Lenny Bruce - Carnegie Hall Concert
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Category: Music CD
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CD Details
Artist: Lenny BruceEdition: Music CD
Format: Live
CD Release Date: 1995-08-15
Music Label: Blue Note Records
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
- Introduction by Don Friedman
- Las Vegas Tits and Ass
Music reviews of Carnegie Hall Concert
Music Review: This Is What Freedom Of Speech Is About
Rating: 5 Stars
I idolize Lenny Bruce - before Pryor, before Carlin, Hicks, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock - the list goes on and on -, there was a former burlesque emcee-conman-Navy man who swore he'd gotten out of the service by wearing a dress-all around scrabbling up out of the grave every day of his life hustler who didn't just blow the doors down when demanding just what 'Freedom of Speech' truly meant, if anything, in our country: he dropped the original F-bomb, MF bomb, dared to question why two gay teachers had been fired from their jobs for seeing one another outside of their workplaces (no joke, scary, isn't it?) and said, regarding what was then considered an illegal act that only homosexuals engaged in, "I don't equate that to homosexuality. I equate that to any hip chick I'd date, or love, or marry." For his efforts, he was arrested, harrassed, blacklisted, (possibly) framed for narcotics, and died penniless, friendless and broken. It's important to note all that in this review, because it's obviously hard for me to pick apart his weak offerings, and it's difficult for me to not fawn over his great ones: It keeps coming back to the fact that Lenny Bruce is why we can say some of the things we say, why we can write what we write, and why we aren't all being dragged into court on an almost daily basis (as he was toward the end of his life) for saying words you hear on the lunchgrounds of any junior high school and up, now. Is the Carnegie concert perfect? No. It was recorded before Lenny was really running for his legal and literal life, and so it's much, much more concise and together than some of his later works left behind (in which he basically reads his charges, what is going to be continued, fought, dropped, or completely incomprehensible to him until his dying breath - the term 'dying on stage' comes to mind with those examples). But this CD still deserves five stars because, when Lenny swings, he swings, and there's been nothing like him since. Whether he's talking about social diseases ("Why aren't there any telethons for the clap?") to Christ and Moses stopping in to check up on who's spreading their word ("Uh, there's a nice Jewish boy here to see you - of course he's white!"), fifty years later, there are still points where the listener gasps. Imagine what Lenny did to 1961 Camelot-fed Americans, and you'll see why this man, depending on your own view, was either crazy, a genius or a warrior - maybe all three. I said at the beginning of this review that I idolize Lenny for giving us freedom of speech, and that's true, and it's so ironic that when you listen to his CDs and watch his performance DVDs now, they are nothing, nothing at all, compared to the utterly obscene and personal attacks we see against one another through Youtube and print. I read things (I just reviewed something else regarding this subject) that, to me, are not an example of freedom of speech - they're examples of vile, mean and twisted minds which have taken this right and knocked it down and stomped the hell out of it. If you listen to Lenny, you'll see that he never dealt the cruelty card, and in fact went the other way, wondering why we, as human beings, choose our friends by race, financial standing, religion and sexual preferences. Even after his demons got to him, there was something worth listening to in every Lenny Bruce 'roll', and if you take the time to go through this CD, you'll see what I mean. Just as when Lenny was a bad boy, he was a very bad boy, when he was brilliant, he blocked out the sun, and we're lucky to have had him for too brief a time.
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