I Listened To Bill Hicks For The First Time In Years
Because nostalgia can be painful too
Laughter and/or funny material will be dubbed in later. Why pressure ourselves? (Bill Hicks, Dangerous)
I can’t remember how I first became a Bill Hicks fan. There was a point in the early 90s when he suddenly burst into the British pop cultural consciousness, and for once I managed to catch a cultural wave. As the title of his albums told us, here was a comedian who was both Dangerous and Relentless, and we lapped that up. He could have been formed perfectly by one of the marketing teams he excoriated to appeal to guys like me: progressive enough to be anti-war, but transgressive enough to still talk about sex; liberated enough to have material about drugs, but experienced enough in the ways of stand-up comedy to be so much more confident on stage than almost any British comedian could manage.
(Maybe there was a cultural exchange going on — we sacrificed Billy Connolly to the world of Hollywood sitcoms for a few years and got Hicks in return.)
Then, of course, he did the ultimate cementing of his comic legacy: he died. You can’t sell out when you’re six feet under, you can only add to your mystique. You can inspire your fans to make grandiose comments about your greatness, proclaim that you were too good for this…
