Consumer Guide Album

Janis Joplin: Janis Joplin's Greatest Hits [Columbia, 1973]
I was disheartened to learn that five of these ten tracks were cut with Full Tilt Boogie, but one of them is a live "Ball and Chain," and I'm delighted to report that such competent classics as "Cry Baby" and "Move Over" sound a lot more raucous following "Try" and "Bye Bye Baby" than they did on Pearl. In short, this blatant piece of product represents her more fully than any other disc: spontaneity as rebellion, tied to the will, the major mode of the late '60s, preserved--imperfectly, of course--forever on a piece of plastic. A