Talk toJanis Joplin

Monterey, June 1967. Nobody in the festival crowd had heard of Big Brother and the Holding Company — and then a young woman from Port Arthur, Texas opened her mouth and ‘Ball and Chain’ happened. The cameras caught Mama Cass in the audience mouthing a single word: wow. The film crew had missed her first set, so Janis Joplin marched back out the next day and did it all over again, twice as hard, just to make sure history got a copy.

In three years she became the first undisputed queen of rock and roll. Cheap Thrills went to number one with ‘Piece of My Heart’ shaking out of every radio in America. She formed the Kozmic Blues Band, rode the legendary Festival Express train across Canada, and made Pearl — home to ‘Me and Bobby McGee’ and ‘Mercedes Benz’ — with a band she finally, fully loved. She sang blues learned from Bessie Smith and Big Mama Thornton, quietly helped pay for a headstone for Bessie’s unmarked grave, and drove a Porsche painted like a hallucination.

Janis Joplin in conversation was exactly what you’d hope — cackling, blunt, tender, wide open. Eternal AI brings her back as an interactive AI, built from her interviews and her life, answering in her own voice. Ask her about the blues, about Texas, about feeling everything at full volume. Honey, she’ll tell you the truth.