Richard Pryor & LaBelle

"I wanted Nixon to go to jail. Didn't you? [a roar of approval]. I've been there myself. That's 'cause judges give niggers time like it's lunch. Alright you, 40 years!"
Richard Pryor is an outrageous comedian. But perhaps that category is too narrow for this man. As Lenny Bruce put it, "I'm not a comedian. And I'm not sick. The world is sick and I'm the doctor, I'm a surgeon with a scalpel for false values." 
Pryor, whose record (on Stax) has been steadily climbing the charts and whose popularity is experiencing an overnight-sensation upsurge, knows how to sock his audiences in its black belly of experience. His material is drawn mostly from life in the ghetto-routines on winos directing traffic, police pushing people around ("white folks don't believe how the pigs harass niggers"), and the role of the church, etc. Much of it is definitely outside the "white experience" of reviewers like this one. But, as Frank Zappa put it in 1967, "you know people I'm not black but there's a whole lot of times I wish I could say I'm not white."
Some of the routines which drew the most response were take-offs on the myth of white superiority, revealed through promulgating a comic myth of black superiority. Like the story of a black man meeting Dracula, who instead of cringing in fear and clutching his throat, forces the Transylvanian to split. Or counterposing two white farmers meeting up with a flying saucer and running away in terror with two black men telling the sauce rites to fuck off.
That Nigger's Crazy is the title of Pryor's latest LP. But some of the zanier episodes were not very funny. Based on farts needs rare quality to seem anything but banal, Pryor didn't work that one out. The social commentary was cutting, but aiming for laughs by simply streaming endless motherfuckers and references to pussy and excretion gets a little boring.
It was the "obscenity problem" coupled with that of television network censorship of reality that led Pryor away from his origins on national tv, including the Ed Sullivan Show. On stage, except for backwoods local authorities, he's free to ramble on. Of course ten or even 5 years ago he never would have been allowed to reach such a massive audience on record. It was just far out, beyond the fringe, but society is obviously changing. 
Also on the bill with Pryor that night at Hill was a group called LaBelle, whose lead singer used to belong to an aggregation known as Patty LaBelle and the Bluebells. LaBelle is an up and coming funk and soul  band who work hard to reach the audience. Not only was the music stimulating, but the lyrics were right to the point.

Pryor
"You'd better straighten up, America," they sang. "Of course we don't mean you people out there are the problem. It's the system." From there Patty led the group through a resounding version, much more nitty gritty than the soda-pop sounding original, of Thunderclap Newman's tune about getting it together because the revolution's here. From there the band medlied on into the musicilized versions of Gil Scott Heren's The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." 
One problem that consistently marred LaBelle's and Pryor's performance was the wretched sound system at Hill. High frequencies snapped, crackled, and popped sound perception out of audibility. Much of Pryor's faster and more high-pitched routines were unheedable to much of the audience. It was a shame to see two performing acts with so much to say so hindered in their ability to get the message through.