Janis Joplin

Latest Articles

Fun with mirrors

Wax Tablet
The dark lounge band JOHNNY CREMAINS are putting the final touches on their first full-length, tentatively titled Leave It To Believers .
By PORTLAND PHOENIX MUSIC STAFF | February 15, 2012

Amy Winehouse, 1983–2011

In Memoriam
While we all await the inevitable "Last Days of Amy Winehouse" report from Rolling Stone , let's take a breather and remember the voice. It was slow, smoky, insinuating, sweet-and-sour, and seemed to conjure a handful of jazz-and-soul divas in a syllable...
By JON GARELICK | July 28, 2011

Beth Ditto | Beth Ditto EP

Deconstruction (2011)
Remember when Mary Beth "Ditto" Patterson was just a blues singer? The Arkansas-born belter used to wail punk blues for the Gossip - the trio who made her a star - like the second coming of Janis Joplin.
By JEREMY ADAMS | February 01, 2011

Joyride

The Worcester Art Museum shows us ‘Who Shot Rock & Roll’
It is May 1966, in the Prelude Club in Harlem, an Atlantic Records release party.
By GREG COOK | March 24, 2010

Kill The Karaoke, featuring Trainwreck

At Empire Dine & Dance, Wednesdays @ 9 pm
Since its invention in Japan in the early ’70s, karaoke has become an international pastime.
By DAN CLARK | October 28, 2009

Review: Chelsea on the Rocks

Abel Ferrara paints an affectionate portrait
Manhattan’s Chelsea Hotel has been the roost of artists, writers, musicians, actors — and a lot of wanna-bes.
By BETSY SHERMAN | October 14, 2009

Anything and everything

StreightAngular just want to know what's now
People never like to label themselves. Or, at least they shouldn't.
By BARRY THOMPSON | October 10, 2009

Beginning? Or end?

Woodstock 40 years later
Let me get this straight up front: I didn't go to Woodstock. But I was teaching a "student-initiated course" in pop-music history at Antioch College at the time, and a number of my students announced that they were going to miss a couple of classes because they had tickets to Woodstock.
By ED WARD | August 12, 2009

Beginning? Or end?

More than a feeling

Music inspires art at the MFA, Panopticon, and the Gardner
The centerpiece of the Museum of Fine Arts' "Contemporary Outlook: Seeing Songs" is Candice Breitz's 2005 Queen (A Portrait of Madonna), a wall of 30 televisions, each showing a different Madonna fan singing a cappella to her 1990 greatest-hits compilation, The Immaculate Collection. They wear headphones, bob their heads, sing aloud to music we can't hear.
By GREG COOK | July 21, 2009

Photos: 'Seeing Songs' at MFA

An eclectic mix of work that draws on music as inspiration
Contemporary Outlook: Seeing Songs at the MFA
By PHOENIX STAFF | July 16, 2009

Slideshow: R. Crumb's Underground

R. Crumb at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, opening February 4.
Featuring work from R. Crumb over the last 40 years.
By R. CRUMB | February 03, 2009

Robert Crumb at MassArt

In Crumb's world, everything appears tantalizingly available, all options are on the table, all bets are off.
R. Crumb's Underground at MassArt
By GREG COOK | February 06, 2009

Rock and rote

Three decades in, AC/DC’s conservatism pays off
Three decades in, AC/DC’s conservatism pays off
By DANIEL BROCKMAN | November 10, 2008

Spirited moves

Paula Hunter’s off-kilter world
Paula Hunter gets under your skin.
By JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ | October 09, 2008

Mix ’n’ mashup

It Was the Best of Times triumph at the Rock Hunt
The 2008 WBRU Rock Hunt finals served up an entertainingly diverse lineup at the Living Room last week.
By CHRIS CONTI | April 23, 2008

Who brought the cool kid?

Ian MacKaye visits Tufts
“For me, punk is the new idea, always the new idea, forever the new idea. That’s why punk can never die. Because as long as there are people, there will be new ideas.”
By WILL SPITZ | April 15, 2008

Trailing Ailey

The Groove at the Wang
Neither the Ailey company nor The Groove ’s choreographer, Camille A. Brown, acknowledged these roots.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | February 12, 2008

Pam Baker & the SGs

Music seen at the Frog + Turtle, January 4, 2008
Pam Baker & the SGs, Maine’s perpetual blues machine, were holding court in a fairly quiet room.
By TODD RICHARD | January 09, 2008

King and Queens

Romance + Cigarettes , plus Salton Sea
In Romance & Cigarettes , which opens this Friday at the Kendall Square, Gandolfini has been dropped by writer/director John Turturro into drab, treeless, white-ethnic Queens.
By GERALD PEARY | November 28, 2007

In search of Kerouac

‘Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?’ . . . Lowell?!
Ashare drops me off, frantic Matt Ashare from my paper, swilling coffee in a ceramic mug at the wheel of his sulky-blue Saturn Ion and ranting about dogfighting.
By JAMES PARKER | August 29, 2007

At home with home

Sara Cox arrives at domesticity with Crowded Is the New Lonely
Women may dominate the pop charts from time to time, but in the annals of acknowledged rock/pop greatness, they are few in number.
By SAM PFEIFLE | May 30, 2007

A Go-Go goes

The Milky Way gets sexadelic, plus Braun Bergundy
This Friday, January 26, your friendly neighborhood bowling alley/nightclub, the world-famous Milky Way Lounge and Lanes, transforms into a ’60s wonderland of go-go dancers, wild groove music, and the ubiquitous Brother Cleve. "Bossy (Drop Tha Beat remix)" (wma)
By DAVID DAY | January 23, 2007

Kurt Cobain

1967-1994
This article originally appeared in the April 15, 1994 issue of the Boston Phoenix.
By JON GARELICK | November 14, 2006

Dis-Respect

Dorothy Marcic’s musical journey
Toward the end of Respect: A Musical Journey, a revue bringing together some four dozen female-associated pop oldies, comes the big moment that’s supposed to represent American womanhood shaking off its shackles and stepping bravely into the future.
By BRETT MILANO | November 08, 2006

Living Wage

Living Wage
I had a girlfriend once who claimed to experience actual orgasms every time Phish played “Chalkdust Torture.”
By SAM PFEIFLE | November 01, 2006

Michelle Malone

Sugarfoot | Valley Entertainment
When Michelle Malone emerged from Atlanta with her band Drag the River at the end of the ’80s, she seemed neck-and-neck with Melissa Etheridge in the Janis Joplin stakes. "Down," Michelle Malone (mp3) "Cypress Inn," Michelle Malone (mp3)
By TED DROZDOWSKI | October 30, 2006

Those were the daze

Unearthing the Mad Peck’s psychedelic artifacts
He goes by the Mad Peck, Dr. Oldie, and a few other cheeky monikers, depending on his pursuit: making posters, writing record reviews, archiving comics, spinning discs, or selling rare recordings.
By BOB GULLA | October 17, 2006

Moscoso and more

Hearing the ’60s through poster art
Victor Moscoso’s ’60s rock posters can get you all choked up about the shows. Slideshow: Posters from Sex, Rock & Optical Illusions: Victor Moscoso, Master of Psychedelic Posters & Comix
By GREG COOK | July 25, 2006

Heidi and seek

Gloucester Stage honors Wendy Wasserstein
The Heidi Chronicles is very much reflective of a first feminist generation of women caught between what their mothers had taught them to desire and what they thought they wanted.
By CAROLYN CLAY | June 20, 2006