Northern California Folk-Rock Festival, Santa Clara County Fairgrounds, San Jose, CA, 5-18-1968, Part 4 - Big Brother & the Holding Company

This is the fourth album out of seven albums I'm posting from the 1968 Northern California Folk-Rock Festival. This set features Big Brother and the Holding Company. The main attraction was the band's lead singer, Janis Joplin.

I said quite a lot in my write-up for the first album I posted from this festival, the Youngbloods set. I recommend you read that, because most of that applies to this set too. Most importantly, note that this is sourced from an audience bootleg, so the sound quality isn't up to my usual standards. I had to do a lot of work to fix all sorts of flaws. The final results sounds pretty decent for a 1968 concert, in my opinion, but you need to be tolerant about the flaws that still remain.

At the time of this concert, Big Brother and the Holding Company hadn't had much success with their records yet. They'd released a self-titled debut album in 1967, but it didn't fully capture their appeal and was largely ignored. But the positive buzz they were getting from their live appearances was tremendous. In August, they would release their second album, "Cheap Thrills." It would go to Number One in the U.S. and stay there for many weeks. The lead single, "Piece of My Heart," would also be a big hit.

I mentioned issues with the sound quality above. However, this set apparently was recorded by Jorma Kaukonen, lead guitarist of Jefferson Airplane. I think it does sound a little better than most of the other recordings from this festival. Presumably, he would have been able to position his tape recorder very close to the stage, and may have been able to use a better tape recorder as well. But it still was an audience boot, and suffered many of the same problems I described elsewhere. 

This album is 38 minutes long. 

01 Catch Me Daddy (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
02 Roadblock (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
03 talk (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
04 Summertime (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
05 talk (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
06 Coo Coo (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
07 Combination of the Two (Big Brother & the Holding)
08 Farewell Song (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
09 Piece of My Heart (Big Brother & the Holding Company)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/wx3ki6Bi

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/yKQ07qH6uudt1I7/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. I had to scrounge for photos for most of the other acts, but there were quite a few of Joplin, many of them in color. I went with one that showed other band members as well.