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THE BEST OF LENNY BRUCE
Fantasy 7012, 1962
LP rip (128 kbps mono) by Dick Baker, January 2015
LIMA, OHIO
THE PHONE COMPANY
HOW TO RELAX YOUR COLORED FRIENDS AT PARTIES
RELIGIONS, INC.
THE WHITE COLLAR DRUNK
THE DJINNI IN THE BOTTLE
FATHER FLOTSKI'S TRIUMPH (unexpurgated)
MARIA OUSPENSKAYA INTERVIEW
HITLER AND M.C.A.
When the sociologists come to study the 1950s and '60s, they'll have the
newsreels and the daily papers, the books and the photographs, but I hope they have
sense enough also to examine the work of such people as Jack Kerouac and Lenny Bruce.
Because in both you get something that even the newsreels and the TV documentaries
miss--the essential minutiae of sociological detail that puts the whole thing in
perspective.
This collection of "The Best of Lenny Bruce" (it's the first of a series,
incidentally) has several things in it which are not only Bruce classics but which are
gems of sociological detail, as well as lapidary descriptions of bits of our time.
Bruce's framework is show business and his vision is how the show business
concept has taken over all our society. It's only a paper moon. His rhetoric is
based on the assumption that we have all--each of his listeners--seen all the movies
he has seen and are familiar with all the stereotypes. Thus the beauties of "Djinni
in the Bottle" and its raising the ghosts of long dead Sabu flicks. Thus the
magnificent "Cell Block 7" and other prison break picture images from "Father
Flotsky's Triumph."
But Bruce also goes past the movies to other contexts familiar to our society
and tacks down some aspect of our behaviour with frightening accuracy and with deadly
intent. Thus the "White Collar Drunk." And thus, too, the classic "How to Relax Your
Colored Friends at Parties." The first time I saw him do that--in a mixed audience at
a concert--the ones who fell out and the ones who were frightened by its truth and its
audacity were astonishing to watch. No one during the great social revolution which
has characterized the past few years has expressed the sadly inadequate understanding
and the appalling condescension of the well-meaning Caucasian better than Bruce has in
the lines of this bit.
A characteristic of Bruce's effect on audiences has been immediately to offend
some of them. Almost any of his more powerful routines or set pieces (nothing of his
is really set, but like the jazz musician, he uses a skeleton form as a starting point
for a constantly changing series of improvisation) is guaranteed to step on the
prejudices, insecurities or tender feelings of some portion of the audience. "Hitler
and M.C.A." has made many people angry because they cannot see any humor in the
despicable German leader or his actions in any way. And yet it is Bruce's gift that
he can rise above this and put the pieces of the picture together in such a way that
there IS humor in even such a subject as this.
"Religions, Inc.," of course, is one of Bruce's most famous creations, a comic
piece that has made social history. It began when Bruce noticed the fact that the
pages of advertising in the weekend editions of the newspapers actually totaled out to
greater space for the various appearances of preachers, revivalists and church
advertisements than it did for the appearance of comics, singers, entertainers and
bands at night clubs.
Taking off from that one point, Bruce then built up a classic routine in which
he assailed all organized religion (and he is by no means irreligious, only his point
is that he's against religion but in favor of God) with specially deft surgical
attention to the current spate of revivalist preachers whose dependence on show
business and commerciality makes one suspect that the moneylenders (or their
corollaries, the money makers) once more are crowding the temples.
Just as in "Father Flotski's Triumph" Bruce uses the routine to comment on such
details as the homosexuality which is forced upon prisoners (and even condoned by
authorities) by our penal system, he uses "Religions, Inc." to point out the basically
irreligious attitude of organized religion.
In the past few years, Bruce's greatest fame, at least in the public prints, has
been as the user of four letter words. He has been arrested for obscenity in Chicago
(case under appeal) and in San Francisco (tried and found NOT guilty). Even in his
serialized autobiography in Playboy the emphasis, for commercial reasons one assumes,
has been on scatological language, hence the title of the autobiography, "How to Talk
Dirty."
Actually, even by acquiescing to such a title, Bruce is pointing up the
paradoxes and the hypocrisy of our society. What he has been doing with the words our
ambivalent attitudes have considered taboo, is to point out that words in and of
themselves are not evil. It is man who attributes to them an evil, and he is hitting
very close to the heart of many of our troubles when he points out the sham in our
attitude towards the public use of those words.
The night he was arrested in San Francisco for using a ten letter word meaning
oral masturbation of a male by a male, there was at least a two hour discussion of the
entire affair by the people left in the club, men and women, including the waitresses,
in which that word was used dozens of times. It was familiar to everyone, its usage
cleared the air and the conversation was actually cleaner than the one Bruce had in
the paddy-wagon with the cop who insisted the word was dirty. Honi soit and like
that.
In Bruce's San Francisco trial, that word was used in open court almost 50
times, according to the trial record. The jury of men and women, the spectators of
both sexes were not demonstrably harmed by it. No one seemed embarrassed or ashamed
of the word except the prosecutor, who blushed and swelled up as if he would choke
when he had to say it. Again honi soit.
If there is one thing guaranteed to cause trouble in our society--since we live
by sham and cover our real thoughts with the sugar coating of pretense--it is reality.
We are trained by our educational system, our religious beliefs and our laws and
government NOT to be able to think.
What Lenny Bruce does is to force his audience TO think. You go away from a
Lenny Bruce show shaken up. You may hate it or you may love it, but you do not--in
fact you cannot--dismiss it. He makes you think. And this is what makes him
important.
In the testimony during the Bruce trial in San Francisco, Dr. Louis Gottlieb
discussed comedy, saying, It consists in evoking laughter and I feel that
laughter is caused as a rule by the unexpected. The
injection of the unexpected on a train of thought
which is going along one line--one author has
referred to this as bi-association, the interjection
of two planes--and when this is done successfully,
that's what causes laughter. . . . As Mr. Bruce
presents his performance he creates a world in which
normal dimensions . . . are translated into a
grotesque panorama of contemporary society into which
he places slices of life, photographically accurate
statements that come out of the show business world .
. . and sometimes the juxtaposition of the generally
fantastic frame of reference that he is able to
create and the startling intrusion of slices of life
in terms of language that is used in these areas, has
an extremely comic effect.
It is hard to improve on that description of Bruce.
--Ralph J. Gleason
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