My hero is a comic, and he is dead.

William Melvin Hicks was born on December 16th, 1961 in a small town in GA, and thirteen years later set out to change the world (and make fun of it in the process). Like Lenny Bruce and George Carlin before him, Hicks approached the stage with the intent of informing rather than merely entertaining, and inspiring as much thought as laughter. Raised outside Houston and spending much of his professional career living in New York and Los Angeles, it is estimated that, over the span of his career, Hicks performed somewhere around five thousand shows in the US and UK.

Sadly, most people have no idea who Bill Hicks is, especially in this country. He enjoyed some fleeting posthumous popularity through an album dedication from british band Radiohead, and select samples used on a Tool album (Aenima, whose final two tracks are based on Hicks' Arizona Bay routine), but in general he is still unknown. He toured relentlessly (250-300 shows/year, even after being diagnosed with cancer), filmed two HBO specials, an hour long special on Channel 4 in the UK, recorded four albums (bootlegs have provided material for several more which have been released in the last ten years), and appeared on the Letterman Show twelve times, though his final appearance was censored by CBS network execs (the FCC and station censors had no problem with the routine, which featured a bit about Right-to-lifers blocking the entrances to cemeteries instead of abortion clinics). The incident fueled the already virulent anti-corporate flames of Hicks' philosophy, as when the episode he was cut from aired, a pro-life commercial was put on in between segments and the true reason for his being censored came out.

Many believe this had a lot to do with Hicks' relative obscurity in America; Hicks spoke his mind and preached reason and logic, things that Americans aren't particularly prepared to deal with. He was also quite keen on pointing out the ironies in American life, and sadly we as a culture have no real understanding of irony anymore. Bill Hicks was a man who quit drugs only to rally for their legalization and question the motivation behind which drugs are, in fact legal; a man who questioned not the ethics of abortion, religion, and other political games, but the relevance of them; a man who was not afraid to point out his own faults and those of the people around him. A man who shared his experience, his mind, with the world, and we were all better for it, whether we knew it or not. On February 26th, 1994, we lost one of the greatest minds and voices our country has ever birthed, and so few even knew of, at the tragically young age of 32.

The truly remarkable thing about Hicks is that he could, and did, offend everyone. There were even parts of his routines that I found gross or uncomfortable, but had to respect, as they were always 100% honest. Hicks cut through the shit, the sleepy commercialized apathetic consciousness of American culture, and spoke from his heart, which is something we have difficulty grasping in this nation. We can't really handle somebody using logic to explain the faults in our political or religious dogma, and that is an equally great tragedy.

I urge you all to check out Bill Hicks' material; the offical site has various media and links to more, including the production company he started with producer and lifelong friend Kevin Booth, Sacred Cow (which contains several audio and video clips), as well as the charity he founded. Bill Hicks strived to influence and infect the people he performed for by simply talking to and respecting them. He relentlessly attempted to share the truth of the world around him, and ten years after his death, is still reaching new minds through his recorded works. He was a philosopher for the modern age.