LORD BUCKLEY IN CONCERT LINER NOTES

In an age worshipping the negation with a humour that is sick sick sick, Lord Buckley insists on being triumphant, joyous, positive, proclaiming himself the poet of the well well well. Listen to him. He starts off talking a kind of actorish-elocutionary English. Boom. He's into hip-talk. Then out of it. Then back in again. Can't get away from it, because this is a language where the words clutch closer to the emotion, where the voice following the Negro hipster intonation, adds extra dimensions to the word . . Like a jazz musician, Lord Buckley never works on paper. The performance is the thing. It's heart to head to voice. And sometimes heart to voice. And sometimes not even voice but an obscene trumpet sound like a ripped pair of breeches . . . He will flatten you with an absurd non-sequitur, then lift you up as high as a pigeon. He will venture into areas of reverence where most people leave their laughter behind them. And then, when he's got you good, when you're laughing so very hard in front . . . why then-in back you'll find creepy little feelings shivering up and down your spine. And ask-Where am I?

ABOUT HIS LORDSHIP

Some men are born to their titles. Others win theirs. But Richard Buckley came into his title because a friend with the unlikely name of Midas, went to a bankrupt circus to buy his kids a pony. With a fine nose for bargains, Midas bought the circus. And phoned Buckley for help. (What do I do now, Daddy?).. .The watchman led them through the warehouse, marched them past the line of mighty elephant rumps, past the dark roaring cages with thick aromatic clouds hanging overhead. They halted before the wardrobe trunks. From the first trunk, Buckley pulls out a vast purple robe studded with emeralds, rubies, sapphires, all of fine solid glass. The robe is strangely shaped but he wraps it carefully about him, head to ankles. It leaves a broad trail in the dust as he steps over to the mirror. "Is he crazy?" the watchman asks, "That there's an elephant hanging. Belongs to the elephant!" But Buckley stares at his reflection. He bows. "Your excellency," he whispers.

Richard, now Lord Buckley swept berobed from the warehouse and on through the streets of Chicago with people pretending not to stare, with wind off the lake whipping his train sky-high, making a great clatter with the glass jewels. Arrived at his apartment, he set about celebrating his title, as nobility obliges. They came from everywhere, politicians, pimps and bankers, Negro musicians and Italian gangsters, chorus girls, policemen, pitchmen and hookers. And together they worked out

the etiquette of the royal court. For Lord Buckley was not the man to keep all that nobility to himself. He knew Lord-ship is no good unshared. So it was "Your Ladyship, this . . . Your Grace that. . . Will your Highness please let go of my goddam leg?" . .. They papered the kitchen with eviction notices. Everybody had a very fine time . . . and the party lasted three years.

For Lord Buckley, the party is swinging yet. And the audience in the Ivar Theatre, in Hollywood, Californian February 12, Lincoln's Birthday, 1959-this audience which heard the original performance of which you now hear the record-to Lord Buckley, this was just another group of royal late-comers to the same old ball celebrating a small miracle that took place quite a while ago in a bankrupt circus warehouse in Chicago, Illinois.

"My Lords and my Ladies," his Lordship addresses them and you, "Beloveds-"

-Dan James