“We could still evolve, even at this eleventh hour. If I can stop smoking, anything is possible.” -Bill Hicks
I love stand up comedy. From my earliest days listening to well worn Cheech and Chong albums to damn near committing Chris Rock’s “Bring the Pain” special to memory, I regard stand up and stand up performers with the highest admiration. But while most people think it’s enough for a comedian to just be funny, I expect more from a performer than well honed punch-lines and rehearsed deliveries. In short, I expect the truth. Enter Bill Hicks.
In my estimation Bill Hicks was the greatest stand up comedian to have ever lived. The funniest? No, that would probably go to Eddie Murphy or Richard Pryor. The most popular? Unfortunately not. But the greatest? Unequivocally, the answer is yes and no other album better captures his essence as the great communicator than 1990′s “Dangerous.”
Humor has a way of exposing our faults and inadequacies in a way that forces us to see things for what they really are. Hicks understood this but there is also the feeling that the humor found in Hicks’ material was almost secondary to the need to wake us up from a long slumber. Once he got you in the door, you belonged to him.
Now there are some who would question my logic in pronouncing Hicks the greatest of all time when I have already conceded that there are others funnier. My reasoning, dear reader, lays in the material. No other comedic performer more fully realized the potential of his chosen medium than Bill Hicks. His routines were tirades, not merely Dennis Miller-esque rants or Lenny Bruce op/ed pieces but condemnations of the audience teeming with anger and vitriol made all the more cutting by his razor sharp wit, incredible timing and wicked imagination. To Hicks stand up was the end all be all, not just a launching pad for a prime time sitcom or movie career but the actual means to his end.
That Hicks continues to be an underground figure 14 years after his death has become both his greatest allure to fans just discovering his work and a depressing tragedy to those in tune with his philosophy. His words have been integrated into the works of other artists, perhaps most notably by the band Tool. Listening to both Hicks and Tool, it’s easy to see that both front man Maynard James Keenan and Hicks were kindred spirits fighting against the same ignorance and hypocrisy, attacking like two rabid dogs that have been battered and bruised by an apathetic and lethargic society.
“Dangerous” serves as both a gateway to and coalescence of the man’s words, his thoughts and feelings. In the album, we hear him ripping apart an America under conservative rule that is obsessed with the war on drugs, young vapid celebrities and Rick Astley. Sound familiar? The power of Hicks’ material isn’t just in the humor but also in its honesty and continued relevance. That we have yet to overcome the same social injustices is perhaps the greatest joke of all. But it’s also why his work demands a significant reevaluation.
But all is not bleak in Bill’s world view. Perhaps the most poignant of all of Hicks’ diatribes is found at the end of “Dangerous.”. Entitled “The Vision,” it imagines a world united by purpose and bound to the advancement of the species… cut short by two gun shots. That was Hicks, a realist and a dreamer wrapped into one. If there is one thing to be gleamed from Hicks its that things will never change unless we come to our senses and start asking questions of our leaders, our neighbors and our friends and family. To continue to bat a blind eye to life’s everyday injustices and annoyances is to leave the world in a decrepit, dying state never to change, never to evolve.
For more information on Bill Hicks, visit his official website, http://www.billhicks.com/. Hicks’ collected works are available on CD from Ryko and on iTunes.
The Bill Hicks Foundation for Wildlife Rehabilitation:
http://www.billhicks.org/
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