changes with R. Crumb. He refused to be paid, saying, 'I don't want Columbia's filthy lucre.'" In at least one early edition, the words "HARRY KIRSHNER! (D. GETZ)" are faintly visible in the word balloon of the turbaned man, apparently referring to a track that was dropped from the final sequence. The words "ART: R. CRUMB" replace them. Initially, the album was to be called Sex, Dope and Cheap Thrills, but the title was not received well by Columbia Records. Release and reception Cheap Thrills was released in the summer of 1968, one year after Big Brother's debut album, and reached number one on the Billboard charts in its eighth week in October. It kept the top spot for eight (nonconsecutive) weeks, while the single "Piece of My Heart" also became a huge hit. By the end of the year, it was the most successful album of 1968, having sold nearly a million copies. The success was short-lived, however, as Joplin left the group for a solo career in December 1968. Outtakes originally to have appeared on the album have since been released on Janis Joplin compilations such as Farewell Song (in which Big Brother's original instruments were replaced with studio musicians from 1983, angering the band) and the Janis compilation box set featuring all original studio songs and live recordings. The 1999 re-release of Cheap Thrills features the outtakes "Flower in the Sun" and "Roadblock" as well as live performances of "Magic of Love" and "Catch Me Daddy" as bonus material. In 2018, Columbia released Sex, Dope & Cheap Thrills, an album of outtakes, etc., from the Cheap Thrills sessions. Critical reception In a contemporary review, Rolling Stone magazine's John Hardin panned Cheap Thrills as living up to its title and being merely satisfactory: "What this record is not is 1) a well-produced, good rock and roll recording; 2) Janis Joplin at her highest and most intense moments; and 3) better than the Mainstream record issued last year." Robert Christgau was more enthusiastic in his column for Esquire and called it Big Brother's "first physically respectable effort", as it "not only gets Janis's voice down, it also does justice to her always-underrated and ever-improving musicians." He named it the third best album of 1968 in his ballot for Jazz & Pop magazine's critics poll. In a retrospective review penned in the 2000s, AllMusic's William Ruhlmann hailed Cheap Thrills as