We spend this whole week talk about Janis Joplin and how this girl survive in a industry which largely dominated by men, and been called "the rock queen".
The book mentioned, as a teenager, "Joplin had been stigmatised as different, interested in poetry, music art and reading," and point out, "as a female, peer group acceptance depends largely upon conformity to the accepted norm. Intelligence is tolerated, overt cleverness is perceived as aberrant, but fatness, spottiness, situates the woman as undesirable." Joplin also famous with her outspoken attitude towards sex, just like her favorite quoted "singing as fucking" and "fucking as liberation". In the University of Texas, the campus newspaper ran a profile of her in 1962 headlined "She Dares To be Different."
She left Taxes in 1963 and went to San Francisco to chase her music dream. In this period she's still mainly focus on blue music, and it's also the time when her drug use increased, she acquired a reputation as a "speed freak" and occasional heroin user. And, her favorite beverage was Southern Comfort.
In 1964, Joplin's bluesy style get attention from the big brother and the holding company, She was recruited to join the group by Chet Helms, who had know her in Texas and in the same time was managing Big Brother. In 1966, she joined the band. In the Big Brother and the Holding Company she achieved a big success, TIME magazine called her "probably the most powerful singer to emerge from the white rock movement", but in 1968 she left band to formed a new backup group, called "Kozmic Blues Band", but she could not be a leader of the band at that time, so at the end of 1969, the group broke up. In 1970 she tries to put together another band called "Full Tilt Boogie Band" and believe this time it will work. But on October 4th, 1970 at the age of 27, she dead in the Landmark Hotel from an overdose of heroin.
Lots of people blamed her death on herself and drugs, but actually it is the competition in this industry killed her. We can see every time when she quit this industry, her mood turned positive, like when she went to Brazil, and in their she stopped drug and alcohol use, but immediately after she came back to join the band, she starts to use them again. She's not only compete with others as a singer, but also as a woman, in a industry which largely dominated by men, her pressure maybe is just too big to handle with.
I find the following comment quite interesting, Yi: "Lots of people blamed her death on herself and drugs, but actually it is the competition in this industry killed her."
ReplyDeleteI can definitely see the argument that you are making with this. It is quite valid, yet I wonder what you would have to say for other arguing theories as to support this even further. For instance, Did she have control over her own actions as to not return to the environment that caused her down fall, thus ultimately have control over her own death in that sense?