Big Brother & the Holding Company's two post-
Joplin releases,
Be a Brother and How Hard It Is, are two of the best recordings by bands picking up the pieces after the losses of their respective comets/focal points. Where the Billion Dollar Babies and
Spiders from Mars had to move on without
Alice Cooper and
David Bowie, respectively, their musical genre didn't lend itself to reconstituted hard rock groups -- look at the sad fate of post-
Jeff Lynne ELO or
BTO without
Randy Bachman. Like
Grace Slick,
Janis Joplin joined the group in which she rose to fame after it had formed, but as
the Jefferson Airplane could reinvent itself for the future as a
Starship with or without
Slick,
Big Brother was never given the chance to continue producing its experimental psychedelic pop.
Lisa Battle has a strong voice, and it's so different from
Joplin's that the band should have developed a new sound for her. It didn't, doing a disservice to this able singer. Battle does a great job on the funky tribute to
Joplin that is "Women Is Losers"; it succeeds because it is not a note-for-note copy but a new look at an original
Joplin composition. On the other hand, what is the point in trying to re-create "I Need a Man to Love?" You can't possibly top the electric
John Simon production from
Cheap Thrills, or Live at Winterland '68's power. The high points of this CD are "Save Your Love" (where Battle's voice carefully patterns itself around this slinky blues-pop, despite the low-budget surroundings); the title track; and two very short pieces, "The OK Chorale" and "Back Door Jamb." Both those musical exercises should have been expanded to give Battle the chance to identify herself as
Big Brother's current singer. The band, after all, began pre-
Janis by creating unorthodox sounds.
Kathy McDonald and
Nick Gravenites, who both appeared on
Be a Brother and How Hard It Is, are the kind of talents who bring out the best these musicians have to offer. Seven or eight albums with that lineup would have created a formidable body of work. Put Lisa Battle into that mix as well, and the possibilities are endless. ~ Joe Viglione