Rhino Comedy Hour: Bill Hicks – A Comedian with a Vision
Last week’s debut installment of the Rhino Comedy Hour offered you an opportunity to ease from music into comedy with a collection of funny songs, but this week you’re getting straight up stand-up as we shine the spotlight on a man whose genius wasn’t fully appreciated until he was no longer around to deliver his caustic comedic commentary on whatever crossed his mind as he crossed the stage.
Bill Hicks was all of 32 years old when he died from pancreatic cancer, but while he still walked the earth, he released two albums that were pure genius: 1990’s Dangerous and 1992’s Relentless. After his death, however, his legend continued to grow, and a result, we’ve been fortunate enough to see a number of additional albums surface: Arizona Bay (1997), Rant in E-Minor (1997), Love, Laughter, and Truth (2002), Flying Saucer Tour Vol. 1 (2002), Shock and Awe (2003), and Salvation (2005), all of which feature the same sort of dark, scathing, and utterly hilarious material that made Hicks into a legend. If you’re just looking for a sampling of Hicks’ best work, though, you can check out 2001’s Philosophy or, for a fuller sampling, there’s 2010’s two-disc set, The Essential Collection.
Oh, right, or you could always check out this week’s Rhino Comedy Hour. (Hey, look, this thing’s still new to us, too, you know?) We’ve put together a 17-track playlist that features a little bit from each of the aforementioned albums and compilation, thereby giving you a chance to hear Hicks in front of several different audiences and never holding back on any of them. Now, to give you fair warning, he’s definitely not someone you’d classify as politically correct – in fact, those of you who are familiar with his work are probably laughing out loud at the idea that anyone might think such a thing about the guy – but he’ll certainly make you think…and laugh…and then think some more.
What can we say? Bill Hicks was an American legend. Ah, why be jingoistic about it? The man was a comedy legend.
