Remember that tape I told you about earlier in the week which I thought contained an interview I did with George Carlin following his appearance on The Tonight Show? (You can see a picture of Carlin and me taken at 30 Rock after that gig and read more about the story here.) Well, it turned out I was wrong. But it turned out I was right, too.

The tape did contain an interview with George Carlin, circa 1972. But now that I’ve listened to it, I’ve learned that it took place before his appearance on Carson, and instead was taped backstage at The Bitter End, where I’d gone a day earlier with two high-school friends of mine to see Carlin perform. I now know this because Carlin spoke of appearing the following night, and we tried unsuccessfully to cadge tickets from him.

We brought along a half-dozen gift-wrapped boxes of Post Raisin Bran, which will explain why there’s a mention of that product on the tape. Why did we present such a bizarre gift, as well as a huge homemade card filled with bizarre raisin jokes and altered book and movie titles such as The Raisin Also Rises? Read on.

My wife, on hearing my voice from more than 35 years ago, remarked on how strong my Brooklyn accent had been in the days before she knew me. It had already started wearing off by the time she met me at Marvel Comics.

So you can get your vocal bearings (assuming you bother to click through), that’s me asking the first question, “How do you feel you’d contrast with such a comedian as Lenny Bruce?” And to show just how old this interview actually is, that’s also me asking, “Would you consider going to Vietnam with Bob Hope?” (more…)

Would you like to hear an interview I did with George Carlin when I was 16? Well, so would I. And after a discovery I made last week, we both might.

I was going through a file cabinet last week, came across an old 3″ tape recorder reel, and suddenly thought—could this really be what I think it is?

Back on June 23, 2008, I told you about an interview I did with Carlin either in 1971 or 1972, and showed off a picture I had my father take of the two of us. There’s a tape recorder in my hand, and I always intended to transcribe that tape and publish the interview, but never did. Holding the reel, I had a sense that it might not be too late. The problem is, I no longer own a tape recorder.

So I put out a call on Twitter and Facebook for someone with an ancient tape recorder who could check whether the tape was indeed my Carlin interview, and Analog writer Tom Ligon stepped up. I shipped it off to him this morning, and who knows, a never-before-heard George Carlin interview from the early ’70s may suddenly appear.

As for where I’d intended to publish the interview, check out the images below. (more…)

I’ve always loved George Carlin, starting before he was considered a satirist, back when he was just a comedian who did characters like the hippy-dippy weatherman, who’d make predictions on the Merv Griffin Show along the lines of “Tonight’s forecast—dark, continued mostly dark tonight turning to widely scattered light in the morning.” His material and his delivery always cracked me up.

But with his routine “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” Carlin transformed himself into a modern-day Lenny Bruce (Bruce was then one of my gods), and that love became adoration.

So back in the early ’70s, when I heard that he would be doing a show at Brooklyn College, I went with a friend, and we roared with laughter the entire time. When Carlin mentioned from the stage that he’d be appearing a few days later at the Bitter End in the Village, we decided right then that we had to be there.

We’d pretty much made fools of ourselves at that second show. Carlin had recently begun doing a bit in which he enthusiastically sang the theme from the Raisin Bran commercial (I can’t really explain why that was funny; you’d have to see it), and so when we went to the Bitter End, we gift-wrapped half-a-dozen boxes of Raisin Bran, and brought it to the show along with a card we’d made in the shape of a giant raisin inside of which we’d written dozens of very bad punning raisin jokes. After that show, Carlin allowed us back stage to so we could give him this very weird gift (hey, we were teenagers!), and then talked with us in his dressing room for what seemed like at least an hour. (more…)