Track 16 of Hamell On Trial's 2000 album Choochtown:
I wish Bill Hicks was alive, I wish Bill Hicks had survived
I wish Bill Hicks was alive, I wish Bill Hicks had survived
But as Bill would be the first to answer
This is the real world, and he had cancer
I wish Bill Hicks was alive
And I would bring my friends to see Bill do brilliant comedy
Watch him needle an aristocrat
I wouldn't resurrect him only for that
I wish Bill Hicks was alive.
Spoken: The Devil call up to Heaven. Say, "Put me through to God."
God get on the phone, say "What?"
The Devil say, "You got Bill Hicks up there?"
God say "Yep. Sold out. Two weeks. Gabriel Arena."
The Devil say, "Can you get me tickets?"
God say, "Whoa-ho, they love him up there. They're bussin' em up from purgatory. What'd you ever do for me?"
Devil say, "Well, without me, there'd be no you."
God say, "I'll see what I can do."
The Devil say, "Can you get me backstage passes?"
God say, "Whoa, you're pushin' it. Always pushin' it."
Sung: For all the reasons I just gave to bring Bill back from the grave
For all the reasons I just gave to bring Bill back from the grave
The world is crazy and you're on your own
I hear Bill's voice, I feel I'm not alone
I wish Bill Hicks was alive
Alive.
Copyright Ed Hamell, reproduced by permission; see Hamell on Trial for full details.
I first saw the name Bill Hicks in the liner notes of Hamell on Trial's first album, Big as Life. "Long live Bill Hicks", it said, catching my eye ever so briefly. Similarly, "Bill Hicks lives" appears at the end of the notes to Hamell's The Chord is Mightier than the Sword. Between those two, which added up to a pretty strong endorsement by one of my favorite artists, and the brightly colored "warning label" wrapper on Rant In E-Minor in the spoken word bin at my friendly local independent record store, I had to check it out.
Was I ever glad I did.
Everything Denis Leary ever did that was funny, Bill Hicks did it first, did it better, did it completely uncensored, and meant every word of it. Leary is an actor playing a part scripted out of the more marketable (palatable?) bits of Hicks' always-edgy material; Bill Hicks is the raw real deal.
Since then I've been corrupting my friends with him and discovering that most of the angry white male comics (the aforementioned Leary and the carefully edited George Carlin that makes it onto his "live" albums --- which isn't to say that Rant isn't edited, since it was compiled from shows in Austin and San Francisco in 1993, it's just to say I saw the Carlin retrospective at The Museum of Television and Radio and it was way cooler than Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics, but I digress...) pale by comparison.
Bill Hicks Discography
"I'm me, it's true. Shut the fuck up."
"You're so pro-life, you're so pro-life, do me a fuckin' favor. Don't block med clinics. Lock arms, and block cemeteries."
"People who hate people, come together!"
"NO."
"Once again, I recommend a healthy dose of psilocybin mushrooms..."
"Isn't it interesting that the two drugs that are legal, alcohol and cigarettes, are the two drugs that do absolutely nothing for you whatsoever, and drugs that grow naturally on this planet, drugs that open your eyes up to make you realize how you're being fucked every day of your life---those drugs are against the law. Wow! Coincidence? I don't know."
"Speaking of Satan, I was watching Rush Limbaugh the other day..."
"I'm just trying to rid the world of all these fevered egos that are tainting our collective unconscious and making us pay a higher psychic price than we imagine."
"Can you calm down on your rutting just for a couple of seconds until we figure out this food-air deal?
"You want a better world, ladies and gentlemen? Legalize pot, right now."
"Gays in the military. Here's how I feel about it, all right? Anyone dumb enough to want to be in the military should be allowed in."
"I just think it's interesting to see how people act on their beliefs, you know what I mean? 'Cause your beliefs, they're just that, they're nothin', there's how you were taught, and raised. That doesn't make 'em real. That's why I always recommend a psychedelic experience, 'cause it does make you realize that everything you learned is in fact just learned, and not necessarily true."