...thus it is the first step of wrenching control from the artist into the hands of the watered-down gas-bag bean counters...there are always examples to be made of, yes?
Did she want to kill herself? No. Did she have some sort of a "hit" put out on her? I say No.
Even though she took a small amount, and it went through her "tester" guy first...I still think it had something to do with her bodys reaction to the drugs. Espicially when it was that pure, and she had some alcohol earlier in the night.
(I merged my Blogger account with my Google account in order to get access to the "Beta" area of Blogger, but I can't post comments with my account now. I have to do them all as an "other" or as "anonymous"...It sucks.)
Hi X, as usual, my comments will sound idiotic compared to the other brilliant folks + yourself. But I don't think she meant to kill herself. For whatever my li'l opinion is worth.
I barely know who she is... And my parents used anyone and everyone who died by an overdose as an example to frighten us from drug use. It worked. Suicide or overdose...either are a possibility- and sad in either case. Thanks for adding the video link- I had never seen that clip.
Lux, I saw what you wrote in the previous post, and my comments were sincere.
John, interesting point. Even if her death were exactly as thought of in popular memory, Joplin was used as an example to curb unprofessionalism in the pop music business. In my dissertatioon, I cite a list of standards that record execs issued in 1974 that list certain do's and don'ts for professional musician, and high among them was no drug usage. Had sobriety been a must in 1967, when the major labels were just beginning to go wholesale into rock, then nobody at Monterrey would have ever been signed.
Rayke, no one thinks she killed herself deliberately. And evidence of a hit is scant in her case. But I'll mention it in this and the subsequent post for there were other cases where evidence of a hit on a rock star was far more compelling. What's worse, there were some who had sufficient motive to kill.
And I noticed that you had switched to Beta last night when I tried to leave a comment on your site, but couldn't.
Hi, Felicity. I don't think your comment sounds idiotic, since almost everyone (including me) agrees that it is true. Some did earlier on, but there's absolutely no evidence that supports a suicide hypothesis.
Cora, when I taught popular music studies at the University, a lot of my students had heard the name Janis Joplin, and known her only as an example of someone who had died of a drug overdose. They never realized what kind of musician she was until I played clips of her performance. When I did, just about everyone, to their surprise, was impressed.
This was the first time I've used video here at The X-Spot, but I thought it important that raders know who she was.
x - this is rather strange and sad...but, if you think about it, almost every famous person's death is wondered about in this way...suicide or murder? have you noticed that too?
X, you and I met with a discussion of Edgar Cayce and reincarnation. Yes, it's off the topic of conspiracy... but speaking of Janis Joplin, I have a video that makes you wonder about reincarnation...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUifOG0ePl8
Whoa, right? I'm not sure why more people aren't aware of Beth Hart.
Her death was front page news in Germany. I remember seeing the newspaper headlines as a 10 year old. I was curious about her but really didn't get to know her music or understand it until later in my teens. Boy, could she sing the blues!
Libby, that's a sobering point. I've seen some studies that say female celebrities live a mean average of about fifty-six years. That would make it seem as though for every long-lived Katherine Hepburn there are a Heather O'Rourke and Samantha Smith in the wings.
The brevity of many celebrated lives, and the fact that that very brevity often deosn't come from natual causes, often raises mild suspicion, or at the very least a head scratching.
Of course, the vast majority of such deaths are not regarded as either suicide or murder--at least not seriously. I would not even list Joplin's death as such, pending further evidence. But there are some irregulaties and an issue of timing involved, and one of these actually had a fair degree of evidence of foul play.
Rinda, I would say that Hart's style is certainly reminiscent of Joplin's. I'm sure that Joplin was a huge influence on her. So in a way, she is a kind of reincarnation of Joplin. A deliberate one.
Speaking of incarnation, Joplin sometimes fantasized that she was the reincarnation of blues great Bessie Smith. That's why, when her fame finally brought her some wealth, Janis purchased a headstone for Smith's grave, which had previously been left unmarked.
Schaumi, I sorry you can't get the YouTube link to work. It works on mine. If anyone else is having this problem, please alert me. Otherwise, I would suspect it might have something to do with how you've set your cookies.
Joplin toured Germany that September, so I wouldn't be surprised if her death made headlines there since she was just there a couple of weeks earlier.
I agree with your assessment of her talent. She was a true rock and roller.
I'm too wired to read this right now. I came to hug you and say thx. I'm ok babe. really. I'm going to read the hell out of this tomorrow. ;) Janis was a case but a wicked performer. I loved Bobby McGee
Hey John, I was thinking about posting some of the dissertation here. The last post was a summary of just a tiny bit of it. Right now I'm trying to apply entropy t6o data sets for a mathematical analysis of pop songs (odd but true). As an engineer, I'm sure you can relate. As an un-mathematical humanities person, I'm desperately seeking Statistics for Dummies.
If only I had a paid more attention in statistics class.
Tragic, it's always good to see you. Thanks for dropping by. And you're right, Joplin was a wicked performer--wickedly good, that is.
Are you talking about information entropy as opposed to thermodynamic? I think you were kidding about "Statistics for Dummies", because you are talking about an extreme narrow field of mathematics...very high level stuff. I love talking about this kind of thing...understanding entropy is sort of like being realistic enough to say, "you can't always get what you want". Without work, entropy will always increase...for a rather dull example, air conditioners are a perfect example of this (i.e. removing heat from a colder to source and moving it to a hotter reservoir...this just will not happen without work). Us human beings really embody this idea, more so than given credit for at least in my mind. I wonder how you are arranging whatever data you are using to fit with the theory (is it Shannon's? there is a good background article on Wikipedia on it, although abstract).
John, yeah. I'm referring to information eentropy, and yes Shannon. I've printed out the wikipedia article, and will try to make heads or tails of it. I reckoned if I could tackle Simpson's Diversity Index, I could do this as well. Maybe I can, but it's not as easy.
There have been a number of studies that indicate that the more the music indsutry consolidates into one big mega corporation, the more homogeneous mainstream music becomes. (My first calculations with SDI also show this.) Problem is, these studies were performed by economists, sociologists, and other people with a mathematics background. Their musical analysis cannot be as (um) rigorous as a musicologist's, but then again a musicologist doesn't usually worry about mathematical formulae.
I sent my calculations to someone who had made a prior study in terms of entropy. I used SDI. He suggested I use both SDI and entropy to express both homogeneity and how the system of hit records (my data set) maintains its integrity at different times. While SDI is simple enough for me to understand, Entropy is not. I have to figure it out, and then know it so well that I can explain it to other musicologists.
If there really were a "Statistics for Dummies" sort of thing, that would help. It's more or less a decoding of the symbols, where they come from and what they mean. A translation, I guess.
Meanwhile, I'm looking for that "Statistics for Dummies." Thanks much for your help, though.
If I were you, get a good "right brained" understanding of entropy first before tackling the rigors of the vast mathematical formulae. College thermodynamic texts usually have a good tangible explanation of what it is, and why it is used. The physical entropy is indeed analogous to the informational...you can be sure this will be on my mind...
whatever ya do, dont call dr. noguchi! interesting theory presented by john b. never really got the cult of janis until i saw the films of the MPF...then it was crystal. i think she was a fine example of the importance of live performance. meaning, there with the crowd, she was in her element.
its a sad phenomena that often the defining moment of a life is boiled down to the worst moment there was.
ARGH! I never thought of Janis' death as questionable. I just thought she OD'd by accident and that's that. But the way you set it up...ARGH! Ok, I await the rest of this information.
K9, I would put it more bluntly as the failure of professional recording protocol to capture the energy, the electricity, the total worth of a performer. Even with digital recording there are many things that cannot be expressed adequately. Nevertheless, I do hear enough of Janis in her studio records to understand the power behind the personna.
Hey, newlywed Kira, I don't mean to set things up as sinister, necessarily. Only to point out that things are rarely as cut-and-dried as history would like to present to us. Janis' passing is just one such point. I'm going to state my belief that she accidentally OD'ed, but I would fill remiss if I didn't mention doubts and why I have them, especially since in other cases, the official story is simply too difficult to believe.
My thoughts... that is what this comment thing is for right? lol
In my opinion, it doesnt really matter if she intended to kill herself just then or not. She was indulging in drugs and living a dangerous lifestyle. It is clear to me that she was fighting demons and this was her method of escape.
I, like your students and Cora, didnt know much about her. I appreciate her talent(ty for the clip). It makes me wonder if people like her are able to give us their art/music because they are uninhibited from the drugs... it just flows...
Some of my most poinent writing happens after a martini or 2! lol... not that I am putting myself even near the category of true artist or even talented... but if I were not so fearful of what people thought... of what it would do to my friends and family... I could and would share so much more of myself to the world.
Now... if the world would be interested at all is a whole different story! *wink
Welcome vack, Anonymous. You've made a good point. Assuming she were murdered, how long could she had lived with the heroin?
Actually, she might have lived a fairly long time. Most of the illness and fatality that comes from heroin addiction comes from (1) overdose from a normally cut source, or (2) poverty. The second one is the bigger killer. Since it costs so much in the long run, many addicts suffer infections--especially from needle sharing--malnourishment, supression of the immune system, additional stress caused by the loss of a support system, and violence.
Celebrity heroin addicts, however, tended to survive the addiction. If they lived short lives (e.g. John Lennon, Cass Elliot) it wasn't because of the heroin. From that era, Joplin and Franklie Lymon are the only two rock stars who I can recall died of a heroin overdose. The difference? Celebrities don't tend to suffer from poverty.
Had Joplin continued to use drugs, she might have gone a long time doing so. She might have gotten straight like the others too.
25 Comments:
At 2:27 AM,
Lady Lux said…
I read this through and through but still need to give it another run before I can give a comment...
I do however want to thank you..sincerely..for your very well placed comment on a previous post ( the one before the latest) I have written...
There was a line there that I needed to hear...and you said it...thanks so much X Dell.
At 2:31 AM,
JohnB said…
...thus it is the first step of wrenching control from the artist into the hands of the watered-down gas-bag bean counters...there are always examples to be made of, yes?
At 2:45 AM,
rayke said…
Did she want to kill herself? No.
Did she have some sort of a "hit" put out on her? I say No.
Even though she took a small amount, and it went through her "tester" guy first...I still think it had something to do with her bodys reaction to the drugs. Espicially when it was that pure, and she had some alcohol earlier in the night.
(I merged my Blogger account with my Google account in order to get access to the "Beta" area of Blogger, but I can't post comments with my account now. I have to do them all as an "other" or as "anonymous"...It sucks.)
At 8:00 AM,
Isolde said…
Hi X,
as usual, my comments will sound idiotic compared to the other brilliant folks + yourself. But I don't think she meant to kill herself. For whatever my li'l opinion is worth.
At 1:15 PM,
Mayden's Voyage said…
I barely know who she is...
And my parents used anyone and everyone who died by an overdose as an example to frighten us from drug use.
It worked.
Suicide or overdose...either are a possibility- and sad in either case. Thanks for adding the video link- I had never seen that clip.
At 1:22 PM,
X. Dell said…
Lux, I saw what you wrote in the previous post, and my comments were sincere.
John, interesting point. Even if her death were exactly as thought of in popular memory, Joplin was used as an example to curb unprofessionalism in the pop music business. In my dissertatioon, I cite a list of standards that record execs issued in 1974 that list certain do's and don'ts for professional musician, and high among them was no drug usage. Had sobriety been a must in 1967, when the major labels were just beginning to go wholesale into rock, then nobody at Monterrey would have ever been signed.
Rayke, no one thinks she killed herself deliberately. And evidence of a hit is scant in her case. But I'll mention it in this and the subsequent post for there were other cases where evidence of a hit on a rock star was far more compelling. What's worse, there were some who had sufficient motive to kill.
And I noticed that you had switched to Beta last night when I tried to leave a comment on your site, but couldn't.
Hi, Felicity. I don't think your comment sounds idiotic, since almost everyone (including me) agrees that it is true. Some did earlier on, but there's absolutely no evidence that supports a suicide hypothesis.
At 1:27 PM,
X. Dell said…
Cora, when I taught popular music studies at the University, a lot of my students had heard the name Janis Joplin, and known her only as an example of someone who had died of a drug overdose. They never realized what kind of musician she was until I played clips of her performance. When I did, just about everyone, to their surprise, was impressed.
This was the first time I've used video here at The X-Spot, but I thought it important that raders know who she was.
At 3:15 PM,
Libby said…
x - this is rather strange and sad...but, if you think about it, almost every famous person's death is wondered about in this way...suicide or murder? have you noticed that too?
At 3:57 PM,
Rinda Elliott said…
X, you and I met with a discussion of Edgar Cayce and reincarnation. Yes, it's off the topic of conspiracy... but speaking of Janis Joplin, I have a video that makes you wonder about reincarnation...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUifOG0ePl8
Whoa, right? I'm not sure why more people aren't aware of Beth Hart.
At 8:27 PM,
schaumi said…
Her death was front page news in Germany. I remember seeing the newspaper headlines as a 10 year old.
I was curious about her but really didn't get to know her music or understand it until later in my teens.
Boy, could she sing the blues!
At 8:28 PM,
schaumi said…
btw, why can't i watch your utube link?
At 8:47 PM,
X. Dell said…
Libby, that's a sobering point. I've seen some studies that say female celebrities live a mean average of about fifty-six years. That would make it seem as though for every long-lived Katherine Hepburn there are a Heather O'Rourke and Samantha Smith in the wings.
The brevity of many celebrated lives, and the fact that that very brevity often deosn't come from natual causes, often raises mild suspicion, or at the very least a head scratching.
Of course, the vast majority of such deaths are not regarded as either suicide or murder--at least not seriously. I would not even list Joplin's death as such, pending further evidence. But there are some irregulaties and an issue of timing involved, and one of these actually had a fair degree of evidence of foul play.
Rinda, I would say that Hart's style is certainly reminiscent of Joplin's. I'm sure that Joplin was a huge influence on her. So in a way, she is a kind of reincarnation of Joplin. A deliberate one.
Speaking of incarnation, Joplin sometimes fantasized that she was the reincarnation of blues great Bessie Smith. That's why, when her fame finally brought her some wealth, Janis purchased a headstone for Smith's grave, which had previously been left unmarked.
Schaumi, I sorry you can't get the YouTube link to work. It works on mine. If anyone else is having this problem, please alert me. Otherwise, I would suspect it might have something to do with how you've set your cookies.
Joplin toured Germany that September, so I wouldn't be surprised if her death made headlines there since she was just there a couple of weeks earlier.
I agree with your assessment of her talent. She was a true rock and roller.
At 10:21 PM,
JohnB said…
Once you are finished, I would be most appreciative if you provided a copy of your dissertation...I love this stuff!
At 10:37 PM,
Oº°‘¨t®ãg‘°ºO said…
I'm too wired to read this right now. I came to hug you and say thx. I'm ok babe. really. I'm going to read the hell out of this tomorrow. ;) Janis was a case but a wicked performer. I loved Bobby McGee
At 12:44 AM,
X. Dell said…
Hey John, I was thinking about posting some of the dissertation here. The last post was a summary of just a tiny bit of it. Right now I'm trying to apply entropy t6o data sets for a mathematical analysis of pop songs (odd but true). As an engineer, I'm sure you can relate. As an un-mathematical humanities person, I'm desperately seeking Statistics for Dummies.
If only I had a paid more attention in statistics class.
Tragic, it's always good to see you. Thanks for dropping by. And you're right, Joplin was a wicked performer--wickedly good, that is.
At 1:37 AM,
JohnB said…
Are you talking about information entropy as opposed to thermodynamic? I think you were kidding about "Statistics for Dummies", because you are talking about an extreme narrow field of mathematics...very high level stuff. I love talking about this kind of thing...understanding entropy is sort of like being realistic enough to say, "you can't always get what you want". Without work, entropy will always increase...for a rather dull example, air conditioners are a perfect example of this (i.e. removing heat from a colder to source and moving it to a hotter reservoir...this just will not happen without work). Us human beings really embody this idea, more so than given credit for at least in my mind. I wonder how you are arranging whatever data you are using to fit with the theory (is it Shannon's? there is a good background article on Wikipedia on it, although abstract).
At 4:34 AM,
X. Dell said…
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
At 4:36 AM,
X. Dell said…
John, yeah. I'm referring to information eentropy, and yes Shannon. I've printed out the wikipedia article, and will try to make heads or tails of it. I reckoned if I could tackle Simpson's Diversity Index, I could do this as well. Maybe I can, but it's not as easy.
There have been a number of studies that indicate that the more the music indsutry consolidates into one big mega corporation, the more homogeneous mainstream music becomes. (My first calculations with SDI also show this.) Problem is, these studies were performed by economists, sociologists, and other people with a mathematics background. Their musical analysis cannot be as (um) rigorous as a musicologist's, but then again a musicologist doesn't usually worry about mathematical formulae.
I sent my calculations to someone who had made a prior study in terms of entropy. I used SDI. He suggested I use both SDI and entropy to express both homogeneity and how the system of hit records (my data set) maintains its integrity at different times. While SDI is simple enough for me to understand, Entropy is not. I have to figure it out, and then know it so well that I can explain it to other musicologists.
If there really were a "Statistics for Dummies" sort of thing, that would help. It's more or less a decoding of the symbols, where they come from and what they mean. A translation, I guess.
Meanwhile, I'm looking for that "Statistics for Dummies." Thanks much for your help, though.
At 12:29 PM,
JohnB said…
If I were you, get a good "right brained" understanding of entropy first before tackling the rigors of the vast mathematical formulae. College thermodynamic texts usually have a good tangible explanation of what it is, and why it is used. The physical entropy is indeed analogous to the informational...you can be sure this will be on my mind...
At 4:01 PM,
X. Dell said…
Thanks, John. Taking your advice. Spent a good part of the day doing precisely that.
At 4:16 PM,
K9 said…
/bark bark bark
whatever ya do, dont call dr. noguchi! interesting theory presented by john b. never really got the cult of janis until i saw the films of the MPF...then it was crystal. i think she was a fine example of the importance of live performance. meaning, there with the crowd, she was in her element.
its a sad phenomena that often the defining moment of a life is boiled down to the worst moment there was.
/grrr
At 4:51 PM,
Kira said…
ARGH! I never thought of Janis' death as questionable. I just thought she OD'd by accident and that's that. But the way you set it up...ARGH! Ok, I await the rest of this information.
At 6:59 PM,
X. Dell said…
K9, I would put it more bluntly as the failure of professional recording protocol to capture the energy, the electricity, the total worth of a performer. Even with digital recording there are many things that cannot be expressed adequately. Nevertheless, I do hear enough of Janis in her studio records to understand the power behind the personna.
Hey, newlywed Kira, I don't mean to set things up as sinister, necessarily. Only to point out that things are rarely as cut-and-dried as history would like to present to us. Janis' passing is just one such point. I'm going to state my belief that she accidentally OD'ed, but I would fill remiss if I didn't mention doubts and why I have them, especially since in other cases, the official story is simply too difficult to believe.
At 9:58 AM,
Anonymous said…
My thoughts... that is what this comment thing is for right? lol
In my opinion, it doesnt really matter if she intended to kill herself just then or not. She was indulging in drugs and living a dangerous lifestyle. It is clear to me that she was fighting demons and this was her method of escape.
I, like your students and Cora, didnt know much about her. I appreciate her talent(ty for the clip). It makes me wonder if people like her are able to give us their art/music because they are uninhibited from the drugs... it just flows...
Some of my most poinent writing happens after a martini or 2! lol... not that I am putting myself even near the category of true artist or even talented... but if I were not so fearful of what people thought... of what it would do to my friends and family... I could and would share so much more of myself to the world.
Now... if the world would be interested at all is a whole different story! *wink
great post.
At 12:28 PM,
X. Dell said…
Welcome vack, Anonymous. You've made a good point. Assuming she were murdered, how long could she had lived with the heroin?
Actually, she might have lived a fairly long time. Most of the illness and fatality that comes from heroin addiction comes from (1) overdose from a normally cut source, or (2) poverty. The second one is the bigger killer. Since it costs so much in the long run, many addicts suffer infections--especially from needle sharing--malnourishment, supression of the immune system, additional stress caused by the loss of a support system, and violence.
Celebrity heroin addicts, however, tended to survive the addiction. If they lived short lives (e.g. John Lennon, Cass Elliot) it wasn't because of the heroin. From that era, Joplin and Franklie Lymon are the only two rock stars who I can recall died of a heroin overdose. The difference? Celebrities don't tend to suffer from poverty.
Had Joplin continued to use drugs, she might have gone a long time doing so. She might have gotten straight like the others too.
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