The Village VOICE

New York's golden ears came out ringing from the Saturday evening performances of Janis Joplin at the Anderson Theatre on Second Avenue. The two shows were the East Coast premiere of Big Brother and the Holding Company—long the favourite group of the San Francisco dance halls—but it was all Janis. Outside of soul, no girl has emerged with the sexual pazazz of male singers like Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix. Now, with Janis, all this is over. She looks like the girl next door, but you live on the Lower East Side. Although not beautiful in the usual sense, she sure projects. Janis is a sex symbol in an unlikely package.
Her belting, groovy style combines Bessie Smith's soul with the finesse of Aretha Franklin covered all over with James Brown drive. She jumps and runs and pounces, vibrating the audience with solid sound. The range of her earthy dynamic voice seems almost without limits. At times she seems to be singing harmony with herself.

DAVID FINKLE—RECORD WORLD

Janis Joplin is a classic figure, the woman who has been kicked around and, having lost her innocence so long ago she's forgotten it and having lost her self-respect, she sings merely to keep herself in liquor Her voice is whiskey-soaked: notes become harsh chords as if a bow is being drawn indiscriminately and simultaneously across all four strings of an untuned violin. And then, suddenly, like a sun breaking through black clouds, the voice is sweet, a tantalising, cruel return to purity. And then the black clouds return.