Live: Satirist, Social Critic

As one who worked in comedy clubs for years and saw hundreds and hundreds of so-called comedians, I can assert that only a handful of comics make a lasting impression.

Hicks was one of those. Though I only got to see him onstage for one week's worth of shows in 1987, his body of work thankfully became more commercially available over the next decade.

Hicks is one of the rare comics with a point of view that both skewers and embraces Mankind. He loved his country and his fellow man, and that gave him license to stab and poke at their flaws. He championed THOUGHT as the means to combat Mediocrity and the Sheep Mentality.

This DVD is a sufficient look into his mastery of his craft and his unflinching control over his audience. Sometimes his control of the audience was mixed with disdain towards them, too. But it was closer to "tough love" than animosity or condescension.

Not everyone will recognize Bill's brilliance and not everyone will "get" the humor. Actually, the brighter you are the more likely you will appreciate Bill Hicks.

Buy this DVD and be elevated to a higher understanding of how the interactive medium of stand-up can be used as a persuasive pulpit not for bullying or mass entertainment but for communal introspection and self-examination.

sick of the lies all politicians spew?

tired of having every aspect of your life turned into a commodity to be bought or sold by a corporation?

don't understand how cigarettes and drugs are the devil but alcohol is the fountain of youth?

what i'm asking is : do you want the truth? truth you know, truth you can feel in your bones, truth like when you were a kid truth?

just buy this dvd. even if you've heard it all before, you have to see it like this.

...but, unfortunately, he never was allowed to reach the peak of his success due to cowardly television and recording executives, and, again like Bruce, due to being a victim and slave to his own excesses--before I go on, I do not own a copy of this DVD, but before any of the usual suspects gets on your high horses to castigate me for reviewing a DVD I've never seen, I correct all of you in advance by answering, that yes, I have seen all this material before--the HBO special, I saw--duh!--on HBO and was one of his few attempts at commercial success as the material is watered-down but no less hilarious, just not as risky and compelling--and the rest I saw on two different PAL format VHS tapes I purchased in the Amsterdam airport gift shop--one was the same Relentless show and that one is later than the HBO special but earlier than the Revelations show--the Relentless show is one of the most funny but haunting comedy sets I have ever seen--Hicks performs all of the material on a dark stage only lit by a spotlight--this is the show that most of the Hicks fans out there will recognize their favorite bits from--the Revelations and the documentary was on the other of the VHS tapes I bought and was called "Totally Bill Hicks"--the Revelations show was haunting, but in a different way--the stage is garishly lit and he is introduced by blaring rock and roll, reminiscent of a Sam Kinison show--but by the middle of the set, Hicks is obviously SKYhigh, and by letting his true demons and inner self out, he skirts all the way to the edge of the abyss, just to pirouette and come back just enough to finish the show--all in all, I have to have this DVD just because upon my return to the US, I had the tapes transferred to NTSC format and they lost a lot of quality, but for the first time viewer or even some Hicks fans, seeing him live for the first time on these discs will be a shocking experience that you didn't or wouldn't get from the CDs--straight arrows, get ready for the drug humor, Republicans, get ready for the Bush-bashing, prudes, get ready for the porn jokes and racists, get ready for the OJ riots as seen from a white man's eyes--I say Hicks is the true successor to Bruce and not Richard Pryor as Hicks was brutal in his political satire and that's what kept him in the end from his exposure to a wider audience, wheras Pryor was more of a successor to Redd Foxx for the race and sex humor--your David Crosses, Janeane Garafalos and all the other (who I call) grunge humorists? That's right--with no Bill Hicks, they'd be doing airplane and 7-11 jokes like all the rest--David Letterman, shame on you for letting this brave and talented man down and shame on you, dear reader, if you don't spend the paltry sum required to see a true comedic genius in action--don't let him slip away in the pages of the cult performer like Bruce--highly recommended!

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