The first ever SNL (hosted by George Carlin) is scheduled to be broadcast on early Sunday (or really late Saturday, if you will). It also features Janis Ian and Billy Preston as musical guests.
Surprisingly, I haven’t seen this one in its entirety, so it should be interesting. We’ll see it if holds up after THIRTY years.
What network is broadcasting it?
NBC. They have been showing old eps in the AM for some time now.
Unlike E! or Comedy Central, they show the entire episode (AFAIK).
Since I get NBC on satellite, I get the NBC affiliates from New York & Los Angeles.
New York will show it at 3am and as will Los Angeles (local time, of course).
Thanks!
I haven’t seen the first episode in its entirety since it was originally broadcast. I watched the show because I liked George Carlin, and I was hooked.
Yay! I just checked, and my local NBC affiliate will carry this at 3 a.m.
Thanks again.
Pretty good. It’s surprising how much music and stand-up the show had.
I got just as many laughs out of their old triple-bladed razor in their double-bladed world from our quaduple-bladed future perspective.
I guess I should have signed my previous post.
Fern ‘Bud’ Forest
I saw the description of the show in the tv guide, and thought “George Carlin? Janice Ian? That must be a old one…” I had no idea it was the oldEST.
Overall, not bad. I didn’t care for Valeri Bromfeld or the Albert Brooks short and a little Janis Ian goes a long way.
The first ever appearance of the “Not For Ready Prime Time Players” (Pardo gaffes the first ep).
I made it up through Carlin’s third mini-routine then fell asleep. Surprised the show made it after that start (it almost didn’t).
That was very good. Still funny after 30 years.
The only negative points were the female comedian who just stank, and the “Learned the truth at 17” one-hit wonder gal, but then who knows at the moment which stars will be big tomorrow.
Billy Preston sure rocked. Funny, but in the skits they had, you could imagine John Belushi being the restrained one.
I regret not being able to stay up for the Muppets.
Bzzzt. “At Seventeen” was Janis Ian’s comeback, not her sole hit. Her first was “Society’s Child,” way back in 1967 (a much better song, if a bit overwrought).
I was struck by the titanic difference between the first “Weekend Update” – small desk, little fanfare – and today’s “Weekend Update,” which is a centerpiece of the show.
Biffy the Elephant Shrew wrote
I googled a bit and don’t know any of her work other than the “dates for beauty queens” one. Was she fairly well-known when the show aired?
In fact, was the female comedian well-known as well?
Maybe they’re from a previous time, but I was born in 64.
She was Dan Ackroyd’s writing partner at Second City. She had a fairly decent career up to 1993.
Society’s Child, about a white teenage girl who was unable to date a black boy due to social pressure, was a fairly big hit in 1967. It was also quite controversial given the racial climate of the time. On top of that, she was only about 16 when it was released, and maybe 14 when she wrote it. (I was a high school student at the time, and remember the song well.)
Her next few albums didn’t have nearly the impact as her first one. She was getting a lot of press in 1975 because of her big comeback with At Seventeen.
I’m not sure what to make of it. It was either tame material suitable for a children’s show (very different than the only other Muppets SNL bit I’ve seen) or deeply biting satire dealing with incompetent leaders and sham messiahs.
Also, I think there was a joke hinting that the queen monster was actually a hermaphrodite slug (or snail). You see, she’s having a problem. She cannot “release her darts.” Slugs and snails eject bone darts into their partner during mating in order to have the genetic advantage of being the impregnator rather than the impregnated (Really. There have been threads on this.)
“At Seventeen” is one of the truly great songs. The problem is that nobody to whom it really applies and really identifies with it wants to admit it. Janis is Cool. She’s really tiny, way under five feet, and haven’t aged well, but has a sharp personality. She got “married” to her girlfriend in Toronto in 2003 and honeymooned at the World Science Fiction Convention. How many other rock stars would do that?
On the 30th anniversary special, several people made the comment that the first season didn’t come together until the fourth show. This show demonstrates that they had no real idea of what they wanted to do and were still groping for a core to build the show around. I hope that NBC is showing the first season in order now so that we can watch the show grow over the next several weeks.
She also had the big fight scene with Amanda Plummer in Needful Things.