In Memoriam: Bill Hicks

Couple of days late, but in memoriam, eleven years gone, RIP Bill Hicks.

I was a "late comer" to Bill Hicks. He somehow flew 100% under my radar while he was alive, but after repeatedly running across references to him for years (Messages from beyond? Synchronicity? The hand of a benevolent, if highly anti-establishment, God? Who knows...) I managed to get ahold of some of his stuff right after the re-election of Bush II last year. It really, really helped.

Here's a few Hicks quotes -- this guy was a genius:

"Here is my final point. About drugs, about alcohol, about pornography and smoking and everything else. What business is it of yours what I do, read, buy, see, say, think, who I fuck, what I take into my body - as long as I do not harm another human being on this planet?"

"Go back to bed, America, your government has figured out how it all transpired, go back to bed America, your government is in control again. Here, here's American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up, go back to bed America, here is American Gladiators, here is 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go America - you are free to do what we tell you! You are free to do what we tell you!"

"I'll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. 'I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs.' 'I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking.' 'Hey, wait a minute, there's one guy holding out both puppets!'"

"You know we armed Iraq. I wondered about that too, you know during the Persian Gulf war those intelligence reports would come out: 'Iraq: incredible weapons - incredible weapons.' How do you know that? 'Uh, well...we looked at the receipts.'"

"The war on drugs to me is absolutely phoney; it’s so obviously phoney, OK? It's a war against our civil rights, that's all it is. They're using it to make us afraid to go out at night, afraid of each other, so that we lock ourselves in our homes and they get suspending our rights one by one."

You know, maybe Hicks was somehow oddly fortunate to have died when he did (1994, age 33, pancreatic cancer. Same thing that killed my uncle about 6 years back). He was this angry, this disgusted, this utterly incapable of fathoming the utter and complete bullshit that is Life in America ... 15 years ago. What would trying to wade through the shit all this time have done to him?

Sigh. I'd have liked to have seen him give it a try.

For way more info on Bill Hicks, check out the links below. If he makes you think, opens your eyes at all, consider a contribution to the Bill Hicks Foundation for Wildlife Rehabilitation.

• Sacred Cow Productions
• billhicks.com - 'People Who Hate People' Party HQ
• The Konformist - The Silence of Bill Hicks
• Bill Hicks - Wikiquote
• Bill Hicks - Interesting Motherfuckers - Acid Logic ezine

Thanks to Lisa Snellings for getting me thinking about Bill today.

Mood: Tired
Now Playing: Tool, "Aenima"

Humor, Dammit! Humor!!!

In an effort to post something that is not sad or moribund or distressing or otherwise depressing, I give you ....

Longmire Does Romance Novels.

I'm really going to have to make a go at doing a few of these myself.

Update: One Hour Later...



Mood: Highly, Officially Amused
Now Playing: John Carpenter, "The Fog"

Ambient Thoughts

I've been listening to Brian Eno's "Ambient 1: Music for Airports" in my car the last couple of days. Great stuff.

If you're not familiar with Eno's ambient work (Music for Airports and Discreet Music are the ones I've heard -- there's also Day of Radiance and On Land, as well as a lot of other work which is heavily ambient even if it is not expressly so), try giving it a listen sometime -- fascinating stuff, and light years away from what is considered "ambient" music nowadays. Most of what passes for ambient now is the stuff that gets played in lounges or restaurants that want to seem hip -- but it's often just standard pop songs without a rhythm track. So if you listen you can still hear the basic 4/4 time signature, the standard verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/chorus approach to writing/churning out a song. It's not really written to be a unique type of music, but rather is created as a by-product of regular dance music that is easier to dance to when stoned and harder to tap your foot to when sober. Not bad really, just mostly uninteresting.

Now, what Eno was working toward with his ambient stuff was the aural equivalent of paintings: Music that could comfortably exist as a "background" experience, but that could also offer a rewarding experience when carefully listened to and scrutinized. The structures of a "song" are sort of there, but not in the usual expected ways. Instead of the rigid v/c/v/c/b/c structure you get lots of independent sound motifs (a pretty little piano run, a chorus of synthesized oooo's, a lovely descending synth line, some very light percussive doodles, etc.) that sort of ... I don't know ... float and bounce around, interacting in different ways at different times over the course of 10-15 minutes. Almost random, but very much not at all random. Fascinating stuff.

Which leads me to the discussion I had with my daughter this morning. Now, every morning I drive Miranda to school. It's not a long drive -- 10 minutes in the car, tops. But it's cool. We get a few minutes that's just for us, and since it's early it's a really good time to throw some music on and just see what she has to say about it.

Now, I listen to pretty much EVERYTHING. Literally. In a given week I can, depending on my moods, swing from Britney Spears to Slayer to Bizet to Duran Duran to Blue Oyster Cult to Ella Fitzgerald to Tool to ABBA, with stops just about anywhere in-between any of those. And I LOVE exposing my kids to lots of kinds of music, just to get their take on it. Miranda, in particular, seems to have my ear for music, in that she describes music in terms that are evocative instead of just "I like this!" For example, recently I played her some Dead Can Dance and within 30 seconds she was telling me how the music sounded like it was from a long ago, ancient place, and that it made her think of Egypt, and it made her want to dance like a snake, which she promptly did. Needless to say, I joined in.

So anyway, I put Music for Airports on and asked her what she thought. And she listened for a minute and then said "It's pretty." So I prompted her a bit, asked her what it made her think of, and she went all quiet. So, I prompted her a bit more, telling her it was named "Music for Airports," and she said "what do you mean, this is music that airports like to listen to? That's silly: Airports don't have ears."

I nearly drove off the road I laughed so hard.

But it got me to thinking: If airports had ears, is this the sort of music they'd listen to? Maybe. Now when I listen to some of Music for Airports, and I hear all those sighing electronic voices, it sounds like some sort of cybernetic angel choir. I imagine enormous, graceful shining metallic angels, singing as they soar through the skies, their wings extended and gleaming in the sun. The voices of things that are sorta like airplanes, but much, much better. Like angels are supposed to be when compared with us. Perfect, without blemish. Sexless and smooth.

And incredibly aerodynamic.

Mood: Kinda floaty
Now Playing: Adrian Belew, "Mr. Music Head"