Lenny Bruce - Let the Buyer Beware

UNEDITED, UNCENSORED, UNAPOLOGETIC...The ultimate Lenny Bruce box set 10 years in the making!

Let The Buyer Beware is an unprecedented 6-CD boxed collection of Lenny Bruce’s popular recorded performances, never-before-released performances, and various private recordings that tell the powerful, funny, and ultimately tragic story of the man whose brilliance and convictions turned stand-up comedy on its head. Lenny Bruce (1925–1966) was a brilliant, outspoken satirist unafraid to speak about such then-taboo topics as sex, race, religion and politics. According to critic Nat Hentoff, "Lenny delighted in exploring why certain words were forbidden—and then demystifying them." Bruce eventually became a victim of his own talent; he was blacklisted by the establishment, but fought the laws of censorship until it eventually killed him.

Much of the public remains unaware of the wealth of personal recordings Bruce made over the years; he recorded everything from private rehearsals of new bits, to phone conversations and paranoid tirades. This collection is the first to tell the definitive Lenny Bruce story.

*This long-awaited box set is the ultimate tribute to a man that Comedy Central calls the #3 comedian of all time.

*Over 7 1/2 hours of performances, interviews, and wire taps, including: 69 previously unreleased recordings, 10 previously unreleased selections from Lenny’s personal tapes, and 4 previously unreleased radio interviews.

*Contains classic recordings of "Religions, Inc," "How To Relax Your Colored Friends At Parties," "Airplane Glue," "Jewish & Goyish," "Tits And Ass" and more.

*Also contains such unreleased material as Bruce’s WFMT Chicago radio interview with Studs Terkel, many bits from performances at the Jazz Workshop and Off Broadway in San Francisco, The Gate of Horn in Chicago, and The Den in New York and an unused radio ad for Zeidler & Zeidler clothiers.

*Luxuriously packaged in a unique 80-page hardbound book, containing unpublished photos and memorabilia, as well as essays by Lenny Bruce’s daughter, Kitty; Bruce expert Marvin Worth; set producer Hal Willner; and writer Paul Krassner; plus tributes, a chronology, a glossary, and much, much more. Album Description

Legendary collection

Hands down one of the best we'll ever see. When Dick Gregory puts you in a class with Mark Twain and Richard Pryor in terms of funniest ever, that says something. I found a copy used at a Newbury Comics, and for half off, and after listening, I would easily pay the 70$ for this collection. April 16, 2008

Essential material for any red-blooded patriotic citizen

Highly recommended listening for any red-blooded patriotic citizen and all compassionate members [or aspirants] of the human family.

And for all crewmembers of spaceship earth [Bucky Fuller] February 27, 2008

Phenomenal audio-biography of Lenny's life, view, and humor

This is a well put together package. I definitely don't recommend downloading this as it comes with an awesome oversized book containing photos of personal clippings, letters, and more information about Lenny Bruce. This is the most Lenny I've listened to at one time, and after listening to this and reading the book, I feel much more respect for Lenny and love him. There is some great comedy on here, but some of the selections were boring and had poor sound quality. I'd rather look into his live stuff and The Lenny Bruce Originals 1 + 2 for a more cohesive sound quality. If you want to learn about Lenny's personality and showmanship, you can't go wrong with this set -- this is an excellent production. December 15, 2007

A Treasure Trove, but Not for Newcomers

This is a great collection of some classic Bruce bits and a lot of lesser known and obscure recordings. If you're a Bruce fan and know his schtick--and you're fairly well-versed in Yiddish--pick up this set. If you're new to Bruce, don't start here. The sound quality varies wildly, Bruce's references are even more arcane than usual--well, this is for aficionados. Newcomers should pick up Bruce's classic (and cleanly produced) Fantasy albums, notably: The Sick Humor of Lenny Bruce, Togetherness, and American. Once you've absorbed these discs (with a copy of "Joys of Yiddish" nearby), then move to the Carnegie Hall Concert, and then...to this multidisc set. December 1, 2005

LENNY LIVES UP TO HIS LEGACY

Remember the old story about the old actor famous for his death scenes?
"Dying," he explained to a younger acolyte, "is easy. It's comedy that's hard."
Comedy may be hard, but anyone can do it. But none ever did it as well as Lenny Bruce.
The funny man died of an overdose, at age 41, nearly 39 years go, but his legacy lives on. It's a life and legacy of laughter, and it's ripe for rediscovery.
Now, a generation who never have heard of Bruce, for those who only know him from Bob Fosse's smoky (but well intentioned) bio-flick, for those who glance at an image of Bruce and think "Castro," can grasp one of the most inventive and prismatic talents of the last century in a set of rare recordings.
"Lenny Bruce: Let the Buyer Beware" is a six-CD compendium of Bruce's best material, lovingly compiled by producer Hal Willner and Bruce's daughter
Kitty. More than half has never been heard before, and a great many variants and alternate riffs of his most well-known material has been anthologized here. His debut on Arthur
Godfrey's show is here, as well as the classic routines about Father Flotsky (a parody of Warner Brothers prison flicks), the Palladium (about an American comic dying on an
English stage), as well as (real) taped phone calls to his lawyers.
Horribly illustrated is his descent into near madness, not through drugs or degenerate lifestyle, but through the systematic persecution by the U.S. government. In
America during the '50s and '60s, you could make jokes about anything, except, maybe, Jesus Christ, Milton Berle and Eleanor Roosevelt. Sacrosanct bastions were not to be
made fun of, and especially not by an outsider, someone different, someone who was not a Christian. Bruce was a Jewish comic, steeped in the tradition, using the attitude and the
language as a position to observe the mores and folkways of mid-century American life.
It's not a stretch to see his persecution by the legal system of our country as another
blatant example of anti-Semitism, a suppression of truth and, worst of all, an illustration of
the stupidity and lack of humor inherent in a repressive government.
Bruce's take on sexuality was summed up in his observation that if the human body
was dirty, the fault lay with the manufacturer. He saw religion as a greedy profession, a
logical extension of an industrial complex to control reason and money. Unfortunately,
and fatally, Bruce believed in our government and legal system.
Like a witty Thomas Paine, Bruce was a true patriot when it came to freedom of
expression. Without Bruce there would be no Bill Maher, no South Park, no Jon Stewart,
and considerably less freedoms in general --- not only in speech, but also in equality
between races and genders. He was one of the first to use humor to attack America's
prejudice against African Americans, gays and all of the non-religious, non-republican
disenfranchised people in America.
Yet one man's patriot is another man's traitor. Bruce was vilified by the press and
by main stream contemporaries as sick, twisted and dirty.
But it's not only Bruce's material, certainly genius and of an equal to Jonathan
Swift or Mark Twain, but his performance style and presentational choices that this new
collection celebrates. He may not have been the first monologist who didn't use the "A
priest and a rabbi walk into a bar ..." joke catalogs, and certainly he had extended parables
and parodies that could be termed as "jokes." Yet his basic presentation was something
very new and different.
Rather than a standard set with the identical jokes, pauses and ad-libs for each
show, Bruce had an uncanny ability to listen ---- not only to his audience (as all performers
must), but he had the uncanny knack of being able to listen to himself. Like a brilliant jazz
musician, he could circle around a motif or a joke, listening to the sound and sense,
backing off, teasing the story, until the timing was exactly right to blast into the theme or
punchline.
In the commemorative hardcover book that accompanies Let the Buyer Beware,
there are a number of essays and appreciations of Bruce, but none so telling as a single
page by his daughter. "His truths were based on our most coveted lies," she writes. "He
left no room for rationalized bigotry or self-deception. He seduced his audience with a
rhythmic and dynamic use of his own language, acting as the slow pull of a Band-Aid off
denial."
Look around at our nation of addicts, a nation where prescription drugs have their
own snazzy TV commercials, when cell phones are required means of communication,
when the religious right still controls the White House.
Where is Lenny when we really need him? February 8, 2005

More reviews at Amazon.com ...