Rick Astley Vs Bill Hicks Vs Denis Leary

 The greatest grudge matches often go down in the annals of history and are the very thing that legends are made of...

 In the Bible we had Jesus vs The Devil and David vs Goliath, in later we had Harry Potter vs Voldemort and in life we have had Mohammed Ali fighting like a bee and stinging like a butterfly, or something like that, against Joe Frazier... but nothing stays in my mind quite like Rick Astley and Bill Hicks...

I included Denis Leary cause when mentioning people who pissed Hicks off it's very hard to not mention Leary's name... Bill once told an interviewer about Leary - "I have a scoop for you. I stole his act. I camouflaged it with punchlines, and to really throw people off, I did it before he did"  

The two were once close friends but plagiarism saw an end to that... After Hicks died it was refreshing to see that Denis could indeed survive without copying his work... it was clear some felt that he wasn't limited to Bill after Louis C K found there were some similarities between a routine of his and a hit song released by Leary.

That said plagiarism doesn't run at the core of this post... it is instead a different special guest who I will remember as the truest adversary of Hicks... a one Mr Rick Astley... Astley represented everything Hicks stood for... Bill loved pure rock, or music with soul as some would call it. Many of his routines focused on the decline of great bands like Led Zep and The Beatles and being replaced with people with thought were, for lack of a better phrase, talentless twats. Bill once said of Astley - 

  "Rick Astley? Have you seen this banal incubus at work? Boy, if this guy isn’t heralding Satan’s imminent approach to Earth, huh. “Don’t ever wanna make you cry, never wanna make you sigh … never gonna break your heart” … oh, I wouldn’t worry about that without a dick, buddy. You got a corn nut! You got a clit! You’re not even a guy! You’re an AIDS germ that got off a slide! They’re puttin’ music to AIDS germs, they’re puttin’ a drum machine behind them in a metronome beat"

However in 1993 Astley retired from performing 'music' in 1993, one year before Hicks passed, and there this story should have ended... but no... someone brought Astley back... He became an internet phenomenon in a 'harmless' prank known as Rickrolling where people would lead you astray to watch videos when unsuspectingly out of nowehere.. POW... the video cut to Astley singing "never going to make you ... blah blah fucking blah"... what were you thinking? Why this dire tripe? You should have let him be! After the 'success' of his Internet hits Astley decided the time was right to make a comeback...he is performing again...he is touring the world singing his filth like some bile filled prophet of bad music... and what does this serve? It only highlights even more how empty the world is without a man like Hicks... We have no one to protect us now, he has no opponent and Astley is free to run amok...

As Sgt Apone said in "Aliens" - "Somebody wake up Hicks"

Roy Woodhouse - Twitter