William Melvin Hicks (December 16, 1961 - February 26, 1994) is an American standing comedian, social critic, satirist, and musician. The material, which covers a wide range of social issues including religion, politics, and philosophy, is controversial, and is often immersed in dark comedy.
At the age of 16, while still in high school, he began performing at the Comedy Workshop in Houston, Texas. During the 1980s, he toured the United States extensively and made numerous high-profile television appearances; but in the UK he garnered a significant fan base, filled big spots during his 1991 tour. He also achieved little recognition as a guitarist and songwriter.
Hicks died of pancreatic cancer on February 26, 1994, in Little Rock, Arkansas, at the age of 32. In subsequent years, his work received significant recognition among the creative - especially after a series of posthumous album releases - and he developed substantial followers of the cult. In 2007 he was voted sixth in the UK Channel 4 list of 100 Biggest Stand-Up Commanders, and climbed to number four on the 2010 list. In 2017, Rolling Stone magazine ranked thirteen in the list of 50 the best stand-up comic of all time.
Video Bill Hicks
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Hicks was born in Valdosta, Georgia, son of James Melvin "Jim" Hicks (1923-2006) and Mary Reese Hicks, Lynn and Steve's younger brother. The family lived in Florida, Alabama, and New Jersey before settling in Houston, Texas, when Bill was seven years old. He was interested in comedy at an early age, mimicking Woody Allen and Richard Pryor, and writing a routine with his friend, Dwight Slade. At school he started doing comedy, mostly derived from Woody Allen material, for his classmates. At home, he would write a line and shift it under the door of his brother's bedroom, Steve, the only respected member of Bill's family, for his critical analysis. "Keep it up", Steve told him. "You're really good at this."
From the beginning, Hicks began to ridicule his Southern Baptist family's religious beliefs. "We are Yuppie Baptists," he joked with the Houston Post in 1987. "We're worried about things like, 'If you scratch your neighbor, Subaru, should you leave a note?'" Cynthia Biographer True describes a typical argument with his father:
Elder Hicks would say, "I believe that the Bible is a literal word from God." And Bill will reply, "No, Dad." "Well, I'm sure that's true." "Well," Bill replied, "you know, some people believe they are Napoleons, that's okay, faith is neat, respect them, but do not share them like they are the truth."
However, Hicks did not reject the spiritual ideology itself, and throughout his life he sought alternative methods to experience it. Kevin Slade, Dwight's brother, introduced him to Transcendental Meditation and other forms of spirituality. Over one Thanksgiving weekend he took Hicks and Dwight to a TM course in Galveston. Concerned about his rebellious behavior, his parents took him to psychoanalysts at the age of 17. According to Hicks, after the first group session, the analyst took him aside and told him, "You can keep coming if you want, but it's them, not you."
Maps Bill Hicks
Careers
Beginning
Hicks is associated with a Texas Outlaw Comics comic group developed at the Comedy Workshop in Houston in the 1980s.
California and New York
In January 1986, Hicks used drugs and his financial resources were reduced. Yet his career received another advance in 1987, when he appeared on Rodney Dangerfield Young Comedians Special. That same year, he moved to New York City, and for the next five years was done about 300 times a year. On the album relentlessly , she joked that she stopped using drugs because "once you have UFO boarded, it's hard to beat that", although in her appearance she continues to praise the virtues of LSD, marijuana, and psychedelic mushrooms.
She eventually fell back into the chain of cigarettes, a theme that would have been very influential in her appearance since then. Nicotine addiction, smoking, and occasionally trying to stop being a recurring theme in action during his final years.
In 1988, Hicks signed a contract with his first professional business manager, Jack Mondrus.
On the song "Modern Bummer" from his 1990 album Harmful, Hicks said he stopped drinking alcohol in 1988.
In 1989, he released his first video, Sane Man ; remastered version with 30 extra minutes of recording released in 1999.
Initial fame
In 1990, Hicks released their first album, Dangerous , performing on a One Night Stand special HBO and performing at Montreal's Just for Laughs festival. He is also part of an American stand-up comedy group performing in West End London in November. Hicks was a big hit in England and Ireland and went on tour there all through 1991. That year, he went back to Only for Laughter and filmed his second video, Endlessly.
Hicks made a short detour to the music record with the Marble Head Johnson album in 1992 in collaboration with Houston's high school friend Kevin Booth and Austin Texas drummer Pat Brown. During the same year he toured in England, where he recorded a video of Revelations for Channel 4. He closed the show with his philosophy that soon became famous about life, "It's Just a Ride." Also on the tour he recorded a stand-up performance that was released entirely on a double CD titled, Salvation. Hicks was selected as "Hot Standup Comic" by Rolling Stone magazine in 1993. He moved to Los Angeles in 1992. Hicks and Tools
The Progressive metal band Tool invited Hicks to open a number of concerts in his performance at Lollapalooza in 1993, where Hicks once asked viewers to search for lost contact lenses. Thousands meet.
Tool Members feel that they and Hicks "resonate similar concepts". Intending to raise awareness about Hicks material and ideas, Tool dedicate their triple-platinum album ÃÆ' â € nima (1996) to Hicks. Both lenticular casing of the album packaging Æ' n n nima as well as the chorus of the title song "ÃÆ' â € nema" made reference to the sketch of the Hicks album of Arizona Bay, where he pondered the idea Los Angeles falls into the Pacific Ocean. ÃÆ'â € nima 'last track , "Third Eye" contains samples from Hicks Dangerous and Endless albums.
An alternative version of the Æ'> € nima artwork shows Bill Hicks painting, calling him "Another Dead Hero," and mentions Hicks found both on liner notes and on notes.
Sensor and after
In 1984, Hicks was invited to appear on Late Night with David Letterman for the first time. He has a joke that he often uses in comedy clubs about how he caused serious accidents that made his classmates use a wheelchair. NBC has a policy that no flawed jokes can be aired on the show, making its prominent routine difficult to do without mentioning words like "wheelchair."
On October 1, 1993, Hicks is scheduled to appear on the Late Show with David Letterman on CBS, where Letterman has just moved. It was her 12th appearance at Letterman's final night show, but her entire performance was removed from the broadcast: until that point was the only occasion where all comedian routines were cut after the recording. Hicks' stand-up routine was removed from the show, Hicks said, because the producer Letterman believes the material, which includes jokes involving religious and anti-abortion movements, is not suitable for broadcast. Producer Robert Morton initially blamed CBS for refusing to take responsibility; Morton later admitted it was his decision. Although Letterman later expressed regret over how Hicks had been dealt, Hicks did not appear on the show again. Hicks actively underwent chemotherapy during his last appearance at the Late Show, unbeknownst to Letterman and most others outside Hicks's immediate family, and died less than four months later.
Letterman finally broadcasted his whole censored routine on January 30, 2009. Hicks's mother, Mary, was present in the studio and appeared in front of the camera as a guest. Letterman took responsibility for the original decision to remove the Hicks set from the 1993 show. "He says more about me as a man than he said about Bill," he said, after airing, "because there's absolutely nothing wrong with that."
Influence on Denis Leary
For years, Hicks became friends with fellow comedian Denis Leary. But in 1993, Hicks was furious by the album Leary No Cure for Cancer , which featured lines and subjects similar to Hicks' routines. According to American Scream: The Bill Hicks Story by Cynthia True, after hearing the album, Bill was very angry. "Over the years, out of the ordinary, he pretty much ignored Leary's appointment.Combedians borrowed, stole goods, and even bought a little from each other.Longton Berle and Robin Williams are famous for it.This is different.Leary has practically taken the line for outlines the actions of Bill and recorded . "The friendship ended abruptly as a result.
At least three stand-up comedians have gone on record stating that they believe Leary steals Hicks material as well as his persona and his attitude. In an interview, when Hicks was asked why he stopped smoking, he replied, "I just want to see if Denis too." In another interview, Hicks said, "I have a spoon for you, I stole his acting [Leary] I disguised it with punchlines, and, to really throw people away, I did it before he did it." During the 2003 Comedy Central Roast of Denis Leary, comedian Lenny Clarke, a friend of Leary's, said there was a backstage cigarette box from Bill Hicks with the message, "I wish I got this for you sooner." This joke is cut from the last broadcast.
The controversy surrounding plagiarism is also mentioned in American Scream :
Leary was in Montreal hosting the "Nasty Show" at Club Soda, and Colleen [CoGarr?] Was coordinating the talent so he stood backstage and heard Leary perform material very similar to old Hicks riffs, including the immortal Jim Fixx joke: "Keith Richards lives longer Jim Fixx, runner and health nut." The plot thickens. "When Leary comes off the stage, Colleen, more shocked than angry, says," Hey, you know it's Bill Hicks! Do you know that is the material? " Leary stood there, staring at her without saying a word, and quickly left the dressing room.
Materials and styles
Hicks appearance style seen as a game of emotion listeners. He expressed anger, disgust, and apathy when speaking to the audience in a relaxed and private manner, which was only talked to his friends. He will invite his hearers to challenge the authority and existential nature of "accepted truth". One such message, which he often uses in his show, is delivered in a news report style (to draw attention to the negative oblique news organization given to the story about drugs):
Nowadays, a young man with sour realizes that all matter is merely energy that is condensed into slow vibrations - that we are all subjective experiencing self-consciousness. There is no such thing as death, life is a dream, and we are our own imagination. It's Tom with the weather.
American philosophers and ethnomocologists, Terence McKenna, have often been the most controversial source of controversial psychic and contradictory material Hicks; he cruelly plays a shortened version of McKenna's "Stoned Ape" human evolution model as a routine during his last few performances.
One of Hicks's most cited lines was delivered during a gig in Chicago in 1989 (later released as pirated I'm Sorry, Folks ). After heckler repeatedly shouted "Free Bird", Hicks shouted that "Hitler has the right idea; he's just an underachiever!" Hicks follows these words with bad words calling for an unbiased genocide against all mankind.
Many of Hicks' routines involve direct attacks on mainstream society, religion, politics, and consumerism. Asked in a BBC interview why he could not perform an exciting routine "for everyone", he said that such an action is impossible. He replied by repeating the comments made by an audience member to him, "We did not come to the comedy to think!", To which he replied, "Wow, where do you go to think I'll meet you there!" point "half way" between the viewer's expectations and his own desires, he said: "but the way I am halfway between, I mean, this is a nightclub, and, you know, this is an adult, and what what do you expect? "
Hicks often discusses popular conspiracy theories in his performance, especially the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He mocked the Warren Report and Lee Harvey Oswald's official version as "lone nut assassin." He also questioned the mistakes of David Koresh and the Branch Davidian compound during the Waco Siege. Hicks will end some of his shows, especially those recorded in front of a larger audience as albums, with his artificial "murder" onstage, making a gunshot effect to the microphone when it falls to the ground.
Diagnosis of cancer
On June 16, 1993, Hicks was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that had spread to his liver. He began receiving weekly chemotherapy, while still on tour and also recorded his album, Arizona Bay , with Booth. He also worked with comedian Fallon Woodland on a pilot episode of a new talk show, titled Counts of the Netherworld for Channel 4 at the time of his death. Budget and concept were approved, and a pilot was filmed. The Pilot's "Counts of the Netherworld" was shown at the tenth tenth Tribute Night events around the world on February 26, 2004. After being diagnosed with cancer, Hicks would often joke that any given performance could be the last; the public, however, was unaware of his condition, and only a few close friends and family members knew about the disease. She performed the last of her career at Caroline in New York on January 6, 1994; he moved back to his parents' house in Little Rock, Arkansas, shortly after. He called his friends to say goodbye before he stopped talking on February 14th.
Death
Hicks died of the effects of pancreatic cancer on Saturday, February 26, 1994 in Little Rock at the age of 32. His body was buried in the graves of a family grave in the Tomb of Magnolia, Leakesville, Mississippi.
In early 1995 his family released a short essay written by Hicks a week before his death:
I was born William Melvin Hicks on December 16, 1961 in Valdosta, Georgia. Ugh Melvin Hicks from Georgia. Yee Har! I'm starting to live with the wrong foot. I always "wake up," I guess you'll say. Some parts of me are shouting for new insights and new ways to make the world a better place. All this goes out year after year, in many of my creative interests which are the tools I bring to the Party. Writing, acting, music, comedy. A deep love of literature and books. Thank God for all the artists who have helped me. I have read these words and I am leaving - dreaming of my own imaginative dream. Train them at will, eventually forming bands, comedies, more bands, movies, anything creative. This is the coin of the world I use in my words - Vision. On June 16, 1993 I was diagnosed with "liver cancer that has spread from the pancreas." One of the weirdest and worst jokes in life imaginable. I have made recent advances in my attitude, my career, and realizing my dreams that it just keeps me standing in my head for a while. "Why me !?" I will cry, and "Why now !?" Well, I know there will probably never be an answer to these specific questions, but maybe by telling a little bit about myself, we can find some other answers to other questions. That might help our own way, to realize my dream of New Hope and New Happiness. Amen. I leave love, in laughter, and in truth and wherever truth, love and laughter stay, I am in the spirit.
Legacy
His albums Arizona Bay and Rant in E-Minor were released posthumously in 1997 in the footsteps of Voices from the Rykodisc label. Danger and Endless re-released simultaneously.
In a 2005 poll to find Comedian Comedians, comedians and comedians voted for the 13th Hicks in "The Top 20 Greatest Comedy Acts Ever" list. In "Comedy Central Presents: 100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time" (2004), Hicks was ranked 19th. In March 2007, he was voted sixth on the UK Channel 4 list of 100 Biggest Stand-Up Commanders, and rose to number four on the 2010 list.
Devotees have incorporated Hicks' words, images, and attitudes into their own creation. By using audio sampling, fragments of his rants, criticism, social criticism, and philosophy have found their way into many musical works, such as the live versions of Super Furry Animals' "The Man Do not Give a Fuck" and Adam Freeland " Want Your Soul ". The effect on the Band Tool is well documented when it is sampled at the beginning of the song "Third Eye"; he "appeared" on the album Fila Brazillia Maim That Tune (1995) and on the album titled Episenal SPA SPA (1997), both dedicated to Hicks; British band's second album Radiohead The Bends (1995) is also dedicated to his memory. American indie rock band Built for Spill song "Planting Seeds" on his 2009 album There Is No Enemy hits Hicks routines on advertising and marketing, which appear in Bill Hicks: Revelations performance film . Singer/songwriter Tom Waits listed Say in E-Minor as one of the 20 most-cherished albums of all time.
The comedians citing Hicks as inspiration include Joe Rogan, Dave Attell, Lewis Black, Patton Oswalt, David Cross, Russell Brand, Ron White, Frankie Boyle, and Brendon Burns.
British actor Chas Early described Hicks in the one-man stage show Bill Hicks: Slight Return, which aired in 2004. The show was co-written by Chas Early and Richard Hurst, and envisioned Hicks's view of the world 10 years after his death.
Hicks is mentioned in the 1999 British film Human Traffic . In the film, the young protagonist and hip-club, "Jeep" praised Hicks as an alternative thinker, and explained that he needed to get a regular infusion of Hicks insights. Before leaving his home to begin the film's main adventure, Jip declared: "... the first daily shot of the late Prophet Bill Hicks... just to remind me not to take life too seriously." He then watched the clips of one of Hicks's jokes about drugs, and how they never affected him badly.
On February 25, 2004, British MP Stephen Pound posted an early-day movement entitled "Bill Hicks Death Anniversary" (EDM 678 of the 2003-04 session), a text that reads:
That the House recorded with the sadness of the 10th anniversary of the death of Bill Hicks, on February 26, 1994, at the age of 33 [ sic ]; recall his statement that his words would be a bullet in the heart of consumerism, capitalism, and the American Dream; and mourning the death of one of the few people who might be mentioned as worthy of inclusion with Lenny Bruce in the list of honest and cruel political philosophers.
Hicks appeared in flashback scenes in the comic book series Vertigo Garth Ennis, Preacher , in the "Underworld" story in issue No. 31 (November 1997).
Hicks is the subject of 2000 "Bill Hicks" honors by fellow Ed Hamell of Hamell in the Court.
In 2014, Bill Hicks Bar, a submarine bar located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada opened in his honor.
Movies and documentaries
Annex Houston (1986) is an early standing video in Texas.
Sane Man (1989) is the first official video recording that Bill Hicks recorded.
Ninja Bachelor Party (1991) is a 1991 low-budget comedy film produced by and starring Bill Hicks, Kevin Booth and David Johndrow. This is a parody of the martial arts film and deliberately dubbed out improperly.
One Night Stand (1991) was the first HBO stand series on February 15, 1989. Half-hour series aired weekly and featured special stand-up comedies from some of the best performing comedians.. The series originally consisted of 55 specials for four years at HBO.
Relentless (1992) was recorded at Centaur Theater during the annual Laughs Cheerful Comedy Festival in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Despite the common title, CD albums were recorded on separate performances, after the Just for Laughs festival has closed.
A documentary entitled American: The Bill Hicks Story, based on interviews with family and friends, aired on March 12, 2010, at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas.
Russell Crowe announced in 2012 that he will direct the biopic of Bill Hicks. Crowe was originally considered a comedian playing, but Mark Staufer, a schoolmate actor and writer on the film, has suggested this section is now open for casting. Production is expected to begin in 2013.
Discography
Bibliography
- Love Everyone: Fonts, Lyrics, Routines
References
Further reading
Note
External links
- Official website
- Bill Hicks's Last Interview 1993
- WebCitation Archive
- Bill Hicks on IMDb
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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