# Persuade me that Bill Hicks (standup comic) was a big deal **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 20, 2011, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721 "2011-07-20T15:43:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2011, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/21 "2011-07-20T21:21:36Z")
“No one knows what it’s like, to be a dustbin…in Shaftesbury…with hooligans…” ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2011, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/22 "2011-07-20T21:37:08Z")
He was a comedian’s comedian, sort of the comedy equivalent of Alex Chilton. Few professional comedians don’t own a copy of “Relentless” and quote bits at length, especially the Senate Subcommittee hearing on his porn collection. Unlike Lenny Bruce, Hicks died at or near the peak of his brilliance, so we got to skip the “high onstage reading transcripts from his obscenity trial” stage of his career. ---
**Author:** ![George\_Kaplin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3e96dc/32.png) [@George\_Kaplin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/George_Kaplin)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2011, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/23 "2011-07-20T21:50:32Z")
You’re not missing anything. Comedy is _massively_ subjective. Personally, I find Hicks hilarious, and I own pretty much everything the guy ever released. Conversely, there are plenty of comedic “sacred cows” for whom I have very little regard. Carlin, Murphy, Pryor, Bruce (_especially_ Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce), I struggle to see the humor in _any_ of their acts. Can’t be helped. I don’t feel like I’m missing out. If you don’t like Hicks, that’s fine. He’s just not for you. And chances are that there’s probably nothing that anyone can show you that’ll change your mind. That doesn’t make him a bad comic, or you a bad spectator. It’s just an aesthetic thing. EDIT: But on the off-chance that I’m completely wrong, check [this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BZ0jkCzAqs&feature=related) out. It’s most definitely not work safe, but then again not much of his stuff is. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2011, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/24 "2011-07-20T21:51:27Z")
Bill Hicks’ bit where he talks about being accosted by some Christian good ol’ boys outside a comedy club who “didn’t like what [he] said in there” is still one of the most concise statements of the hypocrisy that is part and parcel of so much modern “Christianity.” “Then,” he said to them, “_forgive me._” ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2011, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/25 "2011-07-20T23:20:38Z")
> [@Bosstone](#): > > Groundbreakers and trendsetters tend to get a lot of praise, even if others come along and polish the style far more effectively. He was a groundbreaker and trendsetter? No. Lenny Bruce was a groundbreaker and trendsetter, he’s the one that actually went to jail for his routines. Bill Hicks, for all his cultivated image, was no more ‘dangerous’ than Jay Leno. ---
**Author:** ![George\_Kaplin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3e96dc/32.png) [@George\_Kaplin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/George_Kaplin)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/26 "2011-07-21T06:00:12Z")
> [@adliboronti](#): > > He was a groundbreaker and trendsetter? No. Lenny Bruce was a groundbreaker and trendsetter, he’s the one that actually went to jail for his routines. Bill Hicks, for all his cultivated image, was no more ‘dangerous’ than Jay Leno. Well, by that standard he was the only trendsetter ever. That’s hardly fair. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/27 "2011-07-21T06:34:42Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > He was a groundbreaker and trendsetter? No. Lenny Bruce was a groundbreaker and trendsetter, he’s the one that actually went to jail for his routines. Bill Hicks, for all his cultivated image, was no more ‘dangerous’ than Jay Leno. How many other comics of his stature and generation found huge barriers to getting on television? IMDB lists three crappy acting projects and a couple of documentaries, mostly posthumous. This guy’s career peaked just when Comedy Central was getting off the ground. Look at the much lesser comics who got frequent appearances and ongoing series there in the early 90s. No, I’d say there was a significant difference between Hicks and Leno. ---
**Author:** ![NAF1138](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naf1138/32/3245_2.png) [@NAF1138](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NAF1138)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/28 "2011-07-21T11:31:40Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > He was a groundbreaker and trendsetter? No. Lenny Bruce was a groundbreaker and trendsetter, he’s the one that actually went to jail for his routines. Bill Hicks, for all his cultivated image, was no more ‘dangerous’ than Jay Leno. They didn’t really do the same thing. Yes they were both “controversial” comics but comparing Hicks to Bruce makes as much sense as comparing him to Carlin or Pryor, and saying that Hicks wasn’t groundbreaking because Lenny came first is like saying that Carlin and Pryor were just ripping Lenny Bruce off. Hicks owes more of a debt to Bill Cosby than to Lenny Bruce. ---
**Author:** ![Biffer\_Spice\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7ea924/32.png) [@Biffer\_Spice\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffer_Spice_1)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/29 "2011-07-21T12:17:14Z")
hicks had integrity and morality. he was funny, he was dangerous, and he was thoughtful. when i heard him in my late teens in the early 90s, it was a voice from the unknown, expressing thoughts that made me laugh, made me gasp, and made me look at the world anew. he woke me up to politics, to ways of the world, and to finding yourself and being true to yourself, and of doing life on your own terms. that i’ve since kind of fucked that up and become a sellout blue-collar whore is my own fault, not his. 😉 in a world full of stand up comedians who are only interested in getting a sitcom or a lucrative run of adverts, he stands out as someone who believed in what he was saying, and wanted to try and make people give a shit. that’s why i liked him. i agree with someone else on the thread who said don’t beat yourself up if you don’t find him funny. you’re not missing out, you’re just not into him. but if you want to know why people like him, i’d imagine there’s a fair few who think like i do, and that’s why. just answering your query 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Cumbrian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce7236/32.png) [@Cumbrian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cumbrian)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/30 "2011-07-21T12:25:12Z")
> [@Ximenean](#): > > I would say “successful in the UK”, rather than “wildly popular”. For a time, he seemed to be Channel Four’s favourite comedian, but C4 is and was a minor channel. I’m not sure that anybody who didn’t watch “alternative” comedy on C4 back then had even heard of him. We are talking about the C4 that is the either the 3rd or 4th most watched channel in the UK (depending on the measure that you use) right? This in a country with literally hundreds of TV channels. Cite: [http://www.barb.co.uk/report/weeklyViewing?\_s=4](http://www.barb.co.uk/report/weeklyViewing?_s=4) It certainly **is** not a minor channel - albeit not at the level of BBC1 or ITV1. And its viewing share was far higher in the late 80s/early 90s because the number of channels was far fewer (so the viewing was split much less than it is now). This may appear to be nit-picky - but the fact is that Hicks was pretty successful in the UK because of C4 basically pimping him and these appearances did put him in front of a reasonably large number of people, who then helped spread word of mouth (remember, at the time he was on, the only other viewing options were BBC1, BBC2 and ITV1 - and C4 did a much better job of providing a genuine alternative to those channels than it currently does - basically, if you were interested in something new or viewed from a different angle, then you basically wound up watching C4 by default) ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/31 "2011-07-21T12:41:30Z")
> [@Cumbrian](#): > > [Channel Four]'s viewing share was far higher in the late 80s/early 90s because the number of channels was far fewer (so the viewing was split much less than it is now). Well, its share was around 10% then, at a time when BBC1 and ITV still had about 80% between them. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to call that “minor”. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/32 "2011-07-21T13:23:50Z")
> [@](#): > > when i heard him in my late teens in the early 90s, it was a voice from the unknown, expressing thoughts that made me laugh, made me gasp, and made me look at the world anew. um, everyone who has _ever_ gone through their late teens has found a person/book/film/music which they claim has done that for them. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/33 "2011-07-21T13:25:10Z")
derp double post. ---
**Author:** ![Cumbrian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce7236/32.png) [@Cumbrian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cumbrian)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/34 "2011-07-21T13:29:15Z")
My point, on topic, is that 10% of 50m viewers is 5m people - translate through to the audiences of the programmes that Bill Hicks was on and it is a fairly large number when we’re talking about the audience for a stand up comic. I can’t check it because I don’t have access to the data going back that far - but I would guess that the audiences for the programmes Hicks was on would be average out at higher audiences than were pulled in for the likes of The Office and the work of more recent comics who have had great success. I agree that he wasn’t “wildly popular” but he was sawn off at an early age and he had a groundswell of exposure from a channel that could guarantee decent numbers of viewers that could have made him very big in this country at least (had he wanted it - and that, I guess, is a different argument). ---
**Author:** ![NAF1138](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naf1138/32/3245_2.png) [@NAF1138](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NAF1138)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/35 "2011-07-21T13:36:58Z")
> [@jz78817](#): > > um, everyone who has _ever_ gone through their late teens has found a person/book/film/music which they claim has done that for them. And that makes this any less meaningful why? Douglas Adams did it for me when I was a young teenager. His writing changed my life in a very literal way. I would guess that most Douglas Adams fans on this board were not introduced to him at such an impressionable age and didn’t find his work to be eye opening like I did, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t for me. And it doesn’t make it less important that it was. Just because every teenager falls in love with something doesn’t make the something they fall in love with any less important. I am not a crazy Bill Hicks fan. He was good, but I didn’t find him consistently hilarious. A lot of itt was too ranty for my taste. That doesn’t mean that I can’t appreciate what he did as a fan of stand up comedy, or appreciate why he was important in the history of the art form. Or appreciate that he had the best timing of almost any comic I have ever seen. Seriously, it’s like him and Cosby. His timing is so dead on it’s nuts. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/36 "2011-07-21T13:38:58Z")
I watched the “America” documentary onNetflix. It’s a very well done program and it certainly made Hicks’s personal story an engaging one. However, of all the actual standup clips it featured, the only one that really grabbed mesas the Jack Palance bit. Politically speaking, I would say that I find myself in agreement with a lot of what Hicks said, but for the most part as comedy and as entertainment, I just didn’t find him all that good. In the Palance bit, however, he was really performing. What the documentary didn’t make clear to me was Hicks’s place in the context of comedy both when he was alive and now. I’d liked to have seen interviews not only eigh guise who were close to Hicks personally but also those who as professionals consider him important. That’s the question that’s still unclear to me – what was he doing then that’s considers so important still and what is the context that explains that importance? ---
**Author:** ![a35362](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@a35362](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/a35362)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/37 "2011-07-21T13:42:17Z")
> [@NAF1138](#): > > …Or appreciate that he had the best timing of almost any comic I have ever seen. Seriously, it’s like him and Cosby. His timing is so dead on it’s nuts. “…or do you want to meet Chuck Norris?” ---
**Author:** ![MegaBee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f0a364/32.png) [@MegaBee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MegaBee)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/38 "2011-07-21T13:46:36Z")
> [@Max\_Torque](#): > > “No one knows what it’s like, to be a dustbin…in Shaftesbury…with hooligans…” Watch out, he might become a scalywag! ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/39 "2011-07-21T13:48:13Z")
> [@jz78817](#): > > um, everyone who has _ever_ gone through their late teens has found a person/book/film/music which they claim has done that for them. I don’t think that invalidates **Biffer\_Spice** ’s opinion, though. > [@Acsenray](#): > > Well, I don’t think the assertion was that Lewis Black was better merely because he yelled. But his style and presentation makes the material work. If you like him, then you must agree to some extent or other. Delivery is a huge part of comedy, and if you don’t like the way Hicks delivered his material, that make sense as a reason not to like him. I just think it’s kind of funny to describe their work that way. It’s like saying ‘Bill Hicks wasn’t funny, he just stood there and complained. Lewis Black complains and yells- now THAT’s funny!’ ---
**Author:** ![Biffer\_Spice\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7ea924/32.png) [@Biffer\_Spice\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffer_Spice_1)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/40 "2011-07-21T13:48:26Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > I watched the “America” documentary onNetflix. It’s a very well done program and it certainly made Hicks’s personal story an engaging one. However, of all the actual standup clips it featured, the only one that really grabbed mesas the Jack Palance bit. Politically speaking, I would say that I find myself in agreement with a lot of what Hicks said, but for the most part as comedy and as entertainment, I just didn’t find him all that good. In the Palance bit, however, he was really performing. What the documentary didn’t make clear to me was Hicks’s place in the context of comedy both when he was alive and now. I’d liked to have seen interviews not only eigh guise who were close to Hicks personally but also those who as professionals consider him important. That’s the question that’s still unclear to me – what was he doing then that’s considers so important still and what is the context that explains that importance? there’s a documentary called “it’s just a ride” featuring interviews with many comedians who try and address this. it mostly comes down to comments saying “it made me realise that’s the sort of thing i should be doing”, his bravery in doing stuff against the iraq war that went right against the system and ruined his chances of major success in america, and his timing, professionalism, dedication, and the fact he was performing stuff he wanted to perform, regardless of who listened or objected. Also that he viewed standup as the end product, not a path to greater success in some other form of art. https://www.youtube.com/embed/Gd5nXdO4-ig?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721.md?page=3)