George Carlin recorded a special on 09/10/2001 to be aired on Sirius XM radio. Well, the events of the next day kind of shut that down (given the name and the premise), and it was never released.
Here it is on Youtube. I listened to the first routine, and holy shit, he’s bitter and angry. Not even in a funny way, just in a low-energy rant way. I don’t know the whole story behind it, but the first part seems to have been recorded in a studio of some sort, rather than in front of a crowd. His second routine, the energy is way up, and there’s a crowd there, that’s more like the George I knew.
I haven’t listened any further - almost didn’t finish the first routine, it was so bleak - but I know there are many fans here who would like to know about this.
If you go to 15:40 he actually mentions a plane exploding and mentions Osama Bin Laden being blamed by name. Quite a prescient prediction, Carlin was a smart guy.
He had this attitude of he wasn’t a part of the circus that is the the crazy world we live in and seemed to be sort of an idealist that became a burned out cynic.
He speaks a lot of truth but it is true he has a very depressing mindset in a lot of ways and he seemed to become more bitter as he went along.
Oh, the first track, Labeled “Boston Rant 1957” actually WAS recorded in 1957. Guess I thought it referred to something else. Hard to remember sometimes that George was working that long ago. And the rest is material he was working on for an upcoming HBO special, which was retitled, “Complaints and Grievances”, and a lot of this material was reworked or dropped.
