Vince Russo's The Brand

Hello, Brandon Stransky here once again and this time I’ll be doing a review of the comedy album entitled Strategic Grill Locations by the late great Mitch Hedberg. The album title was the start of a running gag that would only be repeated once more with his next album in which the title came from a line in one of his jokes that did not appear on the album.

If you don’t know who Mitch Hedberg is, you’ve probably heard someone using his quotes or telling one of his jokes, many of his more memorable ones actually having come from this album itself.

After reading a bit about the man himself and learning about how he was, at least earlier on in his comedy career, Mitch Hedberg had a very bad case of stage fright and it’s pretty evident as in the beginning of the album he sounds nervous and luckily the crowd was very accepting of this, even if a joke ultimately failed, it would still receive some laughter from the audience.

Even with the shortcomings, stage fright, nervousness, he was still able to show signs of brilliance that would be much more evident on later releases from him as he was able to quickly rebound off of a bad joke and turn it into something a lot more humorous that got a much better reaction from the audience.

You can tell though that as the album continues, he’s getting more and more confident with himself, his nervousness starting to vanish as he really starts owning the mic, cranking out great joke after great joke and the crowd picks up on it, becoming much more receptive to his routine.

His routine and performance itself is certainly very unique in the way he speaks, the tone and tempo of his voice as well as the material itself, being very short and subtle but also easy to relate to as most of his material is drawn from everyday observations that most people don’t really pick up on but as soon as he says it, you immediately know exactly what he’s talking about.

In his later releases he’s certainly much more confident and sure of himself and each subsequent album gets better and better which is the hallmark of a truly great performer and the comedy world truly misses having his presence as there’s no telling what kind of great comedy he would be producing if he were still here.