Arizona Bay is an album by comedian Bill Hicks, posthumously released in 1997. It was released alongside Rant in E-Minor, marking three years since his death. The album's title refers to the hope that Los Angeles will one day fall into the ocean due to a major earthquake. Hicks contends that the world will be better off in L.A.'s absence:
Ahhh, it's gone, it's gone, it's gone...All the shitty shows are gone, all the idiots screaming in the fucking wind are dead, I love it...leaving nothing but a cool, beautiful serenity called Arizona Bay. That's right, when L.A. falls in the fucking ocean and is flushed away, all it will leave is Arizona Bay.
Video Arizona Bay
The music
Several of Hicks's albums are unique in that they feature background music, meant to enhance the album's mood. Such additions were made well after the initial recordings and are the product of Hicks's own musicianship.
According to Kevin Booth, in the BBC documentary Dark Poet, it was during the early recording sessions for Arizona Bay, around Christmas 1992, that Hicks first started suffering from the pains in his side, which would later be diagnosed as pancreatic cancer. Upon learning that he had developed cancer, Hicks used his time to mix music into Rant in E-Minor and Arizona Bay, calling it his Dark Side of the Moon.
The album as with Rant in E-Minor was re-released and extended by Comedy Dynamics, Extending it to 1:12:40 and removing music.
Track listing
All music composed by Bill Hicks
Maps Arizona Bay
Personnel
- Bill Hicks - guitar, vocals
- Kevin Booth - bass, keyboards, percussion, producer
In popular culture
The band Tool released a song, "Ænema", from their album Ænima (actually released the year prior to Hicks' "Arizona Bay" album), which repeats the theme of Los Angeles being drowned in the Arizona Bay. The song includes the lyrics "Learn to swim, see you down in Arizona Bay." Along with this, there is artwork inside the album cover showing a map of California before and after the earthquake. Other album artwork features Hicks himself cited as "another dead hero". Bill Hicks has always been a heavy influence on Tool's albums:
- "Who's that talking at the start of "Third Eye"? - That would be the aforementioned Bill Hicks; those are snips of comedy routines of his, from "The War on Drugs" (off his CD Dangerous) and "Drugs Have Done Good Things" (off Relentless). In fact, on his CD Rant in E-Minor, he refers to the power that heavy doses of hallucinogens have to "squeegeed his third eye."
The computer game Deus Ex, set in the mid-21st century, features a reference to an earthquake destroying Los Angeles in 2030 and creating Arizona Bay.
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia