Blogcritics Author: Eric Whelchel

Music Review - J. Matthew Gerken, Christian Kiefer, and Jefferson Pitcher - Of Great and Mortal Men: 43 Songs for 43 U.S. Presidencies

Eric Whelchel — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 23:49:40 EDT

This concept album about U.S. presidents isn't just for the history dweebs out there.
It’s about damn time someone wrote a song with William Henry Harrison as its main subject. Authored by musicians J. Matthew Gerken, Christian Kiefer, and Jefferson Pitcher, Of Great and Mortal Men: 43 Songs for 43 U.S. Presidencies is an ambitious and imaginative effort that explores the mythology and nature of the American presidency and the...

Comedy Review: Mitch Hedberg - Do You Believe In Gosh?

Eric Whelchel — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 15:35:00 EDT

Comedian Mitch Hedberg's first posthumous release is a reminder of how brilliant a comedian he really was.
Recorded about two months prior to his death in March of 2005, Do You Believe In Gosh? is comedian Mitch Hedberg’s first posthumous release. Only 37 years old at the time of his death in a New Jersey hotel room, it’s still likely a bitter and depressing pill for his fans to swallow. Hedberg’s on-stage persona was unique: wearing...

Music Review: Giant Sand - proVISIONS

Eric Whelchel — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 13:03:06 EDT

Giant Sand's first album in four years is worth the wait.
“Every girl is like a pearl/hearts strung along and then left stranded/this world is worn, all frayed and torn” Howe Gelb sings on “Stranded Pearl,” the opening track on proVISIONS, Giant Sand’s first album in nearly four years. A slow, brooding song ostensibly about a woman and a glass-eyed soldier whose relationship...

Book Review: The Indie Band Survival Guide - The Complete Manual for the Do-It-Yourself Musician by Randy Chertkow and Jason Feehan

Eric Whelchel — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 08:14:17 EDT

You're an independent musician struggling to gain an audience. This book can help.
If your grand musical plan to jump start your career is to win American Idol and enter into a life of indentured servitude to a mega conglomerate, ignore Randy Chertkow and Jason Feehan’s The Indie Band Survival Guide. However, if you’re an independent musician without a label who feels your unique blend of goth-thrash-folk-punk-polka...

Music Review - The Baseball Project - Vol. 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails

Eric Whelchel — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:28:49 EDT

Both baseball fans and music fans will enjoy Steve Wynn and Scott McCaughey's baseball-themed release.
As the story goes, in 1992 Steve Wynn (Dream Syndicate) and Scott McCaughey (Minus 5 and Young Fresh Fellows) met for the first time in the bathroom of a concert venue in Seattle. They eventually discovered a shared interest in baseball and planned to create an album that focused on the sport’s history and players. Of such chance and...

Book Review: On the Road with the Ramones by Monte A. Melnick and Frank Meyer

Eric Whelchel — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 20:16:46 EDT

Monte Melnick's classic oral history of the Ramones is updated and worth another read.
Equal parts oral history of a band and memoir of a tour manager, On the Road with the Ramones is essentially a Ramones fan’s bible. At turns both hilarious and poignant, it’s a sympathetic yet brutally honest account of the band, as told by those who witnessed the band’s many highs and lows over their lengthy musical career. Now...

Music Review: Charlie Louvin - Steps to Heaven

Eric Whelchel — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 08:08:14 EDT

Many of the songs strongly evoke an acceptance of mortality without any fear of death.
Here’s hoping we’re all doing as well as Charlie Louvin by the time we reach the age of 81, instead of slobbering into our beers, boring the pants off strangers with exaggerated tales of our glory days, and fighting off senility. A recent surge of activity that would put much younger musicians to shame has seen Louvin tour with Lucinda...

Book Review - The Last Season by Eric Blehm

Eric Whelchel — Wed, 6 Aug 2008 23:36:27 EDT

Eric Blehm's book explores the life and death of ranger Randy Morgenson.
Eric Blehm’s The Last Season examines the life and death of Randy Morgenson, a backcountry ranger in the Sequoia and Kings Canyon mountain range who mysteriously disappeared in 1996. Despite a massive search effort in the days after Morgenson’s disappearance, no trace of the ranger was found until 2001. Even despite this grisly...

Satire: Indie Music Fan Hopelessly Unaware of Current Pop Culture

Eric Whelchel — Mon, 4 Aug 2008 23:09:47 EDT

An indie fan wrestles with pop cultural ignorance
Indie music enthusiast David Dennisson reluctantly admitted today that his love of the genre has left him completely out of touch with current pop culture trends, celebrities, and events. “What initially began as a brief innocent flirtation in college has developed into a decades-long perverted dalliance; like irrational and hyperbolic praise...

Book Review: Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards - Memoirs of a Rock 'N' Roll Survivor by Al Kooper

Eric Whelchel — Fri, 1 Aug 2008 10:29:48 EDT

Al Kooper's classic memoir is updated and reissued.
Originally published in that most holy of musical years, 1977, updated and republished in the late 1990s, and now again revised in 2008 with an additional chapter, Al Kooper’s Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards: Memoirs of a Rock ‘N’ Roll Survivor remains one of the most honest, hilarious, and in many ways poignant entries...