[DavidS]

Listening to this new release cd tonight - some pretty interesting stuff.  Sadly Janis was dead before I really started listening to rock music so lots of new music here for me.  Some of my impressions:

1.  Janis Joplin is a power house
2.  love James Gurley's guitar playing - claims he was influenced by Coltrane and can really see this; also sounds at least 20 years ahead of his time
3.  now the real interesting piece is the recording.  Mostly good quality for a live 1968 recording - reminds me of the Neil Young live recordings.  Not a lot of noticeable compression on my system - pretty dynamic sounding.  All the drums and vocals are in left channel and most of guitar in the right channel.  So not great listening nearfield.  There is a page in the booklet about listening to the recording where they tell you the recording engineer, Bear Stanley, wants you to push your left and right channel speakers together so you have a single source of sound.  Makes your whole living room a sweet spot of sound just like the Carousel Ballroom.  May have to try this

Highly recommended

[e.man]

3.  now the real interesting piece is the recording. ... There is a page in the booklet about listening to the recording where they tell you the recording engineer, Bear Stanley, wants you to push your left and right channel speakers together so you have a single source of sound.

Very strange idea.  I can't see many people moving speakers about just to hear one album.
Could you get the same effect by turning it into Mono ?

[DavidS]

Yes agree and probably why I wrote this up ... although I love the cd.  I can't say I have ever seen much reference to playback system in the notes of cd short of play it loud.