George Carlin maintained he had a name that never ended: geor - ge - or - ge -or ge.
What George Carlin did for comedy transcends any of his peers or predecessors. He studied the masters and could do great vocal impersonations - Ed Sullivan for one. In fact he was one of Ed’s famous comedians for his character Al Sleet, The Hippie Dippie Weatherman. This shtick made him famous and he could have milked this comedy for all it was worth. He was not only a regular performer on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show he was also a guest host many times.
His contemporaries, Bill Cosby and Rodney Dangerfield, were looking at life from different angles and maintained this style over the years. Carlin did a 90 degree turn. His “Seven Words . . .” routines are as mimicked as much or more than the Monty Python lines, of which we knew all too.
The album Class Clown changed all this. He grew his hair long and became a spokesperson for my generation. What Mort Saul and Lenny Bruce started Carlin ran with. The reason for this that the world was ready for the irreverent, anti-establishment banter that Saul and Bruce were banned for only a few years before.
We had Carlin 8-tracks that would break in the middle of a joke. We didn’t care. because we would park on the back and let Toledo Window Box play until we wore the tape out.
“How come there’s no blue Food?”
“You can toke up before you get on the airplane or in the lavatory in flight. In other words, you can get off and get on, or get on and get off!”
“Today in the news, 18 people suffered 24 hours on continuous whiplash when a man claiming to be the Devil hijacked a roller coaster.”
“Also in the new, the Nobel Prize for mathematics goes to Albert Finestein for discovering a new number. Finestein calls the number “bleen” and says it comes between 6 and 7.”
Just like with a record album a Carlin album release was a time of rejoicing. “Hey, guys, I go the new Carlin album! Come on over!”
I have not really listened to Carlin in a long time. I think I will tonight.