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...taped at an early gig at the california hall 7/28/66 when they were a cool enthusiastic band, this is certainly the business when it comes this group of reefered beatnix...these hepcats get down with some dirty folk/countryblues, garage r'n'b and jammed-out droning jazzboness, and good old rockin'n'rolling freak style...as is usually the case with such archival grist the rough and ready sound helps get the whole vibe across, this is a total must have for cats who dig the funky street screach this aggregation excelled in back in the day...the last track comes from a jam at KQED frisco, 4/25/67 and still hotcha hip, the ballroom sound is in place and monterey is still a year from coming to claim its electric flower children...
...this slab is so cool its a total heavy drag that they never stayed in this groove, but that was probably impossible as the six ohs were rolling along real fast by 1966 eating up everything and anything that came up as a gimmick and lets face it after monterey jj was definitely a gimmick for bread head cubes to leach a buck or three from...vocals are spread between them and its all here...folkrock/freakrock/gospelrock/r'n'b garage style are represented in fine fashion...janis sounds mighty good for what is the bands first real get-to-grips with the studio, and as a plus, the guitar is teetering on the folkrock/ballroom freakout axis, real nice...extra grooviness come in the shape of 4 bonus tracks at the end...
...this is a totally grooved out piece of freaked R&B if there ever was one, the band are going for the one from the get go, pummeling the heavy skronk all the way through without letting up(theres a drum solo that may be in need of chemical assistance for some cats but otherwise its sandblasted psych-O-delic)...recorded at the california hall in february '67, a couple of months before the wig lifting (and not to mention commercial) appearance at monterey, and janis is a member, fully intergrated, not the focal point with the others her backing band...if proof is still needed this late in time and space that these cats were one full on acid screach its this disk, rough and plenty ready with shards of spliffed up noise bombarding the listner, feedback and tambourines dancing in the electric voodoo stew, call and response vocals shouting their way into eternal existance with some buzzing amplifier hum vibeing up the proceedings...the disk winds down/up with a funky 'ball and chain' snaking its way into the audience setting minds free for all time, once any doubting cat gets a lobeful of this there's no turning back to the squaresville, lifelines to groovetown are grabbed and yesterday didn't ever start...
...combination of two gigs in 'frisco during '68, one at the carousel ballroom and the other at the avalon, these are the tunes they were playing leading up to the promotion for cheap thrills, the LP that would break the combo to the detriment of all concerned...with the carousel show its becoming apparent this is starting to be janis's show, the others are starting to be relagated to paid sidemen, the rough and tumble that used to be a big brother show with the freaked R&B explosions of pure lysergic battering are being cooled out and eradicated, hippy bread is being scooped up by ruthless management and the cats will be expendible, superfluous to requirements...this ain't a bad scene going down, its just a sad scene, 20/20vision that hindsight allows shows the end is already on the cards being played out on the stereo...magic's still in the air of course and not more so than on track 4(light is faster...)where the old messed up freakout comes a pummeling and it sounds like earlier times, when wig lifting madness was always going to happen...the old snakey acid voodoo seems to be more evident on the avalon half, with amplifier hum adding to the good old BB noise, the cats are more fired up, pushing the chemical funk forward, janis responding to the tribal screach and thud, they're operating as a mindfrying unit of single determination as time and space dissolve into the void...
...one things for certain here and that its not too often that a slab of freaked out soul/rock gets in the pop charts, those barometers monitoring civilian buying activity, but thats what happened on this second waxing from one of friscos finest hip aggros... in fact it scored the #1 position back in 68 and that might be the only time something like this ever happened, certainly back in the day nothing this hep and noisey came close to chart action in the LP market, it just wasn't feasible but the vietnam climate got to shaking up a lot of cats and squares alike so this future/primitive hallucinogenic mutant blues screach was some kind of 'rights of passage' talisman, play this disk and real life will enter into where previously TEEVEEland ruled supreme for most of the great unwashed...unfortunately this rapidly growing scene that was gathering round the big brother cats was ultimately destined to pull them apart, the powers that be in the record co. bean counting dept. saw no need for a complete band of messy hippies when the singer filled all marketing requirements, incredible shouting blued eyed soul voice, funky looking diva was just what the times demanded, so the gamble was afoot to ditch the hippys, turn janis into a solo star and clean up some teenage/college student bread...big brother splitting up did no one no good as janis got pushed into a blues belter scenario, somewhat tired and formula due to the ferocious touring, publicity schedule with the only relief coming from the booze and smack...big brother themselves never got back to riding that funky psychedelic train to endsville they'd boarded in '66, never found the chemistry again, the molecules and atoms never gelled for future efforts, the unwritten alchemy of earlier times destroyed in the flames of capitalist no nothing endeavours...the whole being a thousand times more than the sum of the parts, no matter how the arithmetic is itemised into strange algebra, no matter what obscure principles are brought into play to support the opposite line of thought, bbhc is five cats unconsciously working the lowdown acid squeal, getting wigged out funky on a surf ride of distortion, blowing their minds along with all other right thinking cats... 
...totally wigged piece of freakout rock-blues-folk from the last days of big brother, it would soon be time for janis to be 'convinced' by devious management that her trip lay elsewhere, without the band, a star in her own right...one listen to this wax shows that aint necessarily the case as all the cats are firing on all cylinders, rocking out a storm, happy to be at newport, laying some good vibes on the crowd, working the hippy mojo, spinning the magic groove through the audience...everyone having a good time, flipping their collective lid, no-ones bugging, just getting to the stoned spot where IT all comes together, soaring to the cloudless sky...dig janis having a great time (even though they came on late and some techy problems crop up), she's digging the crowd, she's digging her psychedelic compadres, no boozed up bad trip raps that excite purient 'hips', just a flipped out weed groove, true modern beatnix journeying across the folk spectrum, spacing out on the electric vibe that dylan had kicked off 3 years previous at the festival...(dig track 3 where they name check old time banjo cat buell kazee whom the audience aint really sure who that is, this is a cool acid rock modal trip version of the 'CooCoo' tune-dig also the square trying to be hip EMCEE at the beginning, the cube aint got a clue)...they follow up with a smoked-out groove(combination of the two)taking it all further with janis shouting encouragement to james gurley as they rip roar to infinity, a cats got dig this the most...a magnificent reminder of why BB&theHC were one of the all time HEPnacious voyagers of rock'n'roll, they encompassed 20th century music, music by and for the people, jazz/blues/country/R&B/RNR all rolled into one, so the joins hardly showed, all bubbling in a psychedelic gumbo, various spices popping up to add more flavour, weaving the trip ever outward...NICE...
...taped at an early gig at the california hall 7/28/66 when they were a cool enthusiastic band, this is certainly the business when it comes this group of reefered beatnix...these hepcats get down with some dirty folk/countryblues, garage r'n'b and jammed-out droning jazzboness, and good old rockin'n'rolling freak style...as is usually the case with such archival grist the rough and ready sound helps get the whole vibe across, this is a total must have for cats who dig the funky street screach this aggregation excelled in back in the day...the last track comes from a jam at KQED frisco, 4/25/67 and still hotcha hip, the ballroom sound is in place and monterey is still a year from coming to claim its electric flower children...
...this slab is so cool its a total heavy drag that they never stayed in this groove, but that was probably impossible as the six ohs were rolling along real fast by 1966 eating up everything and anything that came up as a gimmick and lets face it after monterey jj was definitely a gimmick for bread head cubes to leach a buck or three from...vocals are spread between them and its all here...folkrock/freakrock/gospelrock/r'n'b garage style are represented in fine fashion...janis sounds mighty good for what is the bands first real get-to-grips with the studio, and as a plus, the guitar is teetering on the folkrock/ballroom freakout axis, real nice...extra grooviness come in the shape of 4 bonus tracks at the end...
...this is a totally grooved out piece of freaked R&B if there ever was one, the band are going for the one from the get go, pummeling the heavy skronk all the way through without letting up(theres a drum solo that may be in need of chemical assistance for some cats but otherwise its sandblasted psych-O-delic)...recorded at the california hall in february '67, a couple of months before the wig lifting (and not to mention commercial) appearance at monterey, and janis is a member, fully intergrated, not the focal point with the others her backing band...if proof is still needed this late in time and space that these cats were one full on acid screach its this disk, rough and plenty ready with shards of spliffed up noise bombarding the listner, feedback and tambourines dancing in the electric voodoo stew, call and response vocals shouting their way into eternal existance with some buzzing amplifier hum vibeing up the proceedings...the disk winds down/up with a funky 'ball and chain' snaking its way into the audience setting minds free for all time, once any doubting cat gets a lobeful of this there's no turning back to the squaresville, lifelines to groovetown are grabbed and yesterday didn't ever start...
...combination of two gigs in 'frisco during '68, one at the carousel ballroom and the other at the avalon, these are the tunes they were playing leading up to the promotion for cheap thrills, the LP that would break the combo to the detriment of all concerned...with the carousel show its becoming apparent this is starting to be janis's show, the others are starting to be relagated to paid sidemen, the rough and tumble that used to be a big brother show with the freaked R&B explosions of pure lysergic battering are being cooled out and eradicated, hippy bread is being scooped up by ruthless management and the cats will be expendible, superfluous to requirements...this ain't a bad scene going down, its just a sad scene, 20/20vision that hindsight allows shows the end is already on the cards being played out on the stereo...magic's still in the air of course and not more so than on track 4(light is faster...)where the old messed up freakout comes a pummeling and it sounds like earlier times, when wig lifting madness was always going to happen...the old snakey acid voodoo seems to be more evident on the avalon half, with amplifier hum adding to the good old BB noise, the cats are more fired up, pushing the chemical funk forward, janis responding to the tribal screach and thud, they're operating as a mindfrying unit of single determination as time and space dissolve into the void...
...one things for certain here and that its not too often that a slab of freaked out soul/rock gets in the pop charts, those barometers monitoring civilian buying activity, but thats what happened on this second waxing from one of friscos finest hip aggros... in fact it scored the #1 position back in 68 and that might be the only time something like this ever happened, certainly back in the day nothing this hep and noisey came close to chart action in the LP market, it just wasn't feasible but the vietnam climate got to shaking up a lot of cats and squares alike so this future/primitive hallucinogenic mutant blues screach was some kind of 'rights of passage' talisman, play this disk and real life will enter into where previously TEEVEEland ruled supreme for most of the great unwashed...unfortunately this rapidly growing scene that was gathering round the big brother cats was ultimately destined to pull them apart, the powers that be in the record co. bean counting dept. saw no need for a complete band of messy hippies when the singer filled all marketing requirements, incredible shouting blued eyed soul voice, funky looking diva was just what the times demanded, so the gamble was afoot to ditch the hippys, turn janis into a solo star and clean up some teenage/college student bread...big brother splitting up did no one no good as janis got pushed into a blues belter scenario, somewhat tired and formula due to the ferocious touring, publicity schedule with the only relief coming from the booze and smack...big brother themselves never got back to riding that funky psychedelic train to endsville they'd boarded in '66, never found the chemistry again, the molecules and atoms never gelled for future efforts, the unwritten alchemy of earlier times destroyed in the flames of capitalist no nothing endeavours...the whole being a thousand times more than the sum of the parts, no matter how the arithmetic is itemised into strange algebra, no matter what obscure principles are brought into play to support the opposite line of thought, bbhc is five cats unconsciously working the lowdown acid squeal, getting wigged out funky on a surf ride of distortion, blowing their minds along with all other right thinking cats... 
...totally wigged piece of freakout rock-blues-folk from the last days of big brother, it would soon be time for janis to be 'convinced' by devious management that her trip lay elsewhere, without the band, a star in her own right...one listen to this wax shows that aint necessarily the case as all the cats are firing on all cylinders, rocking out a storm, happy to be at newport, laying some good vibes on the crowd, working the hippy mojo, spinning the magic groove through the audience...everyone having a good time, flipping their collective lid, no-ones bugging, just getting to the stoned spot where IT all comes together, soaring to the cloudless sky...dig janis having a great time (even though they came on late and some techy problems crop up), she's digging the crowd, she's digging her psychedelic compadres, no boozed up bad trip raps that excite purient 'hips', just a flipped out weed groove, true modern beatnix journeying across the folk spectrum, spacing out on the electric vibe that dylan had kicked off 3 years previous at the festival...(dig track 3 where they name check old time banjo cat buell kazee whom the audience aint really sure who that is, this is a cool acid rock modal trip version of the 'CooCoo' tune-dig also the square trying to be hip EMCEE at the beginning, the cube aint got a clue)...they follow up with a smoked-out groove(combination of the two)taking it all further with janis shouting encouragement to james gurley as they rip roar to infinity, a cats got dig this the most...a magnificent reminder of why BB&theHC were one of the all time HEPnacious voyagers of rock'n'roll, they encompassed 20th century music, music by and for the people, jazz/blues/country/R&B/RNR all rolled into one, so the joins hardly showed, all bubbling in a psychedelic gumbo, various spices popping up to add more flavour, weaving the trip ever outward...NICE... 
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