JANIS JOPLIN+BIG BROTHER CHEAP THRILLS RARE ORIG'68 COLUMBIA LP SHRINK UNPLAYED

$

139

WE CURRENTLY HAVE  MORE THAN 100  LISTED ITEMS

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·      JANIS JOPLIN WITH THE BIG BROTHER AND THE HOLDING COMPANY - CHEAP THRILLS - ORIGINAL 1968 COLUMBIA STEREO LP KCS-9700

·      ORIGINAL US PRESSING

*** EASILY THE BEST-PRESERVED FIRST PRESSING OF THIS ALBUM WE HAVE SEEN IN 53 YEARS PF COLLECTING; THE DISC IS CLOSE TO STONE MINT AND IS PROBABLY UNPLAYED ***

·      ORIGINAL RED AND WHITE "360 STEREO" COLUMBIA LABEL

·      THIS IS THE ORIGINAL, AUTHENTIC, FIRST U.S. PRESSING; THIS IS NOT A REISSUE, AN IMPORT, OR A COUNTERFEIT PRESSING.

·      ORIGINAL GATEFOLD COVER, MADE OF THICK CARDBOARD (AMERICAN STYLE) 

·      GORGEOUS ROBERT CRUMB- ILLUSTRATED COVER: A TRUE CLASSIC.

·      COVER IS STILL PARTIALLY (ABOUT 90%) IN ITS ORIGINAL SHRINK (CELLOPHANE) WRAP

·      CLEAN, WEAR-FREE LABELS

·      THICK, HEAVY VINYL PRESSING

·      MATRIX NUMBER IN TRAIL-OFF VINYL (DEAD WAX) ENDS WITH '-1B/-1E'.  ON SOME LABELS,  SUFFIX '–1' DENOTES THE VERY FIRST, ORIGINAL PRESSING)

·      MACHINE-STAMPED MATRIX NUMBER IN TRAIL-OFF VINYL (DEAD WAX) OF THE RECORD  (ON ONE SIDE ONLY)

 (►PLEASE SEE THE IMAGE OF THE COVER, LABEL OR BOTH, SHOWN BELOW)

(Note: this is a REAL image of the ACTUAL item you are bidding on. This is NOT a "recycled" image from our previous auction. What you see is what you’ll get.  GUARANTEED!)

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Cheap Thrills, the major-label debut of Janis Joplin, was one of the most eagerly anticipated, and one of the most successful, albums of 1968. Joplin and her band Big Brother & the Holding Company had earned extensive press notice ever since they played the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967, but for a year after that their only recorded work was a poorly produced, self-titled album that they'd done early in their history for Mainstream Records; and it took the band and the best legal minds at Columbia Records seven months to extricate them from their Mainstream contract, so that they could sign with Columbia. All the while, demand continued to build, and they still faced the problem of actually delivering something worthy of the press they'd been getting -- Columbia even tried to record them live on-stage on the tour they were in the midst of when the new contract was signed, but somehow the concert tapes from early March of 1968 didn't capture the full depth of their work. So they spent March, April, and May in the studio with producer John Simon and, miraculously, emerged with something that was as exciting as anything they'd done on-stage. When Cheap Thrills appeared in August 1968 -- sporting a Robert Crumb cover on its gatefold jacket that constituted the most elaborate album design ever lavished on a rock album from Columbia Records, as well as a pop-art classic rivaling the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's jacket -- it shot into the charts, reaching number one and going gold within a couple of months, and "Piece of My Heart" became a Top 40 hit and helped to propel the LP to over a million sales. Joplin, with her ear- (and vocal cord-) shredding voice, was the obvious standout. Nobody had ever heard singing as emotional, as desperate, as determined, or as loud as Joplin's, and Cheap Thrills was her greatest moment. Not that everything was done full out -- there were relatively quiet moments on the album that were as compelling as the high-wattage showcases; her rendition of George Gershwin's "Summertime" was the finest rock reinterpretation of a standard done by anybody up to that time (though, in an incident recalled in his autobiography Clive, when Columbia Records president Clive Davis played it to Richard Rodgers to give him an example of some of the sounds that younger audiences of the late '60s were listening to, the 66-year-old Rodgers stomped out of the Columbia corporate offices in fury, vowing never to write another song); and Joplin's own "Turtle Blues" showed that she and the band could turn down and do credible acoustic blues, in something like an authentic period Bessie Smith (or, more properly, Memphis Minnie) sound. Big Brother's backup, typical of the guitar-dominated sound of San Francisco psychedelia, made up in enthusiasm what it lacked in precision. But everybody knew who the real star was, and Joplin played her last gig with Big Brother while the album was still on top of the charts. Neither she nor the band would ever equal it. Heard today, Cheap Thrills is a musical time capsule and remains a showcase for one of rock's most distinctive singers.

(REVIEW REPRINTED COURTESY OF BRUCE EDER, ALL MUSIC GUIDE  /ALLMUSIC.COM/)

In one of the interviews, Sam Andrew, the original member of the BB&H/Co. characterized their music on this concert appearance as a "crazy, raw sh!t". Fair enough. We can't think of a single less polished and more crude, emotionally charged white electric/psychedelic blues album of the 1960's. And then, of course, there's that glorious voice of Janis Joplin. The lady sings her heart and guts and everything else out. The almost 9 minute long "Ball and Chain" with its torrents and mudslides of fuzz, feedback and all kinds of guttural sounds made by Janis Joplin is itself worth the price of admission. This is the defining moment of the Psychedelic Sixties and the first (to my knowledge) psych album to ever reach the #1 spot on Billboard's top list of albums.

For its extraordinary contribution to the modern music, superb production, craftsmanship, fine musicianship, revolutionary significance and influence it exerted on numerous generations of musicians, writers and general public, or for some other innate quality, this album was voted one of top-200 albums of all time in one of the largest poll of critics, music reviewers, professionals and producers ever organized: the poll, which was conducted by Paul Gambaccini, legendary BBC Radio A&R man, surveyed more than 50 top music professionals (including Roy Carr, Jonathan Cott, Robert Christgau, Cameron Crowe, Chet Flippo, Ben Fong-Torres, Charlie Gillett, Greil Marcus, Murray the K., Lenny Kaye, Bruce Morrow (a/k/a "Cousin Brucie"), Tim Rice (of "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Evita" fame), Lisa Robinson, Robert Shelton (who wrote liner notes for Bob Dylan's first album), Ed Ward, Joel Whitburn, Pete Wingfield, etc.). For more details, see: "Critics Choice: Top-200 albums" compiled by Paul Gambaccini, Omnibus Press, Library of Congress Catalog No.7855565

TO SEE IF WE HAVE OTHER LISTED ITEMS BY THIS GROUP OR ARTIST ►  CLICK HERE

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·                          CONDITION:

·                          THE RECORD

 (IMPORTANT NOTE: unless otherwise noted, ALL records are graded visually, and NOT play-graded!; we  grade records under the strong, diffuse room light or discrete sunlight)

(a)         THE VINYL IS ABSOLUTELY, PERFECTLY MINT,  as if never played before. The original luster is totally intact, and the vinyl shines and sparkles like brand new. The labels look perfect, simply gorgeous, with absolutely no trace of wear around the spindle hole. The record is TOTAL PERFECTION - ABSOLUTE VISUAL NIRVANA! We are confident that, in this condition, the record we present here is truly once-in-a-lifetime find.

(b)         The record is pressed on a beautiful, thick, inflexible vinyl, which was usually used for the first or very early pressings. Usually, the sound on such thick vinyl pressings is full-bodied, vivid, and even dramatic. Do not expect to obtain such a majestic analog sound from a digital recording!

(c)         The record comes in the original stock inner sleeve.

(d)         Of course, this is a full-bodied ANALOG recording, and not an inferior, digital recording!!!

·                          THE COVER

THE COVER IS STILL IN ITS ORIGINAL ►SHRINK WRAP;  HOWEVER, WE ARE UNABLE TO GRADE IT NEAR MINT DUE TO MINOR FLAWS LISTED BELOW; WE GRADE THIS COVER AS EXCELLENT OR VG++ (A PIECE OF SHRINK WRAP IS MISSING)

The following flaws or imperfections are noted on the cover:

-       Cover has some fraying/wear along the opening side;  a few tiny dents and microabrasions on the back (black) side have been delicately masked with a black marker (barely visible)

-       Front cover has two small peel-off marks in one bottom corner (less than ¼ square inch in size)

-       Cover shows some light yellowing on both sides, apparently from aging.

-       A few microscopic (pinprick?) holes noted in one top corner.

-       Cover has three corners slightly worn (nothing significant)

-       Cover has JUST A HINT of ring wear (nothing significant); On the scale from 1 to 10 (1 being the least, and  10 being the most severe), we assess the severity of ring wear as 2   (VISIBLE ON BACK SIDE ONLY) .

NO OTHER VISIBLE FLAWS OR IMPERFECTIONS ON THE  COVER

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POSTAGE & SHIPPING:

We offer three postage rates for domestic orders: USPS Media Mail, USPS Priority Mail and USPS Express Mail and three rates for international shipments:  USPS First Class, USPS Priority International Mail, and USPS Express International Mail (in a small number of cases, we will, at our discretion and for purely technical reasons, substitute First Class Mail with eBay's Global Shipping, which is fundamentally the same service at about the same cost). INTERNATIONAL CUSTOMERS PLEASE NOTE: WE RECOMMEND (BUT DO NOT INSIST) that you select USPS International Priority Mail when making a payment.

INTERNATIONAL POSTAGE rates vary from one region of  the world to another. For SPECIFIC international and domestic postage rates, please click on " Shipping, returns, and payments" tab in the header of our listing.

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CRITICALLY IMPORTANT INFORMATION:

(A) All orders valued at $50.00 or more will be shipped fully insured against loss, damage or theft by ShipCover, eBay's contracted insurer, at our expense (B) Yes, we do combine items into a single shipment; in order to enable this feature, the winning bidders should WAIT until their last item of interest ends and ONLY THEN make a payment. Doing otherwise will result in multiple shipments to the same customer and forfeiture of multiple shipping charges already paid. (C) Because we do not play-grade our items, we do not know how the purchased item will play on the buyer's equipment. We can only make reasonable inference on the record's playing condition based on its visual appearance. (D) This seller will NOT cancel erroneous, frivolous and prank bids. The bidders can do so on their own, by visiting eBay's Site Map, then clicking on Bid Retractions link. (E) This seller does not specifically grade or describe certain items, such as: shrink (cellophane) wrap and accompanying extras (inserts, booklets, etc.); however, the presence of these items WILL be noted and accompanied by the gallery photo(s). (F) Please do not submit any bids on our items if you have insufficient user history. (G) Other than in very rare justified cases, failure to pay for the item you won amounts to a fraud and will result in a permanent ban on bidding on our future listings. (H) We will NEVER deliberately, knowingly or willingly provide a false, deceitful or misleading information.

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OUR REFUND POLICY :

WE OFFER UNCONDITIONAL MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE (POSTAGE INCLUDED) WITHIN 30 DAYS FROM THE RECEIPT OF THE MERCHANDISE, NO QUESTIONS ASKED; STILL SEALED ITEMS MUST BE RETURNED SEALED IN ORDER TO BE ELIGIBLE FOR A REFUND.   NO EXCEPTIONS!

FINE (BUT IMPORTANT!) PRINT

 (1) The year indicated in the title bar is the year of the original release,  NOT necessarily the year of the actual pressing; for the actual generation of the pressing, please see our item description (top section, the text in red letters). (2) Please do NOT bid based on the title bar, subtitle bar or item specifics box alone; instead, please read the entire description before bidding; (3) Absolutely NO order cancellations after the auction closes. ever, under any circumstances. We can ONLY cancel bids before the item closes. (4) We are unable to provide matrix-, stamper- or other pressing  information in the final 24 hours of the auction. (5) All disagreements and miscommunications can be - and will only be - solved in a civil and mutually respectful manner; please avoid puerile, offensive, abrasive or menacing language (6) This seller will accommodate all reasonable requests and - unless seriously molested - is generally a flexible, pragmatic and agreeable person.

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