Hamell On Trial : Rant & Roll

<img src="http://www.qromag.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/hamellontrialrantandroll.jpg" alt=" " />Ed Hamell delivers an uproarious, if in-your-face, performance on his CD/DVD as Hamell On Trial, <em>Rant & Roll</em>....
7.4 Righteous Babe
2008 

  The singer, songwriter, solo artist, stand-up, and spoken words-man has been touring the country for years now, combining punk-rock sensibilities with folk-rock engines, sort of a twenty-first century Pete Seeger or Woody Guthrie on acid, or George Carlin with an acoustic guitar.  Rant & Roll captures that essence in two distinct forms: an ‘official’ audio bootleg of Hamell at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and a tour DVD fleshing it out.

The Terrorism of Everyday Life, the act Hamell premiered in Edinburgh, stretches from his childhood to adulthood, from his father to his son, with hilarious and pointed observations and stories along the way.  Hamell starts at his young obsession with “John Lennon”, including sneaking into a party and literally crashing into the legend (with which The Beatle said, “Fuck off”), before heading into songs & stories about drug abuse.  And Hamell doesn’t just dabble in drug stories – he goes down deep, to snorting crack and smoking a dead man’s ashes.  Sometimes, Hamell does go a bit overboard in his mockery, like with his repetitively gross faux restaurant ad, “The Trough”, or in his righteous praise, like that for his ’37 Gibson on “7 Seas”.  But then he brings it back when tells stories about his crappy jobs, including working at a bar for blue-collar crackheads on “Crack Bar” and being a forty-year-old pizza delivery boy with a nineteen-year-old boss on “Chris and the Angels”.  The second half of the record is more uneven in terms of tone, from the seriousness of “Father’s Kitchen/Racine/Ellicotville” and “Halfway” to the humorous “Terrors” and probably over-descriptive “Pussy”, then back again with his parents’ deaths in “Parents” & “Father’s Advice”.  He strikes a better tone when joking about dealing with the parents of his young son’s friends on “Vision/Full Circle” and what he’s going to tell young Detroit Hamell about his past on “Inquiring Minds”, but is rather self-righteous when he gets to “Pledge” of Allegiance (and his own, to the Earth), before doing a solid sum-up finish with “The Meeting”.

Rant & Roll CD/DVD trailer:

The Rant & Roll DVD builds upon Hamell’s Terrorism.  The first half of it is video of the same Edinburgh show, like “When You’re Young” and “Pete” (his humorous drug and death stories), as well as “Chris and the Angels” and “Crack Bar”, which get a nice bump from the film and additional images.  But then he gets serious and soul bearing when he discusses his car accident (though perhaps too briefly).  The second half is better video of the same routine, this time at Babeville in Buffalo, NY, but, like the second half of Hamell’s act (though the bits aren’t in exactly the same order), is more uneven, yet ends well.  The bonuses include an interview with his wife, Linda, a close-up on his ’37 Gibson, a dirty ad-lib joke about penguins, and a very old, very grainy film of him in a rockabilly band as a teen.

Really more of a comedy record/video than a music release, Rant & Roll is in the tradition of the late George Carlin’s albums and HBO specials.  But there’s also a heart at the bottom of Hamell’s Trials.  It’s the Fourth of July, and there’s nothing more American than Ed Hamell…

MP3 Stream: "When You’re Young"

{audio}/mp3/files/Hamell On Trial – When Youre Young.mp3{/audio}


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