Bill Hicks’ ‘Revelations’ to Get Audio Release This Fall
A previously unreleased album by the controversial comedian and social commentator Bill Hicks will come out next month.
The comedian did a tour of U.K. colleges and theaters in the city in 1992, selling out 15 of the dates and culminating with his November 29th appearance at London’s Dominion Theatre. That show came out as the home-video release Revelations in 1993. The new album will mark the first time the Revelations performance will be available as an audio release, and it will be available on vinyl and digitally as Revelations: Live in London on November 24th.
Within two decades, Hicks became one of the biting leading voices of Generation X. He’d opine on socially taboo topics like religion, politics and consumerism. Rolling Stone ranked Hicks at Number 13 on its list of the 50 Best Stand-Up Comics of All Time and placed his Relentless special at the same position on a list of the 25 Best Stand-Up Specials and Movies.
Hicks was famously censored on Late Show With David Letterman when he said, “If you’re so pro-life, lock arms and block cemeteries.” Marc Maron, Dave Attell and Patton Oswalt have all cited Hicks as an influence and the band Tool, who had Hicks open their shows on the 1993 Lollapalooza tour, dedicated their 1996 album, Ænima, to him. Hicks died of pancreatic cancer in 1994 at the age of 32.
The new record will be released by Comedy Dynamics, which previously issued an unreleased Bill Hicks album, Arizona Bay Extended, in 2015. The company subsequently put out Rant in E-Minor: Variations the following year and Relentless: Live in Montreal (another album made from a home-video release) earlier this year. It also produced a documentary about the comic, Comedy Dynamics Presents: Bill Hicks, in 2015 and put out a DVD box set of his specials.