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.© William Ruhlmann & Bruce Eder /TiVo

At 40 years old, Sia Furler has decided to absent herself from the depths of underground music, only to resurface as the very definition of mainstream. While her previous album 1000 Forms of Fear was far from shabby, scoring a No 5 in the UK albums chart, her songs have always fared better when sung by someone other than herself. “Diamonds”, sung by Rihanna, and “Déjà Vu”, with Giorgio Moroder, are two of her biggest hits to date. This is Acting got its name, apparently, because many of the songs were originally written by Sia for other singers. “Alive” was co-written with, but then rejected by, Adele.

The Eagles of Death Metal take big steps forward with each of their albums, making their scuzz-rock sleeker and catchier without sacrificing its sludgy hedonism: Death by Sexy added seedy glitz and extra sneering to Peace Love Death Metal's gleefully low-rent Rolling Stones worship, and Heart On ups the ante again. Jesse Hughes and Josh Homme boil down their fetishes for boogie rock, disco, glam rock -- and above all, strutting riffs -- into its most combustible essence while also finding far more shades and moods in it than they have before. Kicking off with "Anything 'Cept the Truth"'s massive swagger, Heart On is top-loaded with addictive rockers. "Secret Plans"'' climbing riff and "I want what I want what I want" are pure id, and "Wannabe in L.A." picks up where Death by Sexy's "I Want You So Hard (Boy's Bad News)" left off, delivering effortlessly catchy late-2000s hedonism (at this point, "I'm burnin' gas until I feel all right" sounds way more decadent than sex or drugs). "(I Used to Couldn't Dance) Tight Pants" and "High Voltage" are the Eagles of Death Metal at their most louche and kinetic, soundtracking a long night out with grinding riffs and low-slung basslines. That string of songs sums up the band's slavish, sometimes exhausting dedication to the rock ethos so well that it's almost a relief when "Now I'm a Fool," Eagles of Death Metal's first honest-to-goodness ballad, ushers in Heart On's darker second half. Whether it's about breaking up with a woman, Los Angeles, or both, "Now I'm a Fool" is one of the album's best songs, its drifting introspection and smooth contours making it stand out all the more among the rest of Heart On's hard edges. From there, the album brings back the rock but remains just confessional enough to reveal a few chinks in the band's armor as they dig into loves, friendships, and nights out gone bad. Hughes wonders "what good's a heart if it's not on your sleeve" on the Stones disco-gone-Devo of the title track, while "Cheap Thrills"' guitar squalls stretch the scope of the song's world-weary emptiness. Even the songs with cartoonish titles don't play out exactly as expected -- "Solo Flights" sings the praises of masturbation, but with lines like "no one gets to love me," it's not all jokes, and while the final track "I'm Your Torpedo" is a proudly obvious mating call, its hypnotic groove is also surprisingly serious. Fans of the goofy rock send-ups Hughes and Homme did on Peace Love Death Metal and Death by Sexy might think the pair are taking themselves too seriously here, but they add just enough maturity to the mix to make Heart On a consistently great album. © Heather Phares /TiVo

Frank Zappa loved '50s doo wop music. He grew up with it, collected it, and it was the first kind of pop music he wrote ("Memories of El Monte," recorded by the Penguins in 1962). Cruising with Ruben & the Jets, the Mothers of Invention's fourth LP, is a collection of such music, all Zappa originals (some co-written with MOI singer Ray Collins). To the unexperienced, songs like "Cheap Thrills," "Deseri," and "Jelly Roll Gum Drop" may sound like an average doo wop song. A closer look reveals unusual chord sequences, Stravinsky quotes, and hilariously moronic lyrics -- all wrapped in four-way harmony vocals and linear piano triplets. A handful of songs from the group's 1966 debut, Freak Out, were rearranged ("How Could I Be Such a Fool" and "Anyway the Wind Blows" give the weirdest results), and old material predating the Mothers was recycled ("Fountain of Love"). "Love of My Life" and "You Didn't Try to Call Me" became live staples.© François Couture /TiVo

Fifty years after its release in 1968, the legendary Cheap Thrills has emerged with a multitude of unreleased tracks and rarities. This time, the opus which sold 1 million copies has kept its original title Sex, Drugs & Cheap Thrills, which was rejected at the time by Columbia for being too scandalous. Cheap Thrills, the best-seller that revealed Janis Joplin to the world, captures the essence of the Cosmic Mama who devoted herself body and soul to the recordings in the summer of ’68. Her coarse voice and her quirky rock vibes are showcased in Summertime, the real emotional peak of the album. While the seven initial tracks illustrated on the cover by the illustrator Robert Crumb, with their dirty, raw sound, may seem to be live recordings, only Ball and Chain was recorded at the Winterland Ballroom concert in San Francisco on April 12th, 1968. From Combination Of The Two, a six-minute jam between Sam Andrew III and Joplin, to the blues of I Need A Man To Love and the classic rock of Oh Sweet Mary, Cheap Thrills comes together to make up 37 minutes of joy. Two years later, after leaving Big Brother & The Holding Company and having successively formed several other groups including Kozmic Blues Band, the psychedelic queen died a heroine. © Charlotte Saintoin/Qobuz

Finally!! Zappa fans have been waiting a long time for this. When Frank prepared the digital masters that were eventually sold to Rykodisc, a number of albums were remixed so they always sounded a bit "odd" to folks who grew up with vinyl or tape. Of these, Cruisin' with Ruben and the Jets and We're Only in It for the Money suffered the most. Frank deemed the bass-and-drum tracks from the multi-tracks unusable, and had Arthur Barrow and Chad Wackerman cut new parts (with some additional acoustic bass from Jay Anderson on Ruben) in 1984. They made no effort to replicate the original parts, so those versions were basically unlistenable to most longtime fans. Frank found a proper stereo mix of Money before he died, but the original mix of Ruben remained a strictly analog artifact until 2010 and the release of Greasy Love Songs.Releasing an album of '50s-style doo wop and R&B in 1968 at the height of psychedelia was (and may still be) viewed as a joke, but this album is no joke. Some of the lyrics may parody the lyrical and social conventions of the '50s, but Zappa loved this music and it shows. According to Frank ("Serious Fan Mail"), promo copies were sent out to oldies radio stations at the time (with no mention of the Mothers) and they were very well received...until word got out. Some of these songs may be funny, but "Anything" is as beautiful as any song in the genre (Ray Collins' lead vocal is pure gold). Since the tunes are fairly simple, it's Frank's arranging skills that are really on display. Four tunes from Freak Out! are totally rearranged for Ruben, and all the doo wop vocal parts are wonderful. But there are also some cool things going on below the surface, too, like some of the rhythmic accents from the drums or the backing vocals on "Fountain of Love" singing the opening melody from Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring."As for the bonus material, there are a couple alternate mixes of "Jelly Roll Gum Drop" and earlier versions of "Love of My Life" (Studio Z!) and "Valerie." "Secret Greasing" is FZ doing a dramatic reading in a radio station of The Story of Ruben and the Jets from the LP jacket while the alternate version of "Stuff Up the Cracks" adds about a minute-and-a-half to Frank's outro guitar solo! There's also a lecture/interview collage with lots of interesting items including Frank mentioning that he had booked studio time the following week to record a sequel to Ruben! The sound on Greasy Love Songs is spectacular: mint vinyl probably wouldn't sound as good. The packaging is really nice, too. The wait was too long, but thanks to Vaultmeister Joe Travers, the original vinyl mix of Cruisin' with Ruben & the Jets has finally entered the digital age.© Sean Westergaard /TiVo

Beneath the suitably massive, trashy-looking, superhero-sized letters of the title -- which create the somewhat misleading if perhaps not unintentional impression of a disposable mass-market club comp -- Cheap Thrills, Vol. 1 promises to provide "The Sound of the U.K.'s Leading Dance Label: A Mix of Ghetto Bass, House, Dubstep, Electro, B-More Club and Bassline." The accuracy of the first claim may be up for debate, but there's no question that this compilation is every bit as wide-ranging, heavy-hitting, and fist-poundingly, well, thrilling as advertised. Offering no shortage of sirens, fidgety electro breaks, and gloriously corny vocal interludes, and veering wildly (sometimes within a single track) from the grittiest, rawest throbbing dubstep bass to the glossiest, unabashedly poppy stadium-trance synths with no regard for the niceties of subgenre demarcations, the only constant among these tracks -- apart from their compulsive, beats-forward danceability -- is their utter lack of restraint. It's an approach to dance music that's been sorely underexploited since the big beat heyday of the late '90s, and the lack of subtlety here is marvelously refreshing, particularly since it never comes at the expense of accessibility and tunefulness. Effectively a showcase for the imprint of the same name headed up by DJ/producer Joshua Harvey (aka Hervé, the Count, Action Man, Speaker Junk, etc., etc.), who has his hand as producer, remixer, or otherwise in nearly half of these tracks, Cheap Thrills is culled from the label's first two years (2008-2009) of output, with eight additional exclusive cuts thrown in. Only ten tracks overlap (sometimes in remixed form) between the two discs (the first is unmixed, the second a relentlessly high-energy DJ mix by Hervé -- obviously each has its place and purpose, but the mix is unquestionably the best way to experience this material), which means there are a generous 25 distinct tracks included across the 35 cuts. The quality remains impressively high throughout (though even the considerable variety may not stave off listener fatigue over two-plus hours of both discs), but definite standouts include Fake Blood's bouncy, pouncy "Fix Your Accent," Jack Beats' cannily deployed dubstep wobbles on both "U.F.O." and "Labyrinth," the pounding filter-house of His Majesty André's "Puppets," and the cartoonish "tribal" drums and incessant builds of Hervé and Jack Beats' "Rainstick."© K. Ross Hoffman /TiVo

The Southern rock band Confederate Railroad performs many of the covers they've been playing live over the years on this entertaining set, including Charlie Daniels' "Trudy" (assisted by Daniels himself), Johnny Paycheck's "11 Months and 20 Days," Waylon Jennings' "Honky Tonk Heroes," and a particularly heartfelt version of David Allan Coe's "Please Come to Boston." © TiVo