12/16/1961

Hearing Bill Hicks before he sounded like a revivalist preacher is disorienting. Recorded around 1982 when he was twenty-one, this fifteen-minute audio set captures a kinetic young comic running through vocal impressions of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards rather than dismantling foreign policy. The set leans into Texas club staples of the era, moving from household pet comparisons in ‘Cats or Dogs’ to quick riffs on neighborhood punks, driven by a twitchy cadence picked up from his early mentor Sam Kinison. Comedy Dynamics gave the five tracks a wider digital release in 2015 alongside an archival box set, having first surfaced to mark what would have been his fiftieth birthday.