Thursday 2 October 2008

Sucking shit

We all love Bill Hicks, right? The greatest standup ever to have lived? Hard to say, as I sympathise with his moral and political stance so strongly that my critical sense is likely to be skewed in favour of him, causing me to be more kindly disposed toward his technique at the expense of others. I'm also sadly lacking in my knowledge of Lenny Bruce. Though his material clearly wasn't as outright rude as Hicks' - simply because of the time in which he was unfortunate enough to be performing - this may perhaps have made him a greater craftsman. From the little I have read, he seems to have been among the greatest, and certainly one of the most interesting, comedians around, and was possessed of the power to shock. See if you can spot my Wikipedia edit in the Lenny Bruce entry, BTW, and win a prize!

I've been fortunate enough to see some of today's leading comics live, from Lee Evans to Eddie Izzard, Phill Jupitus (yes he was!) to Charlie Gough, Shaun Moloney to Jo Brand. There are many good ones, but none have quite struck a chord in the same way as Bill.

One of the first routines I ever heard him do was the one about advertising. Not the "If anyone here's in advertising or marketing, just kill yourselves..." one, but the one in the YouTube clip at the top of this post. I thought it particularly poignant after reading about John Lydon's recent decision to front an ad campaign for Country Life butter. I used to quite like Johnny back in the day. Rebellion for rebellion's sake was always an interesting concept. But now, every time I see him, all I can think about is that little man made of butter who used to play the trombone on a teapot. What a fucking tosser.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are you saying the little man playing his trombone is a tosser? That's a bit harsh.

Myeral said...

Well, he doesn't speak very highly of me.