I’ve always been a big fan of both Denis Leary and Bill Hicks. I’ve spent some time hunting down MP3s from both of them. I’m finding myself at a comedy crossroads. I can’t decide which one I like better.
Bill Hick’s material never fails to make me laugh, but at the moment I’m giving the edge to Denis Leary because his delivery is just so perfect. He could make me laugh if he was just reading aloud from the back of a cereal box.
Sp what say you … Hicks or Leary?
I give Hicks the edge…I like comedians that make you laugh, but them really make you think. Hicks’ material is funny, but in a way makes you almost do a double take and think, “Uh, should I really be laughing at that!!!” I really don’t even think Hicks and Leary are in the same league.
They both have similar views on a lot of things. Religion and drugs to name a couple.
Bill does make me think, but his delivery can sometimes still be too laconic for me. On the other hand I’m listening to Denis Leary right now, so maybe I’m biased.
Gotta go with Leary, but just because I never heard of Hicks.
Will check him out, though, since you give him similar billing.
I saw Bill Hicks here in Austin years ago, and… the word “overrated” comes to mind. Not terrible, mind you, but highly overrated.
Hey, I like a good dirty joke as much as the next guy, and as long as Bill Hicks was telling dick jokes and porno jokes, he was fairly amusing. And his routine about Jimi Hendrix raping Debbie Gibson was hilarious. But, unfortunately, someone convinced him that he was an intellectual. As a result, Hicks would tell five minutes of very funny dirty jokes, then go off an a pointless, stupid, pompous, boring tangent about organized religion and big business until half the audience was snoring so loud, it was keeping the other half awake.
Eventually, he’d go back to telling jokes about jerking off, and all was well again.
On the whole, I’d rate Bill Hicks a 6.5 on a scale of 1 to 10. His dirty jokes were a LOT funnier than Andrew Dice Clay’s… on the other hand, Clay never pretended to be anything more than a raunchy comic. Hicks thought he was a prophet. Prophets without substance get tiresome in a hurry.
So, put me down as a Denis Leary supporter.
Chalk up another vote for Leary.
I’ve heard his bits, read his book, and seen his movies a million times and they never fail to make me laugh.
I’m definitely a Denis Leary fan. I thought Bill Hicks was funny, and sometimes almost painfully thought-provoking. My beef with Hicks is that he often tried too hard to be relevant and topical, whereas Denis Leary just concentrates on being funny, which is, after all, a comedian’s primary job.
Hicks was the prototype.
Leary perfected it with an improved delivery.
It’s a push.
I like Carlin better than either of them anyway! 
Yer pal,
Satan
*TIME ELAPSED SINCE I QUIT SMOKING:
Six months, two weeks, one day, 5 hours, 17 minutes and 42 seconds.
7928 cigarettes not smoked, saving $991.10.
Extra time with Drain Bead: 3 weeks, 6 days, 12 hours, 40 minutes.
I slept with a REPUBLICAN moderator!*
I can’t believe this is even open to debate. Hicks was the original, Leary the pale imitator. Hicks had no substance!!! Unbelievable! He created everything and refused to compromise, Leary copied him, compromised whenever possible, and then got sucked into the big corporate machine he’d been protesting against. The mad had no principles.
Astorian, the guy was more than “dick jokes”. He fully admitted telling these just to try to get people to stick around and get his message across. He tried to improve the world, and stuck to his principles no matter how much it cost him.
Leary liked the image, copied it, and took ALL the soul out of it. “Hehe, let’s rail against the big corporate world, etc, OK, you want me to do another advert? Cool!”
“He could make me laugh if he was just reading aloud from the back of a cereal box” - I’d rather he had, rather than just ripping off material from dead comics! I’d have more respect for him.
“They both have similar views on a lot of things. Religion and drugs to name a couple” - Think you’ll find Leary’s views follow Hicks’ views around like a lost puppy. He didn’t have an original bone in his body!
Basically, it’s like preferring Oasis to the Beatles. The Beatles actually knew what they were doing, were exploring, doing revolutionary stuff. Then Oasis came along years later, and liked it, but didn’t really understand it. They copied it, but all the soul, all the stuff that made it so revolutionary and ground-breaking, was left behind. They then proceeded to make a lot of money out of it, while John Lennon was left pushing up the daisies. For all Beatles fans, that leaves a kind of bad taste in the mouth. Replace Beatles with Hicks, Oasis with Leary, you have a fair representation of what happened.
DANGEROUS / RELENTLESS / ARIZONA BAY / RANT IN E-MINOR
NME, FEBRUARY 1997
By Keith Cameron. Reprinted without permission.
STAND-UP COMEDY is the last refuge of the loud-mouthed, lazy-brained, self-righteous, self-satisfied, talentless, hopeless, all-round useless git. Two exceptions have held this truth to be incontrovertible during the 1990s: Eddie Izzard, and Bill Hicks. While one fondly anticipates Izzard’s absurdist wisdom lightening life’s woeful realities for years to come, Hicks is gone, killed by pancreatic cancer three years ago at the age of 32.
A laconic Texan relocated to New York, Hicks invariably gets compared to Lenny Bruce, seeing as both railed with increasing desperation at the iniquity of the world, both pushed the boundaries of taste, and both died young. Yet, in truth, such linkage ill-serves Hicks, whose humour had a warmth and sleight of hand rare for someone whose favoured topics included pornography, drugs and the sexual proclivities of Barbara Bush. His devastating assaults on the myriad institutionalised hypocrisies of America were heightened by an array of droll characterisations and wonderfully expressive facial mannerisms. These albums clearly want for the latter’s absence, yet still convey a substantial measure of the man’s genius. Previously available, though long since deleted, ‘Dangerous’ and ‘Relentless’ date from '90 and '91 respectively and contain the recognised essence du Hicks. Both are products of his ‘Flying Saucer Tour Of America’, whereby the charmingly, uh, traditional citizens of Fife, Alabama, feel the wrath of this avenging misanthrope. Why, wonders Hicks, would aliens choose to visit such places when they could go to New York instead? (“Oh my God, we’re being invaded by rednecks!”)
The Gulf War is helpfully explained: “They said the Iraqis had the fourth largest army in the world… Well, the Hare Krishnas are the fifth largest and they’ve already got our airports…” Religion is a favoured topic: “A lot of Christians wear a cross round their necks. Do you think if Jesus comes back he ever wants to see a fing cross?!”
Then there is smoking. Always a prodigious inhaler, Hicks’ nicotine habit spiralled after he ended his fractious relationship with alcohol (“I’m up to two lighters a day.” “A message for all you non-smokers non-smokers die every day!”). The chilling irony of his dread prediction that in five years he would be addressing his audience through a post-tracheotomy voice-box is, of course, that Bill Hicks didn’t even last the full five. If ‘Dangerous’ is good 8/10, ‘Relentless’ is damn near comic nirvana, capturing Hicks at his peak before illness and disillusionment took hold 10/10.
Of the two posthumous works, ‘Arizona Bay’ 6/10 is fitful and flawed, featuring Hicks’ tactic of linking tracks with music, which simply detracts from some acidic material (“Ever noticed how people who believe in creationism all look unevolved? ‘God created me in one day.’ ‘Yeah? Looks like he rushed it.’”).
‘Rant In E-Minor’ 9/10, however, is astonishing. Aware that his disease was terminal, it’s the unfettered invective of a man with nothing left to lose or gain, the last will and testament of a man whose obsession with not selling out to the US entertainment mainstream now led him to launch a frenzied attack on his former friend Jay Leno. Hicks imagines Leno shooting himself and his brains forming the shape of the NBC peacock on the wall behind “a company man to the bitter fing end… another whore at the capitalist gang-bang”. And all because Leno had done an advertisement for Doritos.
With complacent goons like David Baddiel currently gang-banging their way to considerable wealth without even having the grace to be funny, the visceral power of Bill Hicks is felt like a knee to the solar plexus. “I believe there’s a commonality to all humanity,” he says on ‘Rant…’. “We all suck.” Beyond question, the King of Comedy, and a prince among paupers.
Whoah there, Biffer, got a few issues?
I agree with your assessment of Bill Hicks. I think he was a visionary, ahead of his time. But just because he was who he was doesn’t mean that every “edgy” comic ripped him off and therefore sucks.
Denis Leary was on his way in the comedy business at the same time that Bill was, so I don’t think he was hunkered down in the back of a comedy club somewhere making notes in his grand scheme of stealing Bill Hick’s act.
This could very well be a cultural thing. Bill Hicks was (or he perceived himself to be) unappreciated in the states. He was, however, very big in the UK, where Biffer is from, if I’m not mistaken.
Meanwhile, Denis Leary’s comedy and delivery is very much “American”. He reminds us all of somebody we know, that’s why we laugh so hard at him.
Nah, there’s no doubt Denis based his act on Bill, by nicking a lot of key material. When I can, I’ll post some “striking” similarities!
When Bill Hicks was asked why he quit smoking, he replied “to see if Denis Leary would”. I reckon that sums it up.
I admit I came out all guns blazing there, but this subject gets me riled. Bill Hicks had a purpose, and Denis cashed in on it, without really knowing what he was doing. I’m very keen on artistic morals and integrity, and Hicks had it in spades. Hicks is one of my heroes, and to me, Leary seems to be pissing on his memory, and to be honest, it affects me more than it should.
But FWIW, Leary is huge in Europe as well.
I don’t know enough of Hicks to make a good comparisson, but I LOVE Denis Leary.
“Cranberry fuckin’ Ale!”
For those who don’t know Bill Hicks, here’s a FAQ
I started listening to Leary first. Like freshman year of high school, my best friend made me a copy of ‘Cancer’. Loved it. Hilarious material.
Then last year, my friend Julio (who’s from Austin) brought up Hicks. Curious, I did some Napster excavations, and within hours felt sick to my stomach.
My beloved Leary ripped a whole lot of material off. For starters, the whole Jim Fix joke. Sure, they didn’t use the same punchlines, but the structure of the joke is basically the same.
I now see Hicks as the be all end all of biting comedy. Although I have to listen to more Izzard (Ali G, too, but that’s a different story altogether). You have not experienced comedy until you have heard his bit about Dick Clark as Satan and his oily evil semen.
A joke among comics is that Leary got famous instead of Hicks because there’s no cure for cancer.
Get that scaley pecker down your gullet
Gotta go with Hicks. Leary is great but once I saw several of Hicks’ tapes and got a lot of his mp3’s I was hooked.
You’re not really asking this question, are you?
Without reading a single post - anyone who said Leary needs to go to Sam’s Club and buy ‘a clue’ in bulk.
Denis Leary is amusing, but at best, he’s Bill Hicks Lite. All the dirty words are still there, but any sort of real substance has been drained away and tossed into the sewer. I think Leary is funny, but the high point of his career is I’m an Asshole. Five years after he dies, we won’t even be mentioning him.
I don’t agree with a lot of the positions Bill Hicks held. But there’s not a single time I’ve listened to him that he didn’t cause me to think, to evaluate my ideas and beliefs. Usually I am either holding my belly because I’m laughing so hard or I’m standing there shocked and outraged. How else should a comedian be judged? Denis Leary has made me laugh, but he’s never made me think.
A lot of people are offended by his take on patriotism, religion and society. I’m not sure what his personal religious beliefs were, but in my view he was a better Christian than most of the people who claim the label. But I’ll let someone who knew him better describe it:
[/QUOTE]
*taken from the transcript of Totally Bill Hicks
*[Brett Butler]:
For all the talk about Bill being like Hendrix or Dylan or Jim Morrison or Lenny Bruce, it was Jesus Bill wanted to be, he wanted to save us all, but Bill got freeze-framed in the scene where Jesus went through the temple and said, “This is my father’s house and you’ve turned it into a den of thieves.” 'Cause that’s what Bill always wanted to do - he wanted to be Christ at his angriest.
[/QUOTE]
**
Just a personal opinion, of course.
Wow, I had no idea I was creating such a shit-storm.
But it’s a dog-fight, damnit.
Voting tallies thus far.
Bill Hicks: 6
Denis Leary: 6 - including my vote.
One Push (Come on Satan hop off the fence, ferchrissakes).
One more point to my position. As a communicator of ideas who makes me laugh, Bill Hicks is the bee’s knees. As a comedian with whose material and delivery I can identify, Denis Leary is king.
So I’m still leaning towards Denis for the title of Jack’s Favorite Comedian.
As long as you’re keeping score, put me in the Bill Hicks camp. I had the good fortune to see him when he came through Atlanta oh so long ago. It was magnificent.
