I know exactly what you mean about Arizona Bay but, cards on the table, I am a huge Bill Hicks fan. I came across him when Channel 4 broadcast his extraordinary Montreal one man show from 1991, and was hooked. There was enough concentrated energy on that stage to power an entire rock festival, but it was never uncontrolled. As it turns out, it was one of his best performances. (This may well be partly because he wasn't playing to a home crowd. He always had a harder time trying to find audiences in the States who would rally round his America-bashing.)

Declamatory, profane, judgmental, yet surprisingly moral at the heart of it all, Bill took his cue from the shouty American stand-ups of the mid-80s - especially his mentor, Sam Kinison - but chose to do something else with it entirely. (His apparent amorality and casual iconoclasm usually get him lumped in with Chris Morris, although the two couldn't be further from each other in style.) Hearing him can never be quite the same as seeing him - he was a great physical comedian - but you might want to seek out the 'Relentless' album, which also contains a lot of his Montreal HBO Special material.

'Dangerous', his first album, contains a lot of the material that gets cited as 'classic', and is also very good, if a little dubious in places (he stopped doing the Jimi Hendrix / Debbie Gibson 'rape' bit after a while). Both 'Arizona Bay' and 'Rant In E Minor' suffer from background guitar music, stemming from an idea which Bill never had the time to reflect and renege on as he died shortly after they were mastered. (They weren't released for another three years - probably because the company thought that there wouldn't be much of a market for them in the STates if he wasn't around to tour them...)

'Rant', although it still contains some fine Hicks moments, is in places quite hard to listen to, as occasionally the comedy is consumed by sheer anger and you're just left with an angry, frustrated man shouting on stage. It's no surprise to learn that Hicks had already learnt that he had pancreatic cancer, which has no identifiable cause and no cure.

He died in early 1994 shortly before he had been due to come over to England, where he had always received a much warmer reception than he ever had at home, to record a pilot for a new comedy vehicle. As his last two albums hadn't been released, his reputation over here for several years had to rest solely on the two albums already released and the videos of Montreal ('Dangerous') and of his last show of his British tour in 1992 ('Revelations'), which, to answer your final question, are the two things you really should see.

More information can be found at (appropriately enough): http://www.sacredcowproductions.com/enter.html

Now someone post an article telling me why I'm completely wrong...

Bill Hicks was really good
BUT
His early death does mean the case is closed and it's easy to confer saint status on him. This why rock journalists and bands like Tool feel safe in praising him - there's no chance he'll come back and shame us.
Retroactively, many of random aspects of his life are being made out to be positive moral decisions. i.e Hicks never sold out. Hicks was never offered the opportunity to sell out, so we'll never know if he would have done. He did do a sit-com pilot once though, in which he played a comedy sailor. I'm told by us comic Tom Rhodes that it it truly awful. Interesting that this blot is always missed out of the eulogies.
Like Cobain, you get used to hearing the phrase 'Hicks died for you'. Neither of them died for us. They just died.
Likewise, being bumped on Letterman is seen as proof that Hicks was too dangerous. Maybe. Or maybe the show just ran long.

I didn't know about Hick's sitcom pilot. It's likely that had he lived he would have become tired of his slavish fans, disenchanted with stand-up, lost some of his passion and rage through success and "sold out". (Incidentally, I am one of those that indulge fat-bellied, poor-quality success in the belief that the comedian/actor/musician in question will suddenly wake up, remember where they put their talent and bite us on the arse with it). But that would not have detracted from the quality of his material when he was in his prime. I saw him do "Revelations" at the Dominion in '92 or '93, whenever it was and it remains the greatest live stand-up I have ever seen. Not that I was thinking that at the time, I was too busy laughing. He excelled in both material and presentation, and that, unfortunately, is a rarity. Some of the material may seem predictable now, Jon, but that's only because it's been ripped off so much since then (and am I the only one to see Hicks' long pauses, tempo changes and understated mime in Eddie Izzard's "unique" style?) - at the time no one else was doing stuff about, for instance, the gulf war that was both funny and truthful, and his own favourite subject, JFK, was hardly and obvious target (no pun intended), a fact he aluded to onstage. And bear in mind that Hicks toured the southern states of America with much of this material and alot that was more provocative, risking life and limb in redneck bars and clubs just to excorcise his own demons (at least, that's what I assume - he can't have made much money, and it's certainly no route to hitting the big time). Definately get "Revelations" before you make your mind up, and let us know what you think. But for god's sake don't watch that fawning tribute thingy that's been included, it will further cloud your preconceptions. Although Letterman's shifty, guarded comments on Hicks' never-broadcast last appearance are, er, Revelatory. I think "I regret...mistakes that were made on his behalf" was how he put it. Clear as mud, Dave.

Louise

Couple of points.

1) Hicks was offered the chance to sell out. A was offered a commerical for Orange Drink and turned it down.
2) The Sit-com pilot is called 'Counts of the Netherworld', the pilot that is knocking around was done on Austin public access TV along with Kevin Booth, who was a life long friend. for a Halloween show although he was pitching it to C4. Consequently the quality is pretty bad and the gags are equally bad (actually there aren't any gags as such) to - there is an audio version of some of it on darktimes - can't remember the url but you can get to it through billhicks.com which is nice and easy to remember. There is an amusing bit where Hicks plays a hillbilly misquoting the bible and so on - I like, but then I've just finished writing my disseration on him and I'm pretty sick of him at this point.
3) Yeah, I reckon Revelations is the best thing to watch - try with the sound off. Although some of the non-comedy on Rant is quite fun.
4) Apparently Kevin Booth is putting together another album which should be out at the end of the year, mind you what is really great is last ever show he did - there is a grotty bootleg around. I won't say because I already have.
5) What is the stupid thing about doing the same gag. That's what ever single comedian does. That's how comedy works. Bill Hicks never really did gags anyway it was organic, reduce to the absurd and all that. That was his style anyway, pushing the point, (great bit of Rev when everytime he says 'This is not a joke' the louder the laughter gets) Catharsis, me thinks. He would often cut the audience down when they claped or laughed and cheer them one when they booed at it him.
6) I'm bored now. Bye

No - not counts of the netherworld
There's another one

Re: 'Orange Drink' (TM)

Hicks claimed this was the brand name for a genuine British product, and from this the humour arose. But there's no such drink surely?

Just because a product hasn't filtered through to collective consciousness dosen't mean that it wasn't actually produced or indeed that it ever was.

He has referred to this in interviews, although I know he often just did comedic 'bits' in interviews I'm pretty certain that it was true. I don't think he would have made something up like that - it would just be dumb.

I have got a copy of a screenplay he wrote involving Elvis coming back after pretending to be dead - it's funnier than it sounds. It's called 'The Kings Last Tour' but I don't think it would have been a sit-com.

Other than that I've no idea, but would dearly love to get hold a copy of it, or at least the title would be nice.

Bill Hicks puts to shame all other comics. He was Lenny Bruce meets Mark Twain. Unlike Fry, Elton, Izzard (anyone you'd like to name) he didn't suck Satan's cock. Hicks is revered because for once somebody was up there saying what most of us are feeling and thinking. He's revered because he wasn't just another Madonna-dater, another Spew Grant or another cockney Mason. We didn't lose our respect for him as we did Dennis Leary and the rest. Some of us lost 'our voice' the day Bill Hicks
died. And we'll be waiting a very long time for the 'new' Bill Hicks because someone of his calibre doesn't come round often.

>Bill Hicks puts to shame all other comics. He was Lenny Bruce meets Mark Twain. Unlike Fry, Elton, Izzard (anyone you'd like to name) he didn't suck Satan's cock. Hicks is revered because for once somebody was up there saying what most of us are feeling and thinking. He's revered because he wasn't just another Madonna-dater, another Spew Grant or another cockney Mason. We didn't lose our respect for him as we did Dennis Leary and the rest. Some of us lost 'our voice' the day Bill Hicks
>died. And we'll be waiting a very long time for the 'new' Bill Hicks because someone of his calibre doesn't come round often.
>


I think that this is the whole point of this thread, though - this reverence should be justified, not just assumed. We didn't lose respect for him because, unfortunately, he didn't live long enough to do anything that let us/himself down. Your comments, Gee, are exactly why this discussion needs to take place - surely not everything he did was genius, and at the end of the day he was still just a man trying to make money out of a career in comedy. He shouldn't be put on a pedestal like this, it could only harm his reputation. Re-examination of his material can only be a good thing. I for one will stick my neck out and say that when I saw his "Revelations" show live at the Dominion, I did think that some of the material got flogged to death (I'm thinking of Goat Boy here - you don't get to see just how long he dragged it out on the video) and he seemed in retrospect to have lost some of his passion (cf. "PLAY FROM YOUR FUCKING HEEEARRRRTT!!!" Attempts to recapture that kind of passion at the time of the Dominion show were exactly that - attempts. Although this was possibly influenced by the fact that he already knew he was dying of cancer). It's still the best live stand-up I've ever seen, though.