Arizona Bay

The hook of Arizona Bay is a specific apocalyptic hope: that a major earthquake will drop Los Angeles into the Pacific Ocean and leave behind a tranquil desert coastline. Bill Hicks treats the stage as a pulpit. He uses the hour to vent his mounting frustrations, targeting marketing executives, the government, and literal dinosaurs in the Bible. He tears down geopolitical conflicts and domestic riots, frequently yelling at the audience to wake up to the hypocrisy around them.

The audio was recorded at the Laff Stop in Austin, Texas, between late 1992 and mid-1993. Behind the scenes, Hicks was undergoing weekly chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer, a terminal diagnosis he kept from the public. The stand-up tracks are interwoven with original guitar music produced alongside his friend Kevin Booth. Released posthumously in 1997, three years after Hicks’ death at age 32, the project documents his takes on the Gulf War and the media. It finishes with his vision of a seismic reset that washes the country’s superficiality out to sea.