George Carlin

By and large, the Carlin-Burns team found little success, and eventually broke up; the album was not released until many years later under the name The Original George Carlin, long after Burns split to begin working with Avery Schreiber. Striking out on his own, Carlin's initial work cast him a clean-cut, straitlaced performer; his proper solo debut, 1967's Take Offs and Put Ons, offered clever if mild-mannered routines like "Wonderful WINO," about a mindless disc jockey. That year he was also tapped to co-star in Away We Go, a summer replacement series for The Jackie Gleason Show; still, despite his success, Carlin found his suit-and-tie image stifling, and began gravitating towards the image and ideals of the counterculture.

Re-emerging as a long-haired, bearded, denim-clad hippie, he lost many of his high-paying gigs, but his riffs on sex, drugs and politics quickly gained an avid following among the fringe culture. While 1972's AM and FM offered an even split between the safer material of his past work and the more incendiary routines of the "new" Carlin, 1972's Class Clown and the following year's Occupation Foole marked his full evolution into a counterculture icon. Most notably, Class Clown featured the recorded debut of the "Seven Dirty Words" bit, the subject of a Supreme Court ruling after the FCC nearly stripped Pacifica Radio of its FM license for playing the routine on the air. At the same time, Carlin himself was arrested after a Milwaukee concert appearance for violating local obscenity laws.

The controversy only made him a bigger star, and in 1975 he was tapped to host the debut episode of the NBC sketch-comedy showcase Saturday Night Live. The same year also saw the release of the LP An Evening With Wally Lando Featuring Bill Slaszo, highlighted by an early performance of what soon evolved into his popular "Baseball vs. Football" routine. In 1976 Carlin appeared in the film Car Wash, and in 1977 he issued On the Road. However, as a new breed of way-out comedians like Steve Martin, Robin Williams and Andy Kaufman began to emerge, Carlin's brand of incisive sociopolitical commentary began to fall from favor; plagued by substance abuse problems, he did not record again until 1981's A Place for My Stuff, and gained a reputation for unpredictable, often abusive onstage behavior.

By the middle of the decade, he resurfaced clean and sober for 1985's Carlin on Campus and 1986's Playin' With Your Head, which reprised material from recent cable-TV and home video performances. After 1988's What Am I Doing in New Jersey? he found a new following among teens thanks to his appearances in the popular Bill and Ted screen comedies; in the early 1990s, he courted an even younger audience by assuming the lead role on the PBS children's series Shining Time Station. Still, Carlin did not neglect his core audience; 1990's Parental Advisory, Explicit Lyrics and 1992's Jammin' in New York found him as feisty as ever, and in 1994 he starred as an abrasive cab driver in the short-lived Fox television sitcom The George Carlin Show. Additionally, he continued to tour constantly, and in 1997 issued the album Back in Town. Like many of his '90s recordings, 1999's You Are All Diseased was issued as a complement to an hour-long HBO special.

George Carlin at The Pabst Theatre, April 5, 2005

Reviewer: Steve (The Pabst Theatre, WI)

George Carlin keeps getting better. He came out on fire Friday night, April 1st at the Pabst Theatre and for close to an hour and a half, had a full house screaming with laughter. When George discussed the possibility of other body parts that should be donated, in this case sexual body parts and how to check their freshness and quality, the woman sitting next to me was laughing so hard I thought she must have wet her pants. It was that kind of night. What a great time. Thanks George!

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