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Big Brother and the Holding Company's Cheap Thrills (1968) isn't just one of the great live albums; it's one of the great aural artifacts of psychedelic Psan Phransysco, period. One of the few writers who got close to the band's legendary singer Janis Joplin, David Dalton looked back at Cheap Thrills a decade ago and found its power undimmed. -- Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director, Rock's Backpages

IT'S 30 YEARS ago today since Cheap Thrills was released, but as soon as the needle touches the surface of the record (I'm sentimental about vinyl), out pours mid-'60s San Francisco in all its jumping-out-of-its-skin energy, cosmic joy and dog-ran-away-with-the-spoon looniness.

This is it! What you hold in your hand is the very thing! Big Brother and the Holding Company's kosmic masterpiece. The ultimate psychedelic album and supreme artifact of the Haightgeist. From the bursting-out-of-its-sockets R. Crumb cartoon cover to the final wall-shattering notes of "Ball And Chain," it is a perfect distillation of San Francisco's high hippie days in all their rambunctious glory and excess. And now – just released! – as if to lure you further into the buzzing psychotropic hive of Big Brother and the Holding Company (with Janis as its queen bee), here comes the recently released Janis Joplin With Big Brother And The Holding Co. Live At Winterland '68.

"You know that scene in Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas?" asks Dave Getz, Big Brother's drummer. "Where Benicio Del Toro [as Hunter Thompson's demented attorney] throws up on the side of the car from too much mescaline? And just at that point – right then! – James Gurley's solo from 'Ball And Chain' comes on the track. Perfect!"

It's one of the great rock solos of all time and an uncanny parallel to Janis's emotionally wrenching singing. Makes you want to run right home and put on Cheap Thrills. I'm cueing up the last track right now. And here it comes!

Just listen to that! Gurley's guitar gnashes at the notes in a gear-grinding metallic howl like some wounded creature morphing out of the blues bardo, half-beast, half-machine stuttering out its rage and pain in a chainsaw metalanguage that chews clean through to the bone. And then there's that voice! Was there ever such a voice? A voice booming out of the clouds, a world-shattering voice.

Okay, go put on Cheap Thrills or Live At Winterland. What? You don't have either of them? Go directly to your nearest CD temple of sound and get them. These are the essential, sacred texts of our civilization – hieroglyphic visions of the First Great Psychedelic Age. Go ahead, I can wait. Meantime, I'll get myself into a suitable frame of mind.

But first: the members of the band – as Janis described them to me many years ago in a bar in Louisville Kentucky. Dave Getz, drums: "Dave, I'd say, is the solidest guy in the group. He was an art teacher before. You could always rely on him in a kind of karma way." Peter Albin, bass: "Peter is crazier than he thinks he is. He thinks he is very middle-class and he just went a little goony. But he is really goony, man. 'Caterpillar,' for example. 'I'm a pterodactyl for your love.' If that's not madness, what is?" Sam Andrew, guitar: "Sam is like, you know, a very intelligent cat. You wouldn't know it because he's so good-looking. One day I was on a plane, walking down the aisle, and, you know, everybody's reading Newsweek and the Kansas City Star and stuff, and Sam's reading a book in Latin!" James Gurley, guitar: "James is a beautiful, strong man. He never had any of that Indian bulls**t, but he had an ethereal quality. I loved him so. We had a little love affair, almost broke up our band."

Read David Dalton's and the band's track-by-track reflections on Cheap Thrills – along with many other Janis Joplin/Big Brother pieces – at www.rocksbackpages.com. Over 13,000 articles by the greatest writers from the finest rock publications of the last 40 years.