Bill Hicks
Dangerous (Rykodisc 10350)

Rykodisc's reissue series of albums by Bill Hicks is one of their more interesting undertakings, promoted with lavish quotes from David Letterman, Dennis Miller, and Brett Butler attesting to Hicks's standing as the best stand-up comic of the 80s and 90s, and once again they make a great case mainly through presentation.

The actual content of the discs makes a better case for Hicks having been a great neglected comedian, in the same league as Lenny Bruce and other "influential" comics whose actual material … isn't all that hilarious to listen to.

Hicks is definitely full of attitude and is hugely more incisive than your run-of-the-mill comedian of the same era ("What is the deal with driving in L.A.?" etc), and it's easy to see why Butler and Miller in particular admire Hicks so much, as his style reflects the best of both of them, but ultimately, listening to the albums is not as earth-shaking as Ryko would want you to think it is.

On Dangerous (Hicks' first album, recorded in 1990, four years before he died of pancreatic cancer), Hicks takes on smokers, non-smokers, malls, southerners, colorization, and a whole lot of material relating to whether musicians have "a dick" or not.

He's not a "ha-ha" comedian so much as a very intense "make you think" comedian, and I'd peg him as a cross between Dennis Miller and Denis Leary, and if I could think of another Dennis besides Dennis the Menace I'd throw him in as well.

But aside from the dated topical material, Hicks loses me with too many "faggot" and "pussy" condemnations, and especially in his very confident but very wrongheaded treatment of late 80s pop music, which gets a long rant that only betrays Hicks as a fairly closed-minded person in the grand scheme of things.

He lashes out at "George Michaels" (sic) and Rick Astley, making the requisite homosexual implications, and laments that Debbie Gibson and Tiffany rule the charts (as though the charts have ever been about integrity) – though I must admit, an aside about imagining Tiffany and Debbie Gibson "locked in a 69" made me laugh.

It's a typical pitfall of comedians and rock critics alike to hold on to the testosterone-fueled side of rock music as its essence, and to confuse pop music with rock music. Comparing Debbie Gibson and Jimi Hendrix is like comparing Franz Liszt and Bill Gates – they're doing totally different things.

It is fairly button-pushing to try to tap into some sort of common outrage about prefabricated pop being ever present – though you can see tons of people taking the same stance with Britney, Christina, and Justin nowadays. Ultimately, though, this type of angle is really much more conservative than these comedians would probably consider themselves politically (not to mention a whole lot more homophobic).

Hicks' own homophobia is obvious, and masked with a carefully constructed stage attitude of confident smarmy rage (wasn't that also the name of a psychedelic rock band? Now psychedelic rock bands – they had dicks!), and this makes a lot of Dangerous hard to take, not because it's so intense, but because it's just not really that funny or clever.

When Hicks gets going (as in an inspired bit about being caught reading in a southern waffle restaurant) he's pretty brilliant, but I think this is really a "you had to have been there" type of thing, recommended to comedy enthusiasts wholeheartedly, but it's not the elusive "Great Comedy Album" I've been seeking.

Loud Bassoon rating scale

Review by Brita Water-Filter