made public. There is no telling how many records were sold from that
night’s debut, but, musically, it was Big Brother’s best album and
graphically it was the most memorable cover art of the generation.
The Cheap Thrillscover was an ersatz comic strip with panels
radiating from a central circle. Like illustrated liner notes, each panel
contained a cartoon reference to either Joplin, Big Brother, or a song on the
album. For the cut “I Need a Man to Love,” Crumb has a zaftig Janis (his
signature female archetype) almost bursting out of her tight clothes,
fetchingly strewn on a bed. For “Ball and Chain,” Joplin’s classic tour de
force, the same character drags along a leg iron attached to a ball and chain,
as if in an endless search for the right man. For “Summertime,” Joplin’s
masterful cover of the old standard, Crumb uses a dubious caricature of a
black woman, a throwback to vintage racist mammy cartoon images from
the nineteenth century, holding a wailing baby with cartoon tears radiating
around its head. Separately, each panel is a slapstick gag in the comic
tradition; together they form a curiously hypnotic, multi-image narrative
that in retrospect visually reflects the San Francisco music scene of the day.
Aside from Crumb’s bawdy humor, what made this album cover
such an icon was its good timing. Produced at a moment when cultural
innovations were introduced at a fast and furious pace, this was the
pinnacle of 1960 s exuberance and invention, just prior to its neutering and
commodification by marketers and entrepreneurs. Which is not to say that
marketers and entrepreneurs were not already maneuvering in the wings—
they were. But even the consumer outlets—FM radio, the record industry,
head shops, and so on—seemed not to be constrained by market or
conventions and were willing to take risks that went beyond “most
advanced yet acceptable.” For an all-too-brief moment, youth-hippie-
alternative culture was in a state of grace when everything seemed new and
unfettered. Music and art were rebellious, expressive, and instinctive.
Formulas, clichés, and stereotypes had yet to exert a viselike grip on
creativity. Crumb’s cover for Cheap Thrillswas not just a calculating effort
to win market share; it was the marriage of two artists and two art forms
that truly spoke to the gut of the same audience without pretense or
conceit. Joplin’s music was raw emotion; Crumb’s art was pure wit.
Nevertheless,Cheap Thrillswas a product of a well-established
music industry. In the wake of the mid- 1960 s British pop invasion, the
American music establishment responded to the popular groundswell
toward psychedelic and folk rock emanating from San Francisco by quickly
signing as many top local bands as possible ( Jefferson Airplane, Grateful
Dead, Country Joe and the Fish, and more). It churned out albums (instead
of 45 s, the standard music medium of the preceding generation), and with
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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