Janis Joplin - Honolulu International Center Arena, Honolulu, HI, 7-6-1970

I haven't published any of Janis Joplin's music until now. She's one of many big name musicians I haven't gotten to at all yet, because I don't want to have too many balls juggling in the air at once. But today, I was listening to the radio and it was mentioned that this was the exact 50th anniversary of Joplin's death, on October 4, 1970. I normally miss those kinds of anniversaries, but since I happened to catch one, I figured I'd post something from her.

This seems to be the best concert recording from her that hasn't been officially released. There's surprisingly little well recorded live material from her, especially considering what a big star she was in the last few years of her life, and one that was well known for her exciting concert performances. There are only three official live albums, plus some other live material here and there.

This bootleg, I'm happy to say, is a soundboard. The sound quality is generally pretty good, but it's not without its flaws. I've tried to fix those flaws the best I could, and I think I succeeded most of the time, but not all the time. It was a long slog getting this ready to post, because I had to fix little things with almost every song. For instance, removing little bursts of feedback, or patching in some audience noise when the crowd reaction faded too fast, or boosting the volume of Joplin's comments between songs. I had to do a lot of volume adjustment in particular. Many songs got louder or quieter for long stretches, for no particular reason. The good thing is that's an easy thing to fix with no loss of sound quality.

But there were some issues like that I couldn't entirely fix. Especially for the last couple of songs, the volume sometimes wobbles up and down, as if someone was turning a volume knob up and down every couple of seconds. Luckily, it's not that noticeable during a song, and I did some extra editing to make it less noticeable between songs.

One nice thing about the concert is that it shows a lot of spirit of the times, and Joplin's personality in particular. It's a good guess that she was drunk, but she sang as well as usual. The crowd was especially rowdy too, with the emcee trying to calm down during the encore and at the end.

Another thing I like about this concert is that it came near the end of her life, during the time she was recording her classic album "Pearl," which wouldn't be released until after her death. Three songs are from that.

The concert is 54 minutes long, and appears to be complete.

01 talk (Janis Joplin)
02 Tell Mama (Janis Joplin)
03 talk (Janis Joplin)
04 Half Moon (Janis Joplin)
05 talk (Janis Joplin)
06 Move Over (Janis Joplin)
07 talk (Janis Joplin)
08 Maybe (Janis Joplin)
09 Summertime (Janis Joplin)
10 talk (Janis Joplin)
11 Get It while You Can (Janis Joplin)
12 Kozmic Blues (Janis Joplin)
13 talk (Janis Joplin)
14 Piece of My Heart (Janis Joplin)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15905244/JanisJ_1970c_HonluluInternationalCenterArena__7-6-1970_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes for her appearance on the Dick Cavett Show on August 5, 1970.