Bill Hicks

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Bill Hicks bigraphy, stories - comedian, social critic

Bill Hicks : biography

December 16, 1961 – February 26, 1994

William Melvin "Bill" Hicks (December 16, 1961 – February 26, 1994) was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, satirist, and musician. His material largely consisted of general discussions about society, religion, politics, philosophy, and personal issues. Hicks’s material was often controversial and steeped in dark comedy. In both his stand-up performances and during interviews, he often criticized consumerism, superficiality, mediocrity, and banality within the media and popular culture, describing them as oppressive tools of the ruling class, meant to "keep people stupid and apathetic".See , October 24, 1993, via Vide.Google.com

Hicks was 16 years old when he started performing stand-up comedy at the Comedy Workshop in Houston, Texas, in 1978. During the 1980s he toured the United States extensively and performed a number of high-profile television appearances. It was in the UK, however, where Hicks first amassed a significant fan base, packing large venues with his 1991 tour. Hicks died of pancreatic cancer in 1994 at the age of 32. In the years after his death, his work and legacy achieved acclaim in creative circles. In 2007 he was voted the fourth-greatest stand-up comic on the UK’s 100 Greatest Stand-Ups on Channel 4, and appeared again in the updated 2010 list as the fourth-greatest comic.

Career

Beginnings

Hicks was associated with the Texas Outlaw Comics group developed at the Comedy Workshop in Houston in the 1980s.Staff report (April 18, 1991). ‘Texas outlaw’ fires from the lip. Washington TimesMatt Harlock and Paul Thomas, Directors (2009). American: The Bill Hicks Story Once Hicks gained some underground success in night clubs and universities, he quit drinking. However, Hicks continued to smoke cigarettes. His nicotine addiction, love of smoking, and occasional attempts to quit became a recurring theme in his act throughout his later years.

California and New York

By January 1986, Hicks was using recreational drugs and his financial resources were badly dwindled., BillHicks.com His career received another upturn in 1987, however, when he appeared on Rodney Dangerfield’s Young Comedians Special. The same year, he moved to New York City, and for the next five years performed about 300 times a year. On the album Relentless, he jokes that he quit using drugs because "once you’ve been taken aboard a UFO, it’s kind of hard to top that", although in his performances, he continued to extol the virtues of LSD, marijuana, and psychedelic mushrooms.See Sane Man and Rant in E Minor. He fell back to chain-smoking,[ Allmusic.com] a theme that would figure heavily in his performances from then on.

In 1988, Hicks signed on with his first professional business manager, Jack Mondrus. Throughout 1989, Mondrus worked to convince many clubs to book Hicks, promising that the wild drug- and alcohol-induced behavior was behind him. Among the club managers hiring the newly sober Hicks was Colleen McGarr, who would become his girlfriend and fiancée in later years.

On the track "Modern Bummer" of his 1990 album Dangerous, Hicks says he quit drinking alcohol in 1988.

In 1989 he released his first video, Sane Man. It was reissued in 2006.

Early fame

In 1990, Hicks released his first album, Dangerous, performed on the HBO special One Night Stand, and performed at Montreal’s Just for Laughs festival.Outhwaite, Paul. . . He was also part of a group of American stand-up comedians performing in London’s West End in November. Hicks was a huge hit in the UK and Ireland and continued touring there throughout 1991. That year, he returned to Just for Laughs and filmed his second video, Relentless.

Hicks made a brief detour into musical recording with the Marble Head Johnson album in 1992. During the same year he toured the UK, where he recorded the Revelations videohttp://www.billhicks.com/ for Channel 4. He closed the show with his soon-to become-famous philosophy regarding life, "It’s Just a Ride". Also in that tour he recorded the stand-up performance released in its entirety on a double CD titled Salvation. Hicks was voted "Hot Standup Comic" by Rolling Stone magazine in 1993. He moved to Los Angeles in 1992.