Bill Hicks: Life is Just a Ride

[gZaw]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1RQmnSJoRg

We want to believe all we have is real, but in the end, it is just a ride.

 

[heavyweight]

My favorite comedian. He's a LEGEND.
When things get ruff, these are the words that cure it all.

 

[havokb8]

Hicks is amazing......Yet another awesome thing TOOL introduced me too

 

[skagenweb]

Looks like he jumped off the ride!

 

[Chief Ranker]

He fucking hates marketers though XD

 

[BENNY8877]

Hicks is amazing......Yet another awesome thing TOOL introduced me too

Wait a minute is he the sample on Aenima?

 

[Chief Ranker]

yeah he's in a few of their songs, he apparently was a huge inspiration to them.

 

[clickobey]

I love Bill Hicks, there arent many comedians as thought provoking as he was.

 

[gregstereo]

Thanks for prompting me to change my avatar back to what it used to be. The man was a legend.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo

"Oh you see what Bill's doing? He's going for the anti-marketing dollar. That's very smart!"

 

[howard_hughes]

wow.. that was good. I liked what I saw

 

[Chief Ranker]

I love Bill Hicks, there arent many comedians as thought provoking as he was.

carrot top, man. carrot top.

 

[CrazyEarner]

Aha gregstereo .. You just made my day!

 

[havokb8]

Wait a minute is he the sample on Aenima?

He sure is Benny

 

[havokb8]

He sure is Benny

"This is a Bill Hicks interview, not a Tool interview," declares Tool
frontman Maynard James Keenan over the phone. Although California's
progressive metalists have imposed a press blackout in order to protect
the lyrical integrity of their brand new albu m, Aenima, Keenan has
reluctantly made an exception to discuss Bill Hicks. After all, the late,
Austin-based comedian gets big play on Aenima: several of his routines are
sampled, there's a painting of him in the CD booklet titled Another Dead
Hero, and t he disc's back cover inlay depicts Hicks'
California-in-the-ocean "Arizona Bay" theory. So, while Keenan says Aenima
isn't a tribute to Hicks, he's fully aware what kind of exposure this
highly anticipated album should give the late comedian.

"[Our fans] will search him out," says Keenan. "That's why we put the
picture on the album, so they can get a wider idea. It helps people
understand where we're coming from as well if they can get perspective
like that. They'll get Bill's tapes and listen to what he's talking about,
listen to our album, and then hopefully have enough intellect to make the
leap and say `I see where the connection is.'"

Keenan says his own connection to Hicks originally came the same way most
bands find musical inspiration -- from tapes someone hands them after a
show. "They became a staple of the road," he says. By late 1992, after
citing the comedian as inspiration on the liner notes of Tool's
full-length debut, Undertow, Keenan mailed the album to Hicks, followed
that up with a call, and started a phone dialogue. "He came down to
Lollapalooza in Los Angeles and introduced the band," Keenan says. "We saw
him a couple t imes after that, talked to him a couple times more, and
then he decided to check out."

Although Keenan says they had almost worked out details for a
co-headlining tour just before Hick's death in 1994, the mutual admiration
society between the musician-turned-comedian and the ultra-political
singer developed mostly by phone and tape exchang e.

"The music is a catalyst for the ideas," says Keenan, who saw Hicks
perform only once, but nevertheless owns bootlegged versions of the albums
Rykodisc is planning to release. "His ideas were what really resonated
with us. I think that's what he really li ked about us as well -- that we
were resonating similar concepts. Unity is the philosophical center.
Evolution. Change. Internally and externally. Individually and globally.
That's pretty much the gist of his comedy no matter what he was talking
about -- music, porno, smoking. Whatever it was, it came back to the idea
of unity and evolution. Evolving ideas."