Presented here is a digital version of a recording of a portion of a Lenny Bruce performance at The Berkeley Community Theatre on December 12, 1965. The show is known as The Berkeley Concert. This file is the beginning of the concert. Bruce is introduced. He fiddles with the microphone. He compares the Catholic Church to Howard Johnson's, in that it has franchises. He says our government is trying to open a franchise in Vietnam. He mentions protesters demonstrating against policemen, and does How the Law Started/Craphouse. He wonders who's exempt from the law, says he's been reading law for a while and wants to know where common sense fits in. He says an obscenity circus has been going on around him for the past five years. He mentions the case about whether James Joyce's Ulysses was going to being allowed into the country and about talks obscenity being judged not in terms of the most corruptible man but of the average man. He mentions a California law from 1961 saying a work has to have artistic merit. He says the church wants only whitewashed information to be disseminated, but that society needs to know about the worst, too. He thinks public money is being wasted on the desperate need to control vice. The recording ends here. The entire concert can be found on file LB_61a.
Full length copies of the recordings are available for use in the department. Please contact the Robert D. Farber University Archives & Special Collections Department, Brandeis University for more information.
