One day a long time ago I scoured through, at the time young and newly bought, YouTube and saw this interesting video. It was this grey haired man with a raspy voice dressed in all black and he was talking about something. He spoke of religion in a very harsh yet unbelievably funny tone and to my immense surprise he talked exactly how I felt about religion at the time. It didn’t take long for me to realize that he spoke of many things of which I felt the same way as him but he also spoke of many new things that helped me evolve and realize many more things. That person was George Carlin and forever was my life changed.
I don’t know exactly why I love him so much but I can safely say I’m not really alone here. Carlin was justifiably one of the best standup comedians of his time. He pushed the boundaries of comedy and censorship along with many other things. He passed away in 2008 and when I heard the news that day, I didn’t go to school nor did I do anything else other than watching his videos and sort of contemplating about his life and how he changed mine. ‘Twas a really good day. I’m not really in a position to be his biographer so I’ll leave that to some other more informative site. This blog here is essentially about sharing what I like and since I like George Carlin a lot I decided that for Flying Teapots third birthday (a date that I annually miss every time) I’m going to post most of his work. In a way this is my way of honoring his memory and thanking him. I’m sure he would appreciate the deed of sharing his thoughts to people who do not know about him or know only a few things. And the fact that I’m ripping off companies that are making profit now in his name.
His career can be split into two eras basically. The first era was much friendlier and perhaps more improvisational. His second era was more critical and more direct. Essentially Carlin is like wine, it gets better as the years go on and this can be noticed really well if you go chronologically through his discography. At first he parodies the news broadcast, little differences and he points out how absurd we are in ordinary life. It was all good and sometimes it went really far but there are some jokes that are flat out terrible and uninteresting. He also took a lot of his early jokes from Richard Pryor (and he even reused them later on). I’m not sure if I should understand this as ripping Pryor off or paying homage to him? As time went on he became more direct and direct until it practically exploded with “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television”. After he got recognized he was able to express anything he wanted the way he wanted it. This led to many of his legendary recordings where he ranted about the government, religion and many other completely nihilistic and misanthropic views that we all love and cherish.
Where to start?
I’m not sure where to tell you to start. If you already know about Carlin and how he works then I’d start from the beginning for absolute effect. If you are new and want to hear Carlin when he shined the most then I humbly suggest Jammin' in New York or You Are All Diseased. My own favorite is his It's Bad For Ya.
Some albums are badly tagged (When will Jesus bring the pork chops especially) because I forgot to tag them but most of them are all right. Carlin On Campus is one big single track. Other than that everything else should be in order.
Here we go chronologically:
Post-mediafire apocalypse commentary: Due to insane amount of time it took me to upload this for the first time I will sadly not reupload any of this unless you really, really, really want some of this uploaded. If that's the case let me know.
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jebeno
ReplyDeletethank you for this.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I've been looking for for at least 10 years are the episodes of GK's tv sitcom. I used to have them on vhs, but I let a co-worker borrow the tape and when I asked for it back - he said his vcr ate it. i'm still not sure if he was telling the truth.