hadn’t seen the group live, they went after buying the record and got just what the psychologist ordered: the assurance of finally being present at an event they were luckless enought to have previously missed out on. Not only the music, but their own experience was immortalized, so they bought a million copies of it. The critics gave that album a rough time, but audiences sized it up just right as a momento of a live show they didn’t want to forget. The song resists her, the way it wouldn’t, say, Ella, or Chris Connor, or most vocalists.” But ooooh, the vibes on Cheap Thrills. Similarly, on “Little Girl Blue” (from Kozmic Blues), her style, her very being, flashed with the firm identity of the song. She couldn’t really handle a song with a tradition behind it, like “Summertime.” The result was hokey and not a little desperate. Her (in my opinion) failures confirmed this. She was a rock singer with a rock band, not a “vocalist” in the conventional, independent sense. A hard act to follow, an even harder one to change from. The music she made with Big Brother (documented on Cheap Thrills) was so full-bodied and complete, had such a distinctive stamp, that it became in a listener’s mind an end, rather than a beginning. Janis’ career was complicated by its skyrocketing character. It’s Janis, or it’s Monk, and you listen, and you care, because you know that whatever is going down is genuine and may contain a revelation, and possibility that may be written off in the case of lesser artists. Would you rather listen to bad Monk or good Ramsey Lewis? Or, if Monk could ever be called bad, could Lewis ever be called good? In certain instances, “good” and “bad” can be pretty useless terms. Anyone who exhibits qualities of greatness earns certain privileges - not critical immunity so much as the right to be forever removed from inconsequentiality: all their work, flawed or not, is worth experiencing. ![]() She was a remarkable, if erratic, singer, and she proved it, live and on record. Besides, Janis was a heavy, and had incredible presence whether at the top or bottom of her form. The fact that there will be no more studio albums inevitably outweighs the issue of how good or how bad the record might be. Her last album can’t simply be an occasion for evaluation. I suspect that some of the tracks are not in their final shape, but these are not scraps, and there is every indication that Janis was working toward a new maturity and confidence. The voice cut off was clearly in its prime. Fortunately, Pearl is a good record and Janis is often magnificent.
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