Posted 3/20/2005 04:30:00 PM by Douglas

Maybe it's just me, but yelling Freebird at a lame cover-band is, and will always be, hilarious.

Yelling "Freebird!" has been a rock cliché for years, guaranteed to elicit laughs from drunks and scorn from music fans who have long since tired of the joke. And it has spread beyond music, prompting the Chicago White Sox organist to add the song to her repertoire and inspiring a greeting card in which a drunk holding a lighter hollers "Freebird!" at wedding musicians.

But I must admit, I'm a bit of a jerk drunk. But I had no idea that Bill Hicks was involved in this little tradition.

A harsh reaction to "Freebird" came from the late comedian Bill Hicks during a Chicago gig in the early 1990s. On a bootleg recording of the show, Mr. Hicks at first just sounds irked. "Please stop yelling that," he says. "It's not funny, it's not clever -- it's stupid."

The comic soon works himself into a rage, but the "Freebirds" keep coming. "Freebird," he finally says wearily, then intones: "And in the beginning there was the Word -- 'Freebird.' And 'Freebird' would be yelled throughout the centuries. 'Freebird,' the mantra of the moron."

Bill Hicks was ahead of his time, and Freebird! may very well be the mantra of the moron, but that doesn't make it any less funny when you're trying to have a beer in a bar and a lame cover-band is working on their fourth Hootie & the Blowfish song, or their tribute medley to Smashmouth. Yarg.