Keeping a jaundiced eye on the corporate media.
Apr 19th, 2008 at 3:32 pm by Susie
In honor of this hot weather, Janis Joplin, live in Stockholm. It’s just as well Janis died young - I could just picture her agent talking her into going on “Extreme Makeover,” and that would have been a travesty:
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I’m not one of those nostalgic hippies decrying the end of the Haight, but one thing I miss about that time was how free people were in their attitudes about looks. Watch Janis on the Festival Express DVD and you will see an explosive sexuality on display. Today, she wouldn’t be able to get a recording contract because of her looks. But she was beautiful - because of the way she carried herself, her look, her beaming smile…. Today, if you don’t have high cheek bones and a sculpted body, forget it. What kind of society have we become that our music stars have to be beautiful above all else?
You know, Bob, when I was of that age, all you needed was talent. We were lucky. Janis was beautiul, to me. It’s sad to think she wouldn’t have gotten very far on American Idol. Not that that would have made her sad, just pissed.
No, it’s not “just as well that she died young”.
It was tragic. She was a great singer and had a career and reputation.
Speculation on what an agent might have talked her into doing is specious and I don’t appreciate off hand comments that someone’s early death is “just as well”.
I like your blog, but you made a mistake here in my opinion.
Thanks for the video, though.
Lloyd
Lloyd: Calm down. You say you read this blog often. So tell me, do you think Susie literally meant “good thing she died young”? Susie was doing something rather routine - she was separating the career from the person. One of the reasons that Joplin, Hendrix and the Beatles remain so universally respected all these years later is because the first two died young and the latter broke up in 1969. Thus, any discussion deals solely with the virtually perfect body of work they left behind. There is no need to explain away all the late years Greedy Bastard Tours, or Steel Wheel[chair]s Tours, or bad albums, or reality shows (thank God we never had to watch VH1’s “Jimi Hendrix’ Guitar School!”). The career remains pristine. That’s all Susie meant. She wasn’t saying “I’m glad Janis died.”