I’m just now discovering the works of the late Mr. Hicks, and I must say I’m impressed. His Iraq material is especially funny, as it’s just as applicable now as it was during Gulf War I.
Anyone else enjoy this comic genius? What is your favorite album? (Mine’s a tie between Arizona Bay and Rant in E Minor.) Why does everyone call Denis Leary a Bill Hicks ripoff?
Ah, the great Bill Hicks. I discovered him about a year ago. Honestly, it’s some of the funniest standup I’ve ever heard in my life. If there is a god, he must not value humor too much if he struck down poor Bill, yet allows Carrot Top to live on.
People call Leary a Hicks ripoff, because, well, he’s blatantly lifted entire passages from Hicks’s acts. Hicks was never too popular in the U.S. and I guess Leary figured nobody would notice. One of the quotes I’ve heard Leary perform and also see attributed to him everywhere, is the following:
“If you don’t believe drugs have done good things, do me a favor. Go home tonight, take all your albums, your tapes, and your CDs and burn them. Because you know the musicians who made all that great music that has enhaced your lives throughout the years? REEEEAAAALLLL f*cking high on drugs!”
That’s pure Hicks. Leary stole the work of a dead man and passed it off as his own. Jackass.
Duh, I should have recognized that particular passage when I listened to some of Leary’s stand-up. Explains the “No Cure for Cancer” title for his album. Punk.
I agree that any world where Bill can die and Carrot Top can live is messed up. Then again, all the good ones die young, so we can really appreciate how good they were.
"I will be hosting a new show on CBS in the fall entitled “Let’s Hunt and Kill Billy Ray Cyrus.”
I prefer to think that He was just keen on getting a live audience with Bill (so to speak). My theory goes on to say that Carrot Top will live to be 120 years old.
Yup, Bill and God, just hanging out together on that cloud. “That’s some real good humour there, Bill” God would say. “We needed a good laugh up here”.
"Hell, the Beatles were so friggin’ high they let Ringo sing a couple tunes.
George, George, help me get him down off the ceiling. He’s got some song he wants to do about a yellow tambourine, or something…"
Squeegee that third eye every once in a while, kids.
I love Bill Hicks. Discovered him in '97 or '98. He did a posthumous cameo in “Preacher,” an adult comic book from DC/Vertigo. “Arizona” and “Rant” are my two favorite albums of his too. But it’s only four albums. FOUR FUCKING ALBUMS, and then he died. Before the O.J. trial! Boy, he would have gotten some good material out of that, with some unexpected perspectives no doubt. And he would deny it, but he was an idealist who loved humanity and wanted a better world. I loved him even when he was crummin on people like me, like non-smokers.
"Hi, I’m Yul Brynner, and I’m dead. Please don’t smoke.
"OK, pretty scary. But what about Jim Fixx? I didn’t see HIS ad.
"Hi, I’m Jim Fixx and I’m dead and I don’t know what the fuck happened!
"I used to pass Yul Brynner in the morning on the way to the jogging track. Drink in one hand, smoke in the other, girls sitting on his cueball noggin every night. That lifestyle’s gonna get you, Yul!, I’d say.
"And now we’re both dead.
“SHIT.”
Bill Hicks was sort-of fun as long as he was telling standard dirty jokes. Problem is, he thought he was MORE than a guy telling funny dick-jokes, he thought he was profound and insightful.
Nope. Not by a long shot.
I saw him perform live twice, and both times, it was the same story. He’d tell some semi-clever dirty jokes in the Andrew Dice Clay style, and the audience would laugh. Then he’d start ranting about politics and religion, and the audience would nod off (“Wake me up when he starts telling dick-jokes again, okay honey?”).
That’s odd…
I always thought his “blue” humor was the dull part of his act. My favorite bits were always the politcal and philosophical.
"Iraq is a very well armed country… "
“How do you know that?”
“We checked the receipt.”
I always thought his political and philosophical jokes were the best part, too. Sometimes they were dull, but usually I cracked up.
(That guy, Reginald Denny? Pulled from his truck and beaten? And all over the world, everybody was thinking the same thing … step on the goddamn gas!)
“We’re the hooligans…”
“Nobody knows what it’s liiiiiike to be a dustbin… in Shaftsbrie… with hooligans!”
Oh, and there’s a fifth album out now. I haven’t heard it yet, but the reviews I’ve seen say that it’s edited poorly.
There’s actually two new albums. “Flying Saucer Tour Vol. 1” is an entire show from Pittsburgh where he ends up getting in to it with the audience. It’s pretty good, even if the material appears on other albums as well.
The other album is edited together from old tapes of material, which means the sound quality goes from good to crappy.
The best part of Hicks’ comedy is that he doesn’t need the “visit to Dick Joke Island” to be funny. The political/religious material is the really funny stuff.
“Relentless” is my favorite album.
I love his Iraq jokes, particularly the bits on the “elite Republican Guard”, his song, “Chicks Dig Jerks” and his, “children are miracles” riff.
The man was a god and a genius, and if there is any kind of afterlife I’m sure he and Sam Kinneson are kicking back, pointing at all of us and keeping the angels (or whatever) in stitches with their observations.
I always thought Kinison ripped Hicks off. Right down to the “demon” sound and everything. Kinison was well aware of Hicks before America was…they were Austin buddies from what I read. Seems natural he would lift material from a genius.
He’s referring to this line: “John Wayne’s not dead, he’s frozen! And as soon as we find a cure for cancer, we’re gonna thaw out the Duke.”
I think that’s true…but I don’t think Hicks dying of cancer escaped Leary either.
Leary also stole the “Jim Fixx dying while jogging” joke directly from Hicks. Not that Hicks was the first one to make that particular joke…but the delivery, man; the delivery.
I very highly recommend American Scream, Bill Hicks’ biography. Reading it entertained me, made me laugh, and pissed me off. Heh.
Not quite - Leary was ripping him off long before he was dead.
Cholo - why would you think Kinison ripped off Hicks? Their comedy has only superficial similarities. The “demon sound” is a well-known effect, widely used while both of those comics were in knee-pants. Bill Cosby, for instance, used it a lot.
It’s great to see a Hicks thread here. The man may be gone…but he’s not forgotten.
For those of you who only liked his dick jokes–that’s cool, but y’all haven’t lost anything with his passing. There are still tons of comedians doing dick jokes. And if you found his political & philisophical jokes boring–no biggie…you weren’t really his audience anyways.
But for those of us who were mesmerized & inspired by his political & spiritual raving–we’ve lost a great one. He truly was the “thinking man’s” comedian/philosopher.
And the truly sad part of it all, is that there is no-one…no-one that has taken his place! Why the hell is that? It seems as though every comedian out there is so concerned with being non-offensive that they’ve all lost their bite!
Today, a comedian is considered “edgy” if they put a lot of sexual material in their act. But there isn’t anyone who talks as frankly about drugs as Hicks did. No-one who can give a Chomsky-like lecture that is actually hilarious. And no-one who can make an audience laugh while giving them a new spiritual outlook.
My favorite bit was the Terence McKenna inspired piece about how psychedelic mushrooms were the catalyst for man’s evolution from shit-flinging tree-dwelling monkeys to outer-space explorers.
I keep waiting & waiting for someone to continue on in Hick’s direction. But perhaps, like Lenny Bruce was to the “baby boomers”…we only get one revolutionary comedian per generation.
Bill Hicks was a genius IMO. He was witout doubt the greatest stand up I’ve ever seen.
I’ve been thinking of him quite a bit of late as I know he’d be tearing new assholes left, right and center at the BS that’s going down at the moment. 
Come to goat-boy :eek:
BBC TV ran a history of US comedy recently, and in it Leary talked about Hicks. He very clearly had a lot of respect for the man, which leads me to believe that it’s less stealing a dead man’s boots and more keeping a torch burning. Hicks said a lot of things that were funny, but more importantly he said a lot of things that were true. They still need saying today.
As to passing it off as his own - any comedian who says “As Bill Hicks used to say” would be cabbaged off the stage. America hated Hicks, and still does - he’d play to 2,000-strong houses in the UK and shitty dives in the States.
Cholo: Kinison’s mike-swallowing predated Hicks’s. He was still an unfortunate self-abuser with not much talent for anything but screaming, but he didn’t lift from Hicks.