The notes are dense, filled in with regular, almost childlike writing. Local newspaper articles reporting early successes are carefully cut out. And they alternate with horoscopes and the agenda of appointments, also ordered, almost maniacally. It would not be said that this school simildiary belonged to Janis Joplin. Of which today we sadly celebrate, just a few weeks after another fallen god of rock, Jimi Hendrix, the fiftieth anniversary of his disappearance, for an overdose of heroin on 4 October 1970. She too at 27, like him and then several others (from Jim Morrison to Amy Winehouse), enrolled in the sinister registry club.
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Well, the simildiary a limited edition reproduction of the originals that belonged to the singer, published by Genesis especially for the anniversary and, somehow, it already tells us a lot about the duality of Janis Joplin, a provincial girl from deep Texas who defies many conventions. First of all, the first woman to establish herself in the purely masculine universe (and also, in good measure, misogynist) of rock’n’roll. Ungraceful yet strongly erogenous, the ugliest girl in high school who becomes, in spite of herself, a sex symbol (here is the ambivalence that returns). And white who sings the things of blacks, the blues to the soul (without anyone bringing up cultural appropriations), when in her Texas and its surroundings racial segregation is still a reality that burns alive on the skin of African Americans.
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That ambivalence will bring her fame and insecurity. While she will be able to dress up any song making it her own with a cosmic roar, among the best performers ever, together with the lysergic accompaniment of the support bands, starting from Big Brother, Janis will never be able to be happy for real and will seek solace in loves clandestine (with men and women, indifferently, here too anticipating customs). And in heroin, a lot of heroin who will take her away, in the end alone, in an anonymous motel in Los Angeles. But perhaps, as Eric Burdon of the Animals would have said at the moment of farewell, Janis died of an overdose on Janis. It was a lot, Janis, it was too much.
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October 4, 2020 (change October 4, 2020 | 06:19)
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