Available material of Bill Hicks....

x-post

Actually, "relentless" is probably a better starter kit.

sounds like a plan....cheers

Oh, without question, especially the Rush Limbaugh bit, and the Jay Leno bit.

It's worth mentioning that "Philosophy" is a compilation that's been edited to sound like one continuous show. I've never actually heard the disc - anyone?

Oh, without question, especially the Rush Limbaugh bit, and the Jay Leno bit.

Or the "bit" where he's just disemboweling an unruly audience member. If you laugh, it's defensive. And a lot of the bits on "Rant" are so comp[letely hate-filled, he goes way past being a comedian and social critic and into being a one-man lynch mob. It's kind of startling the first time you hear it. "Jesus, Bill..."

God bless Bill.

Without a doubt Hicks is my favourite comedian. Republicans somehow gave him cancer, and that's exactly how it happened!

Do not see this show. It is awful.

They might do, but legally there's nothing they can do about it, I don't think. I'm sure they would have done something by now if they could, the show's been kicking around for a while.

there's a hell of a lot of stuff on youtube. this story he tells about the worst gig ever is pretty amazing -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc6yCinSlZk

My fave is called "The Flying Saucer Tour" - it's a real Hicks-vs-Audience kinda show, and very good.

^dead on. fucking spectacular.

he looks like john denver in that video

that "worst gig" story is terrifying/hilarious

yeah you tube is a goldmine. that 'worst gig' clip is one of 4 clips about gigs over the years, all prove how hillarious he was without a script. Sane Man is still the best place to start for the uninitiated think, also available in full on You Tube.

:D

there is a documentary on him I'm watching this week. I've actually heard very little of his stuff, so I'll just be writing about it as a nonfan.

so I guess if you're a fan, you'll want to see this. I prefer more onstage clips, or just an entire show.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/american-the-bill-hicks-story/5402

I don't understand the "but" in this sentence - yes, the preaching often obscured the comedy, or rather made the comedy more complicated and unnerving, but why does that make him less an avatar of free expression?

The title means to paint Hicks as an avatar of free expression through his "fearless" act, but as with George Carlin's late-life anger at American sloth and ignorance, his preaching not infrequently obscured the comedy.

speaking as a fan since way back, i have to say that doc is fantastic.

on netflix they have that thing with his HBO specials and its interesting to see that show in london the year he died (i think it was the year he died?) how he has the bombastic fiery cowboy entrance and it makes me wonder if he was gonna be some sort of thinking man's andrew dice clay if he had lived. more bombastic. more rock star. or maybe this would only have happened in england. don't know how popular he was getting in the states.

DL, I guess it's cuz I see a certain 'untransformed' element in some of Hicks's stuff -- ie, along with expressing his thoughts freely, his profession made it sort of incumbent upon him to spin it into a crafted monologue instead of blurting 'raw' logorrhea. I realize this is what a lot of his followers prize in him, but to me it's just a little unfocused and even edging toward lazy self-congratulation now and then. "Yay, Hicks or Carlin think the Pentagon and the advertising industry are full of shit, just like me!"

The doc makes it clear that he was just another somewhat popular TV-exposed comedian in the US for his entire career, never a breakout success. Hell, I dabbled in standup in New York around 1989-91, and I never saw him or thought about him much.

i like hicks but that cowboy entrance (and the "i always wanted to be a cowboy" monologue before it) is cringeworthy stuff indeed.

omg, where is the youtube morbz stand-up footage???????????

it was recorded on rocks

I guess what I'm saying is "free expression" isn't enough if I can read your ideas in the anarchist newspaper or hear them on Pacifica radio, or if you're asking to be admired for lecturing when you're also expected to be funny (and he WAS funny, sometimes).

xp

also really pedestrian is "so what if rock is the Devil's music, cuz it ROCKS" -- more like Kinison than I was expecting.

The doc has some weird gaps, like mentioning that Jay Leno was friendly and helpful to him in the '80s, with no mention of Hicks's bit eviscerating Leno later on... also the final Letterman appearance edit is just huh?, and the Denis Leary plagiarism stuff is omitted entirely.

i think that leno thing is one of the funniest things he ever did. he wasd funniest when he was being mean.

was funniest

The video I had of my act has degraded and been trashed, and I've had all the live audience members from my sets killed.

I would like to see a morbz standup clip if one ever surfaced :)

on netflix they have that thing with his HBO specials and its interesting to see that show in london the year he died (i think it was the year he died?) how he has the bombastic fiery cowboy entrance and it makes me wonder if he was gonna be some sort of thinking man's andrew dice clay if he had lived

I always thought of him as being kind of similar to Dice, but Dice in his prime was unparalleled. I do like Hicks and I've watched/heard nearly everything he's done but I always wished he was a little funnier.

i'm guessing there were lots of dukakis jokes

"okay, imagine yasujiro ozu, lina wertmuller, and bob rafelson are in an elevator, i think it might go a little something like this..." *morbz turns his back for dramatic impressionist flourish*

Ah, sorry Morbz, I don't know your IRL name so I didn't realise I was being all pernickety about your words rather than just something you linked to.

I base a lot of my opinion of Hicks on seeing him in the UK in 92 and the way he was willing to make the audience uncomfortable, thus avoiding the potential self-congratulation. Those are the moments I remember most strongly - the weird gaps between the jokes, which made the jokes more powerful. But there was definitely a risk of developing an unquestioning cult following just because there was an appetite for a comedian with his politics - the Gulf War bit was definitely the tipping point in the UK (well, that and the bit about being pulled over by the cops while tripping). I agree the rock material has dated very badly - you prefer Hendrix to Debbie Gibson? Big fucking deal. But I give him some leeway on the spiritual/anarchist stuff because (a) it worked on stage when juxtaposed with the dick jokes and (b) it became way more charged once he knew he was dying.

This doc does not sound essential.

Scott otm, angry Bill was my favorite Bill. I liked his stuff on religion, the whole devil + masturbation bit is one of my favorites...and in the right frame of mine, damn he could eviscerate hecklers. I dunno about the Dice comparison... honestly I can't stand Dice, I don't really see the similarity.

I was never a big fan of Hicks' whoa LSD will blow your mind stuff, throwing off the shackles of the material world etc etc...it's like, uh huh, get in line with every college student ever.

He's still one of my favorites though.

I would love to see the doc, I've heard good things.

there was never much actual stuff Leary plagiarised that's probably why the film leaves it out. Hicks never openly dissed him as far as i can recall and really there was very little overlap in the material aside from the fact that they both did 'i love smoking' bits and a bit about shooting Yoko Ono, some other vague references to stuff here and there. the average 2 comedians on the circuit at the time woulda had just about as much x over stuff imo. as much a fan as i am of Hicks, i always thought the similarity between Kinison and him was greater than Leary and him.

i mean this is pretty .. thin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWaJDF-3YhY&NR=1&feature=fvwp

"I do like Hicks and I've watched/heard nearly everything he's done but I always wished he was a little funnier."

this is true for me too. i admire some of what he did, but i do wince at times.

"it's like, uh huh, get in line with every college student ever."

yeah, this is why i was envisioning a future for him of rock star comic college draw. the brainy anti-dice really, but pushing some of the same pissed-off buttons. (i mean the blow job thing from the hbo thing that i was watching is, um, somewhat dice-ian.)

"Hicks never openly dissed him as far as i can recall"

he said he was gonna quit smoking just to see if dennis would do it too.

The saddest part of his passing is he never got to realize his dream of the TV show "Let's Hunt And Kill Billy Ray Cyrus"

xp mm i mean dissed him outright as a thief or whatever. UK telly had a clip in '93 of the night Sadowitz was punched in the face by a guy in the crowd at Just For Laughs in Montreal (for starting his show with "Good evening moose-fuckers") of Leary and Hicks laughing and joking together; they seemed pretty friendly. i keep waiting for that clip to show up on You Tube.

xp if he had actually gone through with it, we'd have no "Party in the USA"

there was never much actual stuff Leary plagiarised that's probably why the film leaves it out. Hicks never openly dissed him as far as i can recall and really there was very little overlap in the material aside from the fact that they both did 'i love smoking' bits and a bit about shooting Yoko Ono, some other vague references to stuff here and there. the average 2 comedians on the circuit at the time woulda had just about as much x over stuff imo. as much a fan as i am of Hicks, i always thought the similarity between Kinison and him was greater than Leary and him.

no, Hicks totally dissed him: "I have a scoop for you. I stole his [Leary's] act. I camouflaged it with punchlines, and to really throw people off, I did it before he did".

i thought i read that he was pissed when dennis's album came out.

like, that's what really pissed him off.

Leary definitely watered down Hicks persona and some specific jokes, though he's certainly managed to craft a career beyond that initial jacking.

The good news, Bill...in twenty years you'll be a cult icon. The bad news...Billy Ray will ride his teenage daughter to kajillions and Marky Mark will have an Oscar nomination.

The good news, Bill...in twenty years you'll be a cult icon. The bad news...Billy Ray will ride his teenage daughter to kajillions and Marky Mark will have an Oscar nomination.

Woops, I meant to italicize The saddest part of his passing is he never got to realize his dream of the TV show "Let's Hunt And Kill Billy Ray Cyrus"

kinison stole the crucifix bit didn't he? thought i remembered him doing that. i think sam just stole from anyone and everyone.

mm i've heard all these quotes over the years. i dunno, it still doesn't really back up the 'plagiarism' stuff imo but if people think he stole stuff then fair enough i just can't really see it from the clips. seems folk on You Tube appear to have been having this debate for years.

it was recorded on rocks

I lol'd

Is it the "I'm An Asshole" bit that's a direct rip?

btw I loathed "Dice" deeply and Kinison's was the last showbiz death that actually gave me pleasure

Are we counting Ronnie Reagan as "showbiz?"

http://www.thecomedynerds.com/2010/08/joke-stealing-is-comedy-justice-blind/

JOHN LENNON/BARRY MANILOW

Bill Hicks:We live in a world where John Lennon is murdered, yet Barry Manilow continues to make albums…if you’re gonna kill someone, have some *beep* taste. I’ll drive you to Kenny Rogers’ house.

Denis Leary: We live in a country where John Lennon takes six bullets to the chest, Yoko Ono is standing right next to him, not one *beep* bullet….bring me the head of Barry Manilow, I want to drink beer out of his empty head, I wanna have a Barry Manilow skull-keg party at my apartment.

JUDAS PRIEST/THE UNIMPORTANCE OF THEIR FANS

Bill Hicks: You know the story about the two kids that were big fans of this group Judas Priest, and they committed suicide, and the parents of the kids sued the band? First of all, two kids, big fans of Judas Priest, commit suicide. Wow. Two less gas-station attendants in the world. What, I don’t mean to sound cruel here, but I don’t think we lost a cancer cure. They weren’t that important. “Bill, you sound so cruel,” *beep* them, they were idiots, get it?

Denis Leary: Judas Priest on trial because kids commit suicide, what is that about?…Heavy metal fans are buying heavy metal albums, listening to the albums, then blowing their heads off with shotguns. Where’s the problem? That’s an unemployment sollution right there folks, it’s called natural selection…I say we put more messages on the albums, kill the band, then your parents, then yourself.

JIM FIX/SMOKING

Bill Hicks: Remember Jim Fix, that health-nut who died while jogging? Used to write BOOKS about jogging…what do you jot down about jogging? “Left foot, right foot, hemorage.” *beep* Jim…we’re gonna need a happier ending, buddy. Heart-attack while jogging, that’s heavy *beep* I’m glad I stayed inside instead of jogging. I was too busy smoking.

Denis Leary: Remember Jim Fix, the big famous jogging guy? Did a jogging book, did a jogging video, and dropped dead of a massive heart attack WHEN? When he was *beep* jogging, that’s when…it’s always the yogurt, sprout-eating *beep* get run over by a bus driven by a guy who smokes three and a half packs a day. “Sorry officer I didn’t see him, I was too busy smoking.”

LOTS OF MARLBOROS

Bill Hicks: I’m a heavy smoker, I go through about two lighters a day. I lost track of the packs, all that math.

Denis Leary: I love to smoke. I smoke seven thousand packs a day…

SHAMELESS THIEVERY

Bill Hicks: (on nonsmokers) Bunch of whining *beep* maggots.

Denis Leary: (on depressed celebs) Whining *beep* maggots.

ANNOYING NON-SMOKERS

Bill Hicks: Nonsmokers say the stupidest things. “What about second-hand smoke? It’s not just the smoke that you smoke, but the smoke that comes out of you, that’s called secondary-smoke. That’s not good smoke just cause it came out of you.” Shut the *beep* up, right now. Dammit, if I dont smoke, there’s gonna be secondary BULLETS coming your way.

Denis Leary: …you got all these little facts that you dig out of a newspaper or a pamphlet somewhere, and you store that little nugget in your little *beep* head, and you see us light up and you spew ‘em out at us, dont you? (Delivered exactly like Hicks portrayed a nonsmoker): “Well you know, smokin…takes ten years off your life!”

LEARY LIKES THE BOAT LINE

Bill Hicks: MC Hammer, there was another boat that left me on the island. “You wanna get on the Hammer boat with us?” No thanks, I’d rather stay here and eat my own flesh. You could sit and explain it to me from now until the end of time, and I’ll go, *beep* don’t get it, man.”

Denis Leary: …explain it to me, I missed the *beep* point some place, the boat left and I wasn’t on the boat.

AND THE CAPTAIN LINE
Bill Hicks:Everybody, this is your captain speaking. I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The bad news is, we’re going to crash. The good news is, there’s enough time to smoke a cigarette before we do.

Denis Leary:Folks, this is your captain speaking, look uhh, light ‘em up, cuz we’re going down. I got a carton of Camel non-filters, I’ll see you on the ground.

I don't see any plagiarism there /pisces

Several Hicks threads, I pick this one (see Rolling Reissues 2015 for audio, incl. prev. unreleased)

New doc, theatrical release
http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?ca=c694764f-1b03-4840-ac05-d9cdff29869e&c=6a933a10-8222-11e4-9290-d4ae5292c40b&ch=6b74c070-8222-11e4-92ea-d4ae5292c40b

trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzqNqDbGSUQ&feature=youtu.be

If that press link stops working, try
FathomEvents.com

HBO had one of his short specials on HBO Go recently, seeing him on video (vs audio) and with less famous material made me understand the Sam Kinison connection a lot more. He was sweaty and shouty in a way a lot of the CDs don't get across.

those leary quotes upthread are insane. i'd always heard ppl criticize him for borrowing material but i didn't realize he'd actually literally plagiarized entire routines word for word.

listening to bill hicks in 2017 is a strange experience. i played all four of his albums in the car the other week + one of the later live performances, first time i'd really listened to his stuff in probably like 15 years. some of his stuff comes across as really dated in the worst possible way (every existing rendition of his george michael routine deserves to be taken out and buried under a rock somewhere in the desert), but a lot of it holds up. some of his angry stuff goes so far that it's actually kind of disturbing, like his bit about jay leno committing suicide where he gets so into it that it reaches the point where it doesn't quite feel like a joke anymore. there's a few bits like that on riot in e minor that get so gross, even against deserving targets, that it's hard to laugh at them. most of his actual political stances don't seem particularly edgy or even really that left-wing anymore. even his bit about the 1992 LA riots, where he eventually gets around to making a decent point, includes a line where he wonders why drivers aren't just running over the rioters. the gulf war material aged well, unfortunately.

"most of his actual political stances don't seem particularly edgy or even really that left-wing anymore." i listened to him for the first time yesterday, and he would have voted for trump, no? this is also coming up in the zappa thread. i like the 90s vibes of the album production. But i find denis leary to be the least funny human on earth, and wikipedia tells me that denis stole his act from Bill Hicks.

he would have voted for trump, no?

lol waht

Denis is a terrible comedian who stole some specific, key bits from Hicks (the "smoking" routine in particular). Otherwise they bear no similarities to one another.

I see there's a side-by-side comparison upthread actually lol

from zappa thread. it rang true to my 1-day-old knowledge of hicks material:

yeah i dunno maybe zappa just sucks

honestly, he feels much less benign these days, because I really do feel like his whole worldview is pretty foundational to the whole angry nerd/Reddit atheist/gamergate/shitlord mindset that led to the alt right

― Universal LULU Nation (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, September 26, 2017 8:36 AM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

More by accident than intent but there's a thread there. Though if anything, as a couple of friends have noted, the line of descent to libertarian techbro might be even clearer.

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, September 26, 2017 10:40 AM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah what else? Obviously Bill Hicks, Dennis Miller (so then maybe Chevy Chase on Weekend Update as a precursor?), Dennis Leary...

― Universal LULU Nation (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, September 26, 2017 8:47 AM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the only alt-rightish/MRA type person i personally know is a friend from childhood who is a massive bill hicks fan

so that's sorted then he was a nazi

re-positioning him as a right-wing troll in the current context is, I think, a gross misrepresentation of the "transgressive" material he liked to do, which were a response to the right-wing puritanism of the 80s. The thing is that is pretty much dead now, the modern-day conventional image of a censoring scold is not a Moral Majority Xtian prude, it's a left-wing, "politically correct" SJW. But this was very much NOT the case in the political environment Bill was born out of.

x[

ums is wrong there imo - esp given that Dennis Miller was *always* a Republican/right-wing asshole. Hicks reveled in being offensive in his day, but the political climate/context is very different to now.

People around here also have drawn - not entirely unfairly, I should point out - connections from Devo to the current MRA nonsense, even though it's hard to imagine Mark Mothersbaugh subscribing or endorsing anything so stupid. Things get misappropriated or distorted and passed down in various ways all the time, but retroactively condemning Hicks or Devo for what their fans did with their shit is neither fair nor productive imo.

that sounds like a good context to better understand what I was hearing. I'm a bit too young to get there myself. but it seems he is being repositioned in that way by right wing trolls, which is so very ironic and tragic.

that was an xpost which basically repeats what you have said in the meantime ha

take this bit:

After a heckler repeatedly shouted "Free Bird", Hicks screamed that "Hitler had the right idea; he was just an underachiever!" Hicks followed this remark with a misanthropic tirade calling for unbiased genocide against the whole of humanity.

there are a bunch of ways to interpret this, but I don't think concluding he is a nazi is an accurate one (a comic nihilist = ok, and there you can see a connection to some of what goes on on like 4Chan and reddit, but at the same time I don't think Hicks would have *literally* advocated this as a political policy, the defense that he was a nightclub performing a standup comedy act does carry some weight imo)

IN a nightclub

oops

You can't politically analyse comedy material from a generation ago, not for the above purpose, not to hold the comic up to whatever current moral standard applies, not for any reason tbh.

If u do this you should be killed tbh

oh i didn't mean to imply that bill was right-wing at all. i think his wide-eyed 60s-ish routines about how we-are-all-one-so-let's-go-explore-outer-space-together are more than enough to set him apart from the alt-right crew (or the reddit atheists), and he clearly hated big business and marketing types more than anything so it's hard to see him evolving toward any sort of libertarianism. i'd been a bit worried that his conspiracymonger side would sound alex jones-ish now but it doesn't so much: his main conspiracy interest (jfk assassination) is about as mainstream as conspiracy stuff gets.

Criticism of Hicks for sexism/misogyny is totally fair imo. He wasn't just trying to rile up Christian prudes with that stuff. I think he crosses over with libertarians as well, but perhaps it'd be fairer to blame him for "brocialists"?

The "it's just a ride" bit is kind of awful in the way it's used now but "The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace" is about the least-Trumpian viewpoint you can hold.

his ranting conspiracy-and-drug-loving persona is pretty contagious. "squeegee your third eye" must have been a popular thing to say in some 90s crowds of the right age.

i also have such a clearer idea of what exactly maron was failing at trying to do in his old specials. (i don't hate new maron stand up).

the rant in e-minor bit about the orgy between conservative figureheads in the hot tub is an instance of him going so far beyond the joke that it stops being funny and then gets sorta funny again, anyway i think about that bit anytime someone mentions rush limbaugh

bill hicks routines that deserve to be buried underground: pretty much anything he said about music especially the one where he imagines jimi hendrix raping debbie gibson

hicks was enormously important to my political development when i was growing up, much as i find some of his stuff now to be crypto libertarian conspiracy theoreist garbage “he would’ve voted for trump” is pretty off the mark

I think one of the reasons things like this are so muddled is that for decades and decades censorship and cultural gate-keeping was almost exclusively the province of the right, and primarily the Xtian Right. They didn't like rock n roll, they didn't like rap music, they didn't like pornography, they didn't like foul language, etc. etc. And this was the contingent that people like Zappa, Hefner, Hicks, and Albini (to name some names currently being discussed) were reacting against. To a man (and no it's not coincidental that they were all men) they railed against any limitation on expression, speech, creativity, media imagery. And large portions of their respective fanbases, both on the left and right, took this message to heart. The key position was that *anything* in terms of speech should be permissible, "no one can tell me what to say or think" etc. This is essentially a position that cleaves between both political poles, it's got an attraction on either side.

And then from the mid-70s or so (thinking primarily about McKinnon and Dworkin on the feminist end of things here), there started to be some movement on the left that mirrored conservative arguments against various types of speech, but not from an explicitly religious angle and more from a "this speech is harmful to segment X of the population" angle. I think this distinction is important, personally, because I don't think the Xtian right really ever had anybody's "best interests" in mind as much as they were concerned about social control and maintaining a sexist and racist state.

But as this movement from the left gathered strength and impact up through the 90s, then you had a segment of the population that saw this too as a censorship movement that was in essence no different from the Xtian right's, regardless of its motivations. And that's where you get MRA and 4Chan guys picking up the arguments and attitudes of prior generation's anti-censorship icons, because they refuse to see the context or the difference. They do not actually think it matters if racist speech is racist because free speech trumps everything, and other people don't matter. But I don't think Hicks felt that way, and to place him in that context as a progenitor of that kind of shit is wrong. He had plenty of failings and I will readily admit he went over the line - willfully and explicitly - on a variety of occasions, but he was not a totally self-absorbed idiot that would have thrown his lot in with Nazis and Trumpists.

many xps

oh everybody upthread made that point better than i did, sorry

xp

tbf I only thought he'd vote trump because of hatred of the clintons + misogyny

Good post outic

yeah great post shakey

It may be also relevant to point out how quickly and completely the Xtian right's precipitous failure to censor society was - the internet basically ended that debate once and for all. The population (or enough of it anyway) wants to be able to view/read/listen to absolutely anything, and they promptly retreated and conveniently forgot that they ever held those positions at all, so much so that they are willing to vote for an amoral sex offender for president.

But on the left issues of sexism and racism are still paramount, and while next to nobody on the left is calling for state censorship, they continue to make arguments (entirely legitimate ones imo) that it's important to acknowledge the roots and nature and damage of sexist and racist speech, depictions in the media, etc. And so the free speech brigade kicks against them, because they're the only ones left to kick against.

xp

think at this point if I had to vote for one Bill Hicks joke to remain on earth it would be the one about the pigeons saying "coup"

xp yes, very good posts. I was not convinced my impression, based on one listen to rant in e-minor, was correct. But I was surprised to see it echoed the next day by a poster that (I think?) has more 90s context. I'm also not sure I care to dig deeper into Hicks after this but am glad to have a more complete take on who he was, since people seem to frequently drop his name iton current stuff.

tbf I only thought he'd vote trump because of hatred of the clintons + misogyny

Hicks would totally be a third/fourth party dude now, or possibly a BernieBro.

think at this point if I had to vote for one Bill Hicks joke to remain on earth it would be the one about the pigeons saying "coup"

― thirst trap your hare (DJ Mencap), Friday, September 29, 2017 3:19 PM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmao i totally forgot about this one

haha yeah I can totally see him as a Berniebro

"they've got the window all set up to look exactly like it did on that day...and it's really accurate, ya know...cause oswald's not in it!"

I haven't listened to any Hicks stuff in at least 10 years but if I had to describe his POV I would place him in the context of other Texas freaks - the Butthole Surfers, ZZ Top, Willie Nelson, those kinds of guys. He was sort of a hippie at heart (see his "just a ride" bit quoted upthread) that liked drugs and being *out there* and that included "freaking out the squares" by being offensive and grossing people out or shocking them. And as a result he was also in that stand-up tradition of not wanting his audience to get *too* comfortable, if he felt they were too much on his side he would try to provoke them, he didn't want to be predictable and safe, he wanted to be dangerous. And it's the latter stuff that obviously is subject to getting hijacked for various reasons.

xp

Sam Kinison too, though he got so fucked up on coke that his “material” = “yelling” by the end

But yeah, Butthole Surfers is an otm comparison

My favorite Hicks is pretty innocuous but I love it:

https://youtu.be/BwkdGr9JYmE

“whatchoo readin for”

Haha yeah thats a good bit

god this guy is such a mean-spirited shithole

the interview piece with his brother on netflix was good. the longer bits of stand up ranting with no funny parts are a bit awkward. still, it's easy to recognize Hick's voice in following (and I suppose concurrent) generations. I watched a similar brother-interview-documentary-hybrid short on netflix for sam kinison, who I only remembered from 'Wild Thing'. If the Hicks one was occasionally awkward, it is downright surreal listening to kinison's brother/manager talk about how sam's stand up is timeless before a clip of sam simply screaming or doing probably the most poorly aged shit imaginable on a stage.

lol Kinison is an interesting figure but I would not call much of his material "timeless"

generally speaking standup is v v rarely timeless

Stand-up comedians still have a weird hard-on for Kinison.

name them

name them

― sans lep (sic), Wednesday, January 23, 2019 2:58 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

most of the well known gen x or baby boomer comedians

norm macdonald, chris rock, seinfeld etc.

he was well-liked by his contemporaries. later generations, idk

I'm fairly confident that there will be millennial comics who are comedy nerds and like the big names of previous generations. probably not the kind of comics that get netflix specials, but if you are in a comedy club in a random city in north america type thing

citation needed

that's a dumbass rejoinder

sic demanding receipts is a)commonplace and b) usually the harbinger of a long, possibly boring and imminent takedown

Lol otm

I appreciate sic's comedy knowledge