Diving into the Bill Hicks catalog re-issues

Once upon a time, there was a stand-up comedian named Bill Hicks… and for those truly unfamiliar with his legacy as a stand-up, some initial comparative context is necessary:

When Bill Hicks died in 1994, most of this current mid-to-late 20’s generation of comedians had just finished wrapping their heads around the genie from Disney’s Aladdin (released in 1992). While we were watching Jafar obsess about taking over the kingdom of Agrabah, Hicks’ own brand of acerbic sorcery sought to tackle the inimical ironies of American imperialism, fatalistic journalism, and the War on Drugs. Long before anger ever trended online, Bill Hicks was practically his own epicenter of cultural anger, taking on U.S. domestic themes throughout his career such as public smoking, the state of music, and corporate consumerism.

Though he only released two comedy albums in the course of his life – Dangerous in 1990, and Relentless in 1992 – his bits have been re-mixed and re-packaged tens of times, creating archival albums such as Arizona Bay, Rant in E-Minor, and Philosophy: The Best of Bill Hicks. He served as direct influences to the next wave of comedians such as Patton Oswalt, David Cross, Dave Attell, and Russell Brand, and is posthumously-proven to be one of stand-up’s all-time greats. With the release of a full catalog of Bill Hicks’ collected works out this week, we now have the opportunity to again reflect in his afterglow. If you’ve never given yourself the opportunity to listen to Hicks, then this is the perfect pool of works to familiarize yourself with.

Each album – presented according to release date in mostly chronological order – shows a slightly different side to Hicks. 12/16/61 is Hicks as a 21-year-old blooming renegade, clearly hoping to exercise his comedic will against safer brands of generic comedy (like the “boy are my arms tired” cliche, which he nimbly satirizes with a joke about masturbation). That said, he nimbly japes about the differences between cats and dogs, here, too – but the fact that this bit never appears again is a testament to the evolution of his material.

Fast-forward to Hicks living in New York City at age 29, and you have Dangerous, which is Hicks’ first intentional album, and the audio version of his first special, Sane Man. Though he waxes over the meaning of homelessness, his iconic bits on smoking, rock-and-roll, the War on Drugs, and anti-intellectualism are the ones that he takes with him on the road, and you start to see them become staples of his act as you listen to Arizona Bay (released posthumously in 1997 alongside another album, Rant in E-Minor), and Relentless.

Both Arizona Bay and Rant in E-Minor are important, as bits fancying the “sinking” of Los Angeles into the ocean and trying to organize a church of “People who hate people” are very telling of Hicks’ educated clergy-complex. But Relentless is the quintessential, controversial Bill Hicks. His vices are perfectly on display, as we see the man in all his fallibility against a backdrop of socio-political commentary. Also, this is the first recording of his that features the truly insidious sound-effect of someone performing oral sex on Satan (Hicks is a master of visual and audio vignettes, giving his comedy a sense of depth rarely realized over the course of most careers).

Later albums are again mostly re-packagings, but still great, and necessary for die-hard fans and comics alike. Flying Saucer Tour is a near-carbon copy of Dangerous, though it contains a multitude of crowd work that turns a seemingly-slow set into a diverse and dynamic performance. Philosophy: The Best of Bill Hicks qualifies as essential, showcasing the themes of Bill Hicks that built his reputation: his disdain for anti-intellectualism as well as the military-industrial complex and corporate consumption; his observations on the politics of cigarette-smoking, and; his unapologetically visceral fascination with pornography. This album nicely ties up the aforementioned six others.

Love, Laughter and Truth, released in 2002, consists of previously unreleased material from various recordings in Denver, Pittsburgh, and other cities in California. Apparently, this one was re-mastered before its release, but still deals with some wobbly stereo. Nonetheless, it’s actually a super-necessary part of the catalog. If Philosophy is one side of a coin, then Love, Laughter, and Truth is the other. Of course, it’s all similar themes, and it boasts a particularly morbid epithet (“You Can’t Get Bitter” is a funhouse horror-antic as an example of just how bitter one can get towards an ex-relationship). The Essential Collection is a 4-disc set that packs in selections from every single Bill Hicks recording, plus an entire album of Hicks’ recorded music, AND a final disc containing a 30-minute audio journal entry, entitled The Adventure.

The final album appearing in this catalog is Salvation, (originally released in 2005). It has a lot of cross-over material from Relentless, though Bill Hicks is now appealing this material to an audience in Oxford, England. It should not be curious to Bill Hicks fans that he drew larger crowds in England and Canada than he did in the U.S. Bits on the War in Iraq, crime in England vs. crime in the U.S., the Kennedy assassination, and abortion all feel solid and particularly at home, here.

That the density of this collection renders Hicks a juggernaut within the cultural comedic landscape is of no question. But, to talk about the culture he railed against in contemporary terms is absolutely to talk about the fallibility of Bill Hicks. A conversation on gender relations, for instance, would likely find Hicks’ portrayal of women to be much more than objectionable. Also (hilariously), Michael Bolton – a subject of Hicks’ ire in rants against the music industry of twenty years ago – has been steadily skyrocketing back to fame through comedic partnerships with The Lonely Island and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Nonetheless, Hicks still feels very much at the center of social consciousness, even in this age of increasing digitization. You can’t help but yearn for his opinion on government surveillance activities, the decriminalization/legalization of marijuana in certain states, the riots we see happening all over the U.S., and – with every fiber of his being – the increasing non-acceptance of public cigarette smoke. Dark, scathingly critical, and always a divisive figure, Hicks flew through a 16-year career in professional stand-up like a bat with a butcher’s knife, and we are all unabashedly more human because of it.

Bill Hicks entire comedy catalog has been re-issued by Comedy Dynamics, pick it up now.