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.

Various Artists - Monterey International Pop Festival, Monterey County Fairgrounds, Monterey, CA, 6-18-1967, Evening Show

This is the fifth and last album I'm posting from the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival. As I've mentioned previously, the festival itself was divided into five parts, and one had to buy tickets for each part. This is the longest album from the festival, and probably the most important in musical history, especially due to the set by Jimi Hendrix.

With most of the previous parts from this festival, I've made reference to a Wikipedia page listing all the songs known to have been performed at the festival. Let me do that again, as I mention the missing portions:

Monterey Pop Festival set list - Wikipedia 

The Blues Project started the evening show. The two songs here are the only ones listed at the Wikipedia page, but it's known they performed more. Unfortunately, the band was in the process of breaking up when this concert happened. A key member, Al Kooper, left a couple of months prior to this. (He had his own solo set at the festival.) The band collapsed shortly thereafter, though there were later reunions.

The second set was by Big Brother and the Holding Company, starring their lead singer Janis Joplin. As I mentioned previously, they were the only act to perform twice at the festival. That's because they went over very well the first time, the day before, but the band's manager didn't allow them to be filmed at that time. (The cameras were running but pointed at the ground, which at least allowed the audio to be recorded.) By the next day, the band members were convinced that getting included in the documentary about the festival would give their career a big boost. So they played a short set of just 15 minutes, compared to 23 minutes the day before, in order to get enough film footage. It turned out to be a very smart career move indeed. When the "Monterey Pop" movie documentary came out in 1968, Joplin's performance in it helped make her a big star.

The next set is quite a mystery - even the band's name: "the Group with No Name." This band was led by Cyrus Faryar, a singer-songwriter who had previously been in the Modern Jazz Quartet. But no songs from this set have been made public, and none or the names of any of the songs performed are known, nor is the number of songs. It seems they were not well received. A Newsweek review of the festival said they "were terrible and may well not last long enough to get a name." That turned out to be accurate, because the band broke up before they released any music. 

After that came Buffalo Springfield. I'm especially excited about this, because up until 2024, only five of the songs they performed were publicly available. But that year, there was a "record store day" release of their entire set here. That release included three songs that were previously unreleased, and even unbootlegged: "Hung Upside Down," "Nobody's Fool," and "Pretty Girl Why."

Here's a review about the Buffalo Springfield set in Rolling Stone Magazine in 2024: 

First-Ever Buffalo Springfield Live Album Released on Record Store Day 

This performance is unusual in that key member Neil Young quit the band about a week before the festival, only to rejoin shortly afterwards. (He quit and rejoined multiple times.) Young was temporarily replaced by two people: lead guitarist Doug Hastings and rhythm guitarist and vocalist David Crosby. Crosby's involvement was controversial, because he was still a member of the Byrds at the time, and in fact he performed in their set at the festival as well. 

Here's a quote about the controversy by Roger McGuinn, the leader of the Byrds: "I didn't know David was going to sit in with Buffalo Springfield, and that wasn't really a big deal. What was happening was that we were not happy with each other, like a marriage breaking up. He was really upset because we didn’t do his song 'Triad.' That was the big bone. He wanted to be the lead singer of the Byrds, you know, the head Byrd. That wasn't happening. To his satisfaction, we were sharing vocals equally. At Monterey I was trying to be a trooper, like Bobby Darin taught me, and try and soldier on and do it."

I don't know how much Crosby's sitting in with Buffalo Springfield impacted his role with the Byrds, if at all. But he was kicked out of the band a few months later. And his involvement with Buffalo Springfield was key to his future music career, because he would later be a member of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young with two members of Buffalo Springfield: Stephen Stills and Neil Young.

The next act up was the Who. Jimi Hendrix moved to Britain in late 1966 and soon found fame there. One he was living there, he and the Who had seen each other perform. They were both impressed with and intimidated by each other. Neither wanted to be upstaged by the other at this festival, especially since both had made destroying their instruments part of their acts. They decided to toss a coin. The  Who won the right to play first.

Adding to the competition between the two acts, backstage before their sets, Hendrix played his guitar while staring at the Who's lead guitarist Pete Townshend, trying to impress him with his skills. Townshend said later, "It was just Jimi on a chair playing at me. Playing at me like 'Don't fuck with me, you little shit.'" 

Here's how the Wikipedia entry about the festival describes the finale to the Who's set: "At the end of their frenetic performance of 'My Generation,' the audience was stunned as guitarist Pete Townshend smashed his guitar and slammed the neck against the amps and speakers. Smoke bombs exploded behind the amps and frightened concert staff rushed onstage to retrieve expensive microphones. At the end of the mayhem, drummer Keith Moon kicked over his drum kit as the band exited the stage." 

The Who's set was relatively short, only 25 minutes, when they were allowed to play up to 40 minutes. So their set here is complete. But their performance was very impactful, especially due to the destruction of their instruments. They were a British band, and hadn't had any hits in the U.S. yet, except for "Happy Jack" in 1966, though there already was a lot of buzz about them. Their performance at the festival would raise their profile in the U.S., helping them to have two more U.S. hits later that year, "Pictures of Lily" and "I Can See for Miles."  

Eric Burdon of the Animals later commented about the Who's performance: "The American audience went: 'What the hell is this?!' The climax of the show was just like a terrorist attack, with the bombs and the smoke. It was just shocking!"

After the Who came the Grateful Dead. The band would go on to play concerts for decades, becoming one of the most popular touring bands in the U.S. But keep in mind this was very early in their career, with their debut album ("The Grateful Dead")coming out only three months prior to this festival. In a Newsweek review of the festival, music critic Michael Lydon commented: "The Grateful Dead were beautiful. They did at top volume what Shankar had done softly. They played pure music, some of the best music of the concert. I have never heard anything in music that could be said to be qualitatively better than the performance of the Dead, Sunday night.

The next act was the Jimi Hendrix Experience. This was possibly the most musically historic set of the entire festival. As an aside, Hendrix was not well known in the U.S. at the time of the festival. The main reason why he appeared at the festival, and especially at a pivotal spot near the end of the final night, was because Paul McCartney of the Beatles was a member of the board of governors for the festival, and he absolutely insisted that Hendrix had to perform there. The Wikipedia entry on the festival has a good summary of what happened during Hendrix's set, so I'll quote that here:

"Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones introduced [Hendrix]. His use of extremely high volumes, the feedback this produced, and the combination of the two along with his dive-bombing use of the vibrato bar on his guitar, produced sounds that, with the exception of the British in attendance, none of the audience had ever heard before. This, along with his look, his clothing, and his erotic antics onstage, had an enormous impact on the audience. To take things further, aware of the Who's planned explosive finale, he had asked around for a can of lighter fluid, which he'd placed behind one of his amplifier stacks before beginning his set. He ended his Monterey performance with an unpredictable version of 'Wild Thing,' which he capped by kneeling over his guitar, pouring lighter fluid over it, setting it on fire, and then smashing it onto the stage seven times before throwing its remains into the audience. This performance put Hendrix on the map and generated an enormous amount of attention in the music press and newspapers alike." 

Actor Dennis Hopper had this to say: "Hendrix was certainly a great guitar player. He became part of the guitar, it was an extension of his, ah, his feelings and his sex and everything. He was unmatched in that."

And music critic Robert Christgau wrote this in The Village Voice decades later: "Music was a given for a Hendrix stuck with topping the Who's guitar-smashing tour de force. It's great sport to watch this outrageous scene-stealer wiggle his tongue, pick with his teeth, and set his axe on fire, but the showboating does distract from the history made that night - the dawning of an instrumental technique so effortlessly fecund and febrile that rock has yet to equal it, though hundreds of metal bands have gotten rich trying."

The final act of the evening, and thus the entire festival, was the Mamas and the Papas. They had had many big hits of their own by this time. But the band's main songwriter John Phillips had recently wrote a single meant to promote the festival, "San Francisco [Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair]." Rather than had his own band play it, he gave the song to Scott McKenzie, who was having a huge hit with it right when the festival was happening (as I detailed in the write-up in the first part of this festival). McKenzie wasn't just a random singer though. He and Phillips were friends since childhood, and played in different bands together. When Phillips created the Mamas and the Papas, he invited McKenzie to join, but McKenzie turned down the offer, wanting to try a solo career instead. In any case, towards the end of this set, McKenzie joined the band and sang his hit song with the Mamas and the Papas backing him.

Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar had this to say: "The group who really made me feel good, I can't tell you how nice, was the Mamas and the Papas. There was melody, there were lyrical moments, and beautiful - and they looked so good together." (As an aside, he enjoyed many of the other acts in the festival, but hated the destruction of instruments by the Who and Hendrix.)

Now, this is going to be an extra long write-up, because before I finish with this festival, I want to write a little bit about how it came to be in the first place. I'm putting that explanation here because it turns out the main instigators of the festival were actually the members of the Mamas and the Papas, so I think it's fitting to put this explanation after talking about their set. The festival came together rather quickly, in just a few months, but during that time the band members worked tirelessly on it, basically putting the band on hold for a while to do so.

The band put on a pretty good performance despite being too busy organizing the festival to rehearse much beforehand. But in retrospect, the fact the band spent so much time organizing the festival was probably a sign that they had grown tired of being in a band together. Phillips remembered as the apex of the band's career, saying, "There would never be anything quite like it again." The band put out a new album in October 1967. But after that, they decided to take long vacations to "get the muse going again," according to Phillips. But instead, the band fought during their vacation time, resulting in an announcement that they had broken up. They did manage to reunite for another album in 1968, only to break up again.

The festival was originally conceived as a money-making event. But the people involved didn't have the money to pay for star acts. So the organizers changed the idea to a benefit concert (although first class transportation was paid for all the acts). The profits from sales of albums drawn from the festival still help fund charities decades later, especially due to steady profits from the hit "Monterey Pop" movie documentary. Ravi Shankar was the only act to be paid, because he signed a contract early on, before it was changed to a benefit concert.

The festival had a very unusual board of governors to help organize it: John Phillips, Donovan, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Roger McGuinn, Johnny Rivers, Smokey Robinson, Paul Simon, Brian Wilson, Lou Adler, Terry Melcher, Andrew Loog Oldham, and Alan Pariser. All the next except the last four were famous musicians at the time. The last four were successful music producers or managers. Some, like Phillips and Simon, were very involved, while others like Smokey Robinson basically just gave their name to the effort.

By the way, one of the last things I want to mention about this festival is all the bands that didn't play. Here are some names, plus the reasons why they didn't participate in paranetheses: the Beach Boys (internal squabbles), Donovan (couldn't get a U.S. work visa due to a drug charge), the Kinks (couldn't get a U.S. work visa due to being banned due to a union dispute), the Lovin' Spoonful (fighting a drug charge, plus internal squabbles), and Dionne Warwick (cancelled right before the festival because she had a schedule conflict). Kaleidoscope (the U.S. band, not the British one) did play at the festival, but only outside, for the crowd who didn't have tickets to get inside.

There were still more acts that were asked but declined. Producer Lou Adler later said, "There weren't a lot of tours [at the time]. We're still talking 1967. Not a lot of acts [were] working all the time. The San Francisco acts [were] playing around San Francisco. The big acts couldn't get visas to get in. The Motown acts were working, the blues acts were working, but the acts that we went after, they had time even though we had a short window [to get them]. ... Everyone jumped on very quickly. We tried for the Impressions. We got some no's, from some of the Motown acts, and Chuck Berry passed."

In my recent write-up about the 1969 Toronto Rock and Roll Revival Festival, I mentioned that legendary 1950s star Chuck Berry was notoriously cheap. This is another good example of that. John Phillips tried to invite Berry. "I told him on the phone, 'Chuck, it's for charity,' and he said to me, 'Chuck Berry has only one charity and that's Chuck Berry. $2,000.' We couldn't make an exception." 

Anyway, that's the festival. I hope you enjoy. Personally, if I could get in a time machine and see just one rock festival, I think it would be this one, even over Woodstock in 1969. Actually, the people who created the Woodstock festival came up with the idea immediately after watching the "Monterey Pop" documentary movie in 1968. Like many others, they wanted to repeat the success of Monterey, but make a lot of money from it instead of doing it as a benefit concert.

Here's an interesting quote from Chris Hillman of the Byrds, contrasting the two festivals. "I didn't do Woodstock, and I remember Gram Parsons and I were sharing a house in the San Fernando Valley, and Woodstock was on the news. The situation there. We were laughing, and I said, 'That's no Monterey.' And it wasn't! There was a sense of commaraderie at Monterey." 

This album is three hours and 35 minutes long. 

01 talk (Tommy Smothers)
02 talk (Paul Simon)
03 The Flute Thing [Instrumental] (Blues Project)
04 talk (Blues Project)
05 Wake Me, Shake Me (Blues Project)
06 talk (Tommy Smothers)
07 Combination of the Two (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
08 Harry (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
09 Ball and Chain (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
10 talk (Peter Tork)
11 For What It's Worth (Buffalo Springfield)
12 Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing (Buffalo Springfield)
13 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
14 Hung Upside Down (Buffalo Springfield)
15 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
16 A Child's Claim to Fame (Buffalo Springfield)
17 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
18 Nobody's Fool (Buffalo Springfield)
19 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
20 Pretty Girl Why (Buffalo Springfield)
21 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
22 Rock and Roll Woman (Buffalo Springfield)
23 Bluebird (Buffalo Springfield)
24 talk (Eric Burdon)
25 Substitute (Who)
26 talk (Who)
27 Summertime Blues (Who)
28 talk (Who)
29 Pictures of Lily (Who)
30 talk (Who)
31 A Quick One while He's Away (Who)
32 talk (Who)
33 Happy Jack (Who)
34 talk (Who)
35 My Generation (Who)
36 talk (Bill Graham)
37 talk (Bill Graham)
38 Viola Lee Blues (Grateful Dead)
39 talk by emcee (Grateful Dead)
40 talk (Grateful Dead)
41 Cold Rain and Snow (Grateful Dead)
42 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
43 Alligator (Grateful Dead)
44 Caution [Do Not Stop on Tracks] (Grateful Dead)
45 talk (Bill Graham)
46 talk (emcee)
47 talk (Brian Jones)
48 Killing Floor (Jimi Hendrix)
49 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
50 Foxy Lady (Jimi Hendrix)
51 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
52 Like a Rolling Stone (Jimi Hendrix)
53 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
54 Rock Me Baby (Jimi Hendrix)
55 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
56 Hey Joe (Jimi Hendrix)
57 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
58 Can You See Me (Jimi Hendrix)
59 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
60 The Wind Cries Mary (Jimi Hendrix)
61 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
62 Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)
63 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
64 Wild Thing (Jimi Hendrix)
65 talk (Paul Simon)
66 Straight Shooter (Mamas & the Papas)
67 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
68 Got a Feelin' (Mamas & the Papas)
69 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
70 California Dreamin' (Mamas & the Papas)
71 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
72 Spanish Harlem (Mamas & the Papas)
73 Somebody Groovy (Mamas & the Papas)
74 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
75 I Call Your Name (Mamas & the Papas)
76 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
77 Monday, Monday (Mamas & the Papas)
78 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
79 San Francisco [Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair] (Mamas & the Papas & Scott McKenzie)
80 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
81 Dancing in the Street (Mamas & the Papas)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/8vU9t776

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/3WanaF2nlZaXyl8/file

Like most of the cover art I've made for this festival, I had too many good options to choose from, so I broke the image into four smaller ones. From top left clockwise: David Crosby (with hat), Richie Furray (with glasses) and Stephen Stills of Buffalo Springfield, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend (smashing his guitar) of the Who, the Mamas and the Papas, and Jimi Hendrix.

Various Artists - Monterey International Pop Festival, Monterey County Fairgrounds, Monterey, CA, 6-17-1967, Afternoon Show

Here's the second out of five albums I'm posting that make up the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival. As I mentioned in the first album, the festival was broken up into five parts, and one had to buy tickets for each part. This part consisted of the afternoon show on June 17th, the second day of the festival.

Generally speaking, the different parts didn't really have musical themes, except for this one, because most of the musical acts in this part were heavily influenced by the blues.

As I mentioned in the write-up for the first part, I'm mostly just posting what a person named Simon put together in 2022, with some additions based on material made available since then. As with all the parts, I'm including a PDF Simon made that explains the different sourcing for each of the songs.

Also in my write-up for the first part, I mentioned a Wikipedia link that lists the known songs from the festival, including the ones where there's no publicly available recording. It's worth mentioning that link again:

Monterey Pop Festival set list - Wikipedia 

Let's review what's still missing. Canned Heat is known to have played the three songs included here, but also an unknown number of additional songs. The Big Brother and the Holding Company set is complete. This was the concert that turned that band's main lead singer, Janis Joplin, into a big star. In fact, they're the only band to play two sets in the festival. That's because their set here was one of the highlights, but a documentary film crew headed by D.A. Pennebaker failed to record any good footage of the band. So they were brought back to play a few songs on the third and final day.

Al Kooper had been a keyboardist for the Blues Project since 1965, but he quit that band shortly before this festival. The Blues Project got their own spot later in the festival, but Kooper got a solo spot too. (He would go on to form Blood, Sweat and Tears a year later.) According to the Wikipedia set list above, he only played two songs, and one of them is here. But according to a Newsweek article I linked to in the first part, Kooper's set lasted about half an hour, so he probably played more.

There are eight songs here performed by the Butterfield Blues Band, led by Paul Butterfield. Apparently there did more songs. But each act was allowed to up to 40 minutes, and their set already totaled 33 minutes, so there's probably just one or two missing songs. There are just two songs here by the Quicksilver Messenger Service, and they played five. One of the missing ones is a cover of "Who Do You Love," which they usually ended with a long jam.  There are two Steve Miller Band songs here, but they played at least one more, "Living in the U.S.A." 

The last act for this part of the festival was the Electric Flag. This band was formed in the spring of 1967 by guitarist Mike Bloomfield, and it was led by him, Barry Goldberg, and Buddy Miles. This actually was their very first concert. They would put out a studio album in early 1968 called "A Long Time Comin'," but by then the band's sound had already changed, with founder Bloomfield having less of a role. In fact, he left the band just a couple of months after the album was released. This concert is truer to the original vision he had for the band. There are six songs by them here, which actually is two more than the ones on the Wikipedia set list, so I don't know if there are still more missing ones.

I could say a lot more about all the different performances, but I think the music is all good and generally speaks for itself. The sound quality is excellent throughout, especially considering the time period. A lot of that quality is due to the unusually good sound system. Here's what the Wikipedia article on the festival has to say about that:

"Also notable was the festival's innovative sound system, designed and built by audio engineer Abe Jacob, who started his career doing live sound for San Francisco bands and went on to become a leading sound designer for the American theater. Jacob's groundbreaking Monterey sound system was the progenitor of all the large-scale PAs that followed. It was a key factor in the festival's success and it was greatly appreciated by the artists. For instance, in the 'Monterey Pop' film, David Crosby can clearly be seen saying 'Great sound system!' to band mate Chris Hillman at the start of the Byrds' soundcheck."

Note that that, like all the parts from this festival, this sounds even better than what Simon put together, because I boosted the vocals for the songs that needed that, using the UVR5 audio editing program. About half of the songs needed the boost, though there didn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to it. Some musical acts had low vocals across the board, or not, but often that was only the case for certain songs. Perhaps that's because this is a patchwork, put together from many different sources, both released and unreleased. 

By the way, here's a quote about the festival by Steve Miller: "I remember being really happy to be at Monterey, really excited. It was the first event I attended that was organized in such a really first-class way from top to bottom." 

And here are some quotes about the Big Brother and the Holding Company set, since that was the clear highlight of this part of the festival. Rock critic Keith Altham: "Janis Joplin was the staggering thing I saw on the whole show to me. Because I had never heard a woman sing like that. 'I told her afterwards, "you're the best female rock singer I've ever heard in my life.' She looked me up and down, smiled, and said, 'You get out much, honey?' I thought it was funny. She was very friendly. I liked her."

Record company executive Clive Davis: "When Janis (Joplin) took the stage, it was an unknown group to me totally, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and right from the outset it was something you could never forget. She took the stage, dominated, and was absolutely breathtaking, hypnotic, compelling, and soul shaking. You saw someone who was not only the goods but was doing something that no one else was doing. With that fervor, that intensity, and impact. So yes, that in effect, coupled with everything around me, the way people were dressing, what was going on in Haight Ashbury [the hippie district in San Francisco], the spirit in the air, and the feeling... I just said, 'You know, I am here at a very unique time. I'm feeling it. I'm feeling it in my spine. I'm feeling it in my sense of excitement. I'm feeling it in the impact. It's not only musical changes, but in societal changes.'" 

Davis immediately had the record company he was working for, Columbia Records, sign the band to a record contract, even though they had to buy out the band's existing contract with another company to do so.  

This album is two hours and 27 minutes long. 

01 talk (John Phillips)
02 talk (Canned Heat)
03 Rollin' and Tumblin' (Canned Heat)
04 talk (Canned Heat)
05 Dust My Broom (Canned Heat)
06 talk (Canned Heat)
07 Bullfrog Blues (Canned Heat)
08 talk (Chet Helms)
09 Down on Me (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
10 Combination of the Two (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
11 Harry (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
12 Roadblock (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
13 Ball and Chain (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
14 talk (Country Joe & the Fish)
15 Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine (Country Joe & the Fish)
16 talk (Country Joe & the Fish)
17 I-Feel-like-I'm-Fixin'-to Die Rag (Country Joe & the Fish)
18 talk (Country Joe & the Fish)
19 The Bomb Song (Country Joe & the Fish)
20 Section 43 [Instrumental] (Country Joe & the Fish)
21 Wake Me, Shake Me (Al Kooper)
22 Look Over Yonders Wall (Butterfield Blues Band)
23 Mystery Train (Butterfield Blues Band)
24 Born in Chicago (Butterfield Blues Band)
25 Double Trouble (Butterfield Blues Band)
26 Mary Ann (Butterfield Blues Band)
27 Driftin' Blues (Butterfield Blues Band)
28 One More Heartache (Butterfield Blues Band)
29 Droppin' Out (Butterfield Blues Band)
30 Dino's Song [All I Ever Wanted to Do] (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
31 If You Live (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
32 Mercury Blues (Steve Miller Band)
33 Super Shuffle [Instrumental] (Steve Miller Band)
34 talk (David Crosby)
35 Groovin' Is Easy (Electric Flag)
36 I'm Sick Y'All (Electric Flag)
37 Texas (Electric Flag)
38 talk (Electric Flag)
39 Over-Lovin' You (Electric Flag)
40 Night Time Is the Right Time (Electric Flag)
41 Wine [Drinkin' Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee] (Electric Flag)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1mXxvn3Y

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/hpdZuZUHcB1hh9t/file

Like most of the cover art I've made for this festival, I had too many good options to choose from, so I broke the image into four smaller ones. From top left clockwise: Janis Joplin of Big Brother and the Holding Company, Country Joe McDonald of Country Joe and the Fish, Mike Bloomfield of the Electric Flag, and Paul Butterfield of the Butterfield Blues Band.

Newport Folk Festival, Festival Field, Newport, RI, 7-25-1968 to 7-28-1968, Part 7 - Big Brother & the Holding Company

Next up for the 1968 Newport Folk Festival was Big Brother and the Holding Company, led by singer Janis Joplin.

At the time of this festival, Joplin and her band hadn't had much success so far. They'd released one album in 1967, simply called "Big Brother and the Holding Company," but it had only reached Number 60 in the U.S. charts. They'd put out a few singles, but only one of them, "Down on Me," had charted at all. In August, just one month after this concert, their second album, "Cheap Thrills," would be released. It would hit Number One in the U.S. and sell millions, becoming a classic. But that was still in the future.

Despite that relative lack of success so far, the buzz about Joplin had already turned her into a star. 

I previously posted a link to a Rolling Stone Magazine review of the entire Newport festival. It was written by famed rock critic (and future producer for Bruce Springsteen) Jon Landau. He was a real curmudgeon in his sour review, disliking most all the acts in the festival, especially Joplin and her band. (He even wrote, "I should note the audience loved every minute of [her performance] and that I was singularly isolated in my reaction.") But even he had to admit that her set was "unquestionably the hit of the festival."

Joplin and her band was the last act to perform on the July 27th day of the festival. Technically, their set was on the 28th, because they went on well after midnight. A curfew was enforced, so the band had to play a shorter set than they wanted. Many or even most of the people in the crowd waited through folk acts all day in order to see Joplin, and they'd gotten bored and restless. 

However, all that changed when Joplin took the stage. Landau later wrote that the song "Ball and Chain" in particular earned a "massive standing ovation." And at the end of the set, "[Joplin] and the audience just beamed at each other through her two encores."

Here's that Landau review again, in case you're curious to read the whole thing:

The Newport Folk Festival: 1968 (rollingstone.com)

This album is 35 minutes long.

087 talk by Unknown Emcee (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
088 Piece of My Heart (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
089 talk (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
090 Summertime (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
091 talk (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
092 Coo Coo (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
093 talk (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
094 Combination of the Two (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
095 talk (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
096 Ball and Chain (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
097 talk (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
098 Down on Me (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
099 talk (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
100 Piece of My Heart [Reprise] (Big Brother & the Holding Company)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16033565/NewprtFlkFestivl_1968_07BigBrothrtheHoldngCompny.zip.html

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.