I watched a stand-up show from Bill Maher the other day and made comment on the fact that when he pushes to a delivery of "outrage" or anger" he seemed to lose his point and just ended up hammering the audience with a rant rather than becoming more passionate and convincing. I didn't know it when I wrote that sentence the other night but essentially what I meant was "he's no Bill Hicks". I have recently been making an effort to catch up on the man whose name is still spoken with reverence in the stand-up world and it is easy to see why because he manages to produce politically-aware, anger comedy that does not rely on him just ranting or shouting.
Of course he does shout and "go off on one" regularly but what he doesn't do is make less sense as a result and indeed the energy and anger he comes over with feels real and natural as opposed to some comedians who come over more like they are trying to fire up their audience by being extreme. In Relentless he covers subjects from smoking to celebrities advertising products and throughout he is consistently thoughtful but also funny. Now I am not saying that he excels at both, because I don't think he is wildly hilarious or incredibly wise or correct in all he says but just that in terms of getting the mix just right, he is spot on. A lot of this is from the writing but his delivery is good as he plays his arguments really well to both make his point and draw laughs at the same time.
The structure of his delivery is also important because, although extreme, he mostly manages to draw the audience in and see things from his point of view ("mostly" I said). This is again something to his credit because with many extreme political comedians (again, like Mayer) they tend to only play well to home crowds and are not good enough to "discuss" opinions as they get to their point. Here, Hicks does that well in the most part and only occasionally does he appear to throw an extreme opinion out of nowhere (and when he does, at least it tends to be funny).
Relentless is worth checking out and it is significant that, even so many years later it still feels relevant and fresh in most areas - something that similar comedians cannot often manage. Not the funniest comedy you'll ever hear, nor the most insightful commentary either but what Hicks did do very well was blend the two so they both work at the same high level and Relentless is a good example of why his name lives on long after his death.
