Big Brother and the Holding Co. with Janis Joplin-Nine Hundred Nights (2003)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Main Menu Audio & Animation Featurette-Complete Performances Audio-Only Track-Rare Audio Recording: Hall Of The Mountain King Discography Gallery-Photo Notes-Biographical Timeline Outtakes-From Interviews DVD Credits
Rating
Year Of Production	2003
Running Time	58:54 (Case: 148)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Michael Burlingame
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Rip Torn Janis Joplin Sam Andrew Peter Albin David Getz James Gurley
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$34.95	Music	None Given

    OK, first things first. This disc has nothing to do with a house on the Gold Coast and any money grubbing morons that may inhabit it. If you came here looking for insights into the holding company which owns the rights to the TV show, you are in the wrong place.

    Big Brother and the Holding Company were an important band of the late 60s Psychedelic scene around the San Francisco Bay area. They started as a group focused on performing versions of songs with long instrumental jams and interesting jazz influenced arrangements. They developed a following in the San Francisco area during this phase, however, they only really started to hit the big time when they added a female singer to the group by the name of Janis Joplin. Janis turned the band from a small regional cult group into a national and international phenomenon due to her incredible blues influenced singing. At the time some fans of the band (and even some members) were very much against the idea of Janis joining. She joined the band in June 1966 and left them two and a half years later in December 1968 to pursue a solo career. During that period the band recorded their only hit album, Cheap Thrills, which went on to reach #1 on the Billboard charts. After Janis left the band they tried to continue, playing live with various lead singers including Nick Gravenites who is interviewed on this disc, with only minor success. By October, 1970, Janis was dead from a heroin overdose. By 1972, Big Brother and the Holding Company had stopped touring although they do seem to have reformed recently.

    Janis Joplin has become an icon of the late 60s due to her sudden appearance on the music scene and her tragic death and tends to get mentioned with people like Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison when deaths due to the excesses of the 1960s are discussed.

    This disc is a collection of various live performances, interviews, documentaries and memorabilia which focuses more on the band rather than only on Janis. The amount of attention that Janis received is obviously still fresh in the minds of some band members which they discuss during fairly candid interviews. The centrepiece of this collection is a one hour documentary entitled Nine Hundred Nights. The title seems to refer to the number of nights that the band were together for. The documentary features excerpts from various modern and original interviews with band members, archival footage from the period, live performances by the band including their star-making set at the Monterey Pop Festival. It would have been great to have more of this footage as it was the highlight of the disc for me but unfortunately it is restricted to one track, Ball & Chain. 

    The documentary is quite interesting, giving an understanding not only of the band themselves but of the times in which they were popular. Having said that, it is not the best music documentary I have ever seen, lacking some depth and any astounding insights. I think the band themselves were very close to this project, which would obviously slant the content in their favour. It would be of great interest to fans of Big Brother and the Holding Company or people interested in the psychedelic era of American music.

Video

    The video presentation is generally very good, clear and sharp, however this disc contains significant amounts of archival footage recorded in the late 1960s and is therefore inherently of variable quality.  

    The feature is presented in a 1.29:1 aspect ratio and is full screen. 

    The picture during the modern interviews is extremely clear and detailed. Shadow detail is excellent and no low level noise is present. The various pieces of archival footage have obviously been lovingly restored for this disc and are as good as I think you could expect.

    The colour in this presentation is difficult to rate as much of the material is either black and white or old washed out colour. The Monterey footage has a very yellow tinge causing facial colours to appear a bit jaundiced. A concert in a club toward the end of the disc is very dark and has a red tint. Again, I believe the best possible vision has been achieved considering the poor source material.

    There are very few artefacts which is excellent considering the extensive use of archival material. I did notice some microphony at 16:24. Some of the archival footage also features some minor artefacts, but this is to be expected.

    There are six different sets of subtitles on this disc which cover the documentary and some of the extras. None of them are English. They are Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese & Spanish.
    

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Considering that the music was recorded during the late 1960s at concerts, the sound on this disc is generally very good.

    This DVD contains three audio options for the main feature, a DTS 5ch track encoded at 768 Kb/s, a Dolby Digital 5.1 track encoded at 448 Kb/s and a Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo encoded at 192Kb/s. I listened to the entire DTS track and extensively sampled the Dolby Digital tracks. Don't get too excited here - despite the encoding, the tracks here are mostly mono, especially for the music segments, however the sound quality is excellent and much work has obviously been done to improve the sound found on the original live recordings. I have seen some of this footage previously and the sound here is dramatically improved. As far as the different tracks go, I found the DTS track to be superior providing a deeper and fuller sound. If you do not have DTS, the Dolby Digital tracks are also very good and to my ears they sound pretty similar to each other. There was one piece of footage used early in the documentary of 'Down On Me' where the audio was of lesser quality, however, it is a worthwhile addition due to its rare nature.    

    Vocals & interview dialogue was generally clear and easy to understand with no noticeable audio sync issues.

    The music came across well.    

    There was no noticeable surround activity and the subwoofer rested comfortably throughout this programme.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menus were presented in 1.33:1, with psychedelic liquid projections, band footage & music.

Complete Performances (17:19)

    This extra is presented in 1.33:1 with all three soundtracks available. It contains complete footage of performances included in the documentary. The tracks are Down on Me and The Coo Coo from a television show called Come Up The Years, Ball & Chain from the Monterey Pop Festival and Piece of My Heart from a club performance. These tracks are the highlight of the disc, especially the footage from Monterey. There is annoyingly no Play All option for these extras.

Rare Audio Recordings (6:52)

    This is an audio only track in Dolby Digital 2.0. It contains a psychedelic reworking of The Hall of the Mountain King , a classical track from the Peer Gynt suite by Grieg. This is interesting and something very different from the standard classical reading of this piece with violins replaced by guitars.

Discography

    A static display of the various albums and VHS tapes (!) released by the band and Janis Joplin over the years.

Galleries

    There are three static galleries here including Posters (20 items), Band Photos (25 items) and Treasures (12 items). This is quite interesting, especially the Treasures section which includes song lyrics scribbled down by Janis, drawings by her for other band members and even a copy of the invitation to her wake!

Biographical Timeline

    This is an interactive timeline of key milestones in the band's development and eventual break-up which can be stepped through date by date or accessed separately by date. This is quite interesting and gives a good overview of the band's history.

Interview Outtakes (90:42)

    This section includes an hour and a half of extra modern interview footage not used in the documentary. There are two things which make this part of the disc a struggle to get through. Firstly, some of the people and what they have to say is quite boring and secondly, there is no Play All function and the ninety minutes is split up into 52 tracks (that's right, Fifty-Two!). It becomes quite tedious to access each track individually and needless to say they are split over a number of menu pages. The people interviewed are Ellen Willis, a Rolling Stone journalist of the time; band members Peter Albin (bass), Sam Andrew (guitar), Dave Getz (drummer), James Gurley (guitar); Nick Gravenites, a lead singer for the group after Janis' departure and Lenny Kaye, the guitarist for the Patti Smith group. The band members are probably the most interesting and their widely differing viewpoints on Janis and how they felt about her death are very enlightening.

    The latest Region 1 version of this disc (it has been re-released with extra audio options) seems to be identical except for PAL/NTSC differences. On that basis I would go for the Region 4 disc.

    The video quality is very good, considering the poor source material.

    The audio quality is very good, considering the poor source material.

    There are abundant extras of varying quality. The complete performances included here are the highlight of the disc.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall