At the height of his career, George Carlin was to the comedy
\nworld what Howard Stern is to radio today: the bastard child who
\nhad the courage to say what was on his mind, even if it went
\nagainst what was popular at the time. In fact, Carlin’s own battles
\nagainst obscenity (the classic “Seven Words You Can Never Say On
\nTelevision”) mirrors some of the struggles Stern has had with the
\nFCC.<\/p>\n
Carlin has always been a master social critic, and a collection
\nof his early work,
\nClassic Gold<\/i>, is evidence of that skill, as well as his
\nhumor.<\/p>\n
The two-disc set is a re-packaging of Carlin’s first three
\nalbums,
\nFM & AM<\/i>,
\nClass Clown<\/i> and
\nOccupation: Foole<\/i>. (I remember that my dad had
\nFM & AM<\/i> when I was a small child; he had to keep the
\nrecord on a high shelf in a closet to keep me from it.) You can
\nhear Carlin’s reputation grow as he moves from playing a small
\nvenue (
\nFM & AM<\/i>) to finding out he won a Grammy while on stage
\nin front of a larger audience (
\nOccupation: Foole<\/i>). But while his audience grew, so did his
\ncaustic wit and criticism of the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n
You do have to keep an open mind when listening to some of his
\nbits. “I Used To Be Irish Catholic” tells of his split with
\nCatholicism, though he handles the subject tastefully (being a
\nRoman Catholic, I wasn’t offended). And you’ll definitely want to
\nkeep the kids away for some of the routines, especially “Seven
\nWords You Can Never Say On Television.” (It is interesting to note
\nthat, 25 years later, the list still is accurate.)<\/p>\n
Carlin manages to re-create some of the characters he did on
\nearly variety show programs on vinyl, such as the hippie-dippy
\nweatherman Al Sleet (“Tonight’s forecast – dark.”) It’s at monents
\nlike this that Carlin can have you laughing uncontrollably. Other
\ncharacters, like the DJ Scott Lame on “Wonderful WINO”, seem to run
\nendlessly, and would have been better had they been shorter.<\/p>\n
And while a great deal of the material tends to be tame by
\ntoday’s standards, Carlin was often seen as “the enemy” for saying
\nthings that he did in the early ’70s. He had the courage to joke
\nabout drugs and criticize America’s presence in Vietnam – actions
\nwhich occasionally lost him jobs. As for the language – again, tame
\nby today’s standards. Hell, at least Carlin tried to provide some
\nbackground on the words rather than using them incessantly. But the
\ncountry in 1971 was just getting over Lenny Bruce; they weren’t
\nready for another aural attack on their sensibilities.<\/p>\n
The “Class Clown” routine, to me, is the highlight of
\nClassic Gold<\/i>, and is part of the album of the same title
\nwhich won Carlin a Grammy for best comedy album. While you can’t
\nsee what he’s doing, the sounds he makes paint a vivid picture, and
\nwill have you teary-eyed with laughter. Carlin stretches it a
\nlittle too long by continuing it on portions of
\nOccupation: Foole<\/i> material without providing a smooth segue
\ninto it. In fact, there are portions of
\nOccupation: Foole<\/i> that sound like Carlin is just exhausted
\nwith the whole role he was playing.<\/p>\n
The only other negative with this album is that some of the
\nmaterial is quite dated. I remember “Let’s Make A Deal” quite well;
\nyounger listeners may wonder what Carlin is rambling about.
\nHowever, if you take portions like this with a grain of salt,
\nthey’re not so bad.<\/p>\n
I normally would want to take a CD like this and do three
\nseparate reviews – one for each album that makes it up. However,
\nI’ll make an exception with
\nClassic Gold<\/i> and recommend it in the package it’s in. The
\nthree albums are natural progressions of one another, and are an
\nintregal portion of Carlin’s career. After numerous listenings,
\nit’s sometimes hard to separate the material into albums. That –
\nand the fact this stuff is still funny 25 years after he performed
\nit – is testament enough to the power of Carlin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5813],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-35710","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-george-carlin","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35710"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=35710"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=35710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}