![]() But I didn’t know on “Piece of My Heart” that there were several Janis vocal takes. I didn’t even know that Janis had done her vocals on more than one - on something like “Turtle Blues”, where she’s just playing with the piano, yes she did a lot of vocal takes. We would settle for maybe three or four at the most of the instrumental take, and then select maybe just one or two. We didn’t work on all of them to completion. Sometimes Janis would maybe put her vocal on a couple of things as options, then whatever had her best vocal, then the last thing would be to try to get some backup vocals. When we got the take that we liked, that had the energy and at the same time didn’t have any obvious mistakes in it, that would be the one that we would work on vocally. We’re playing live in the studio as an instrumental quartet. We didn’t have click tracks or anything like that then. So we did a lot of instrumental takes that were discarded or had a mistake in them, sped up or slowed down, something like that. We were trying to do the whole band basically instrumentally at one time and then do the vocals. We tried to play live, meaning bass, drums, and guitars are all playing at the same time rather than layering, which sort of started happening more in the ’70s. Big Brother tried to record live in the studio, without the vocals. What we were trying to do at that time is to get a good basic take. A time when everything went down on tape and any edits that had to be made had to be physically made. The way that we recorded Cheap Thrills, you’re realizing of course this if before digital. It’s all gonna get blown up again big in front of me. It’s like now when I hear this thing coming out and the CD, which as a lot of the outtake, it’ll be like adding water to some instant mix. And over the years all of that stuff just recedes and you forget all of these little things, these little outtakes. Then the album came out and it is what it is. At one point Janis and Sam went in and spent hours mixing it, and then James went in and spent time, and then I went in with the engineer at one point myself and spent about 12 hours. I remember at the time when we were doing Cheap Thrills, everybody went in to mix it. But it was something that I’d really never heard before. That was a jam that we had that I didn’t even know we’d recorded. I remember when they sent me the stuff there was one thing that I’d never heard. That’s one of the nice things about getting older and being able to let go of stuff like that. And the mistakes and the flaws and the flies in the ointment, you can sort of ignore that more. But then you get passed that point and you can start to except it for what it really is and what’s really good about it. Because I was starting to really get better as a musician, and I was very judgmental and I knew people were very judgmental about Big Brother, so it was very hard for me. There was a certain period of time in my 40s and 50s where I couldn’t listen to any of it. There’s a certain factor when you’re older where you can sort of let go. It’s listening to it with a different sensibility. I’ve played with dozens, if not hundreds, of other bands and some really great bands, some great musicians, and I’ve developed. I’m still playing, I’m still a guy out there who since that time I’ve gotten a lot more chops in my playing. There are certain things that I’ve gotten better at. I think we started recording in March or April, maybe slightly after that, in 1968, and we were working on it through the summer of ’68, so it’s more than 50 years ago. It’s 50 years ago, and in some sense more than 50 years ago, that we were playing it and recording it. Let me put it this way, I call it the cringe factor. ![]() I’m excited to hear that again and hear her little changes that she made in the vocals, things like that. I remember there were several different takes and they were all kind of interesting in their own way. For some of the songs, like “Turtle Blues”, which is really just Janis and piano, I know a few of them have me playing on a table with brushes, I think, on some of it. It’s not outtakes anymore, they’re out there. ![]() It’s going to be a shock to me again now to know it’s really out there in the world. In terms of the music, I have to hear it again, because it’s been four months now. I personally have a lot invested in it in that way. I’ve written a couple of essays that are in there I’m excited about seeing my own ideas finally find an avenue out into the world about what I think happened with Cheap Thrills, and what’s good about it, what’s not good about it, what happened with the cover. I’m excited to listen to all of this stuff again in the form of a record rather than a bunch of MP3s that are being sent to me, for me to receive the whole package. Something that in some way holds up over time. Of course, I’m excited that the record after 50 years now, people still consider it important and listenable.
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