Have been watching through a few of these on my phone while eating lunch and such, they’re all pretty easy to find.

Carlin On Campus (1984): I think this is the last thing he did before he became the ponytailed old man, right? I’m not sure how much I like it. It’s mostly just observational humor and not particularly barbed attacks on various dumb people; I was watching it to see if I liked this era of Carlin more than the ponytailed old man era. Decent, I s’pose–he recycled the baseball/football bit from his gig hosting the first SNL which had been a full nine years earlier. The cars/driving bit probably sticks out the best. Watching this brought to mind how lots of stand up comedians are now avoiding college campuses due to political correctness.

Carlin At Carnegie (1982): Watched this after On Campus. I’d rate them about the same. The bit at the end where he does a virtuoso expanded list of his “seven dirty words” is probably the best. I’m still not blown away by these, but they’re at least amusing.

Jammin’ In New York (1992): Well, this was sort of a pleasant surprise–I thought I was going to hate it, or at least dismiss it, but I didn’t. The airline bit was good as far as observational humor goes. I can’t take issue with the political stuff at the beginning either–most people didn’t speak out against the first Iraq war, as I recall, and of course it’s all totally relevant now too, applying easily to Trump whom I hate completely. I thought his “why I don’t vote” bit, which I do take issue with, in part because it’s been co-opted by right-wing CHUDs and social media slackers for a long time, was in this special, but it isn’t, unless I somehow missed it. Watching this, I keep thinking of Frank Zappa more than I think of other comedians Carlin influenced. (Remember, Carlin was a freedom of speech absolutist who had to remind Andrew Dice Clay that a lot of people in Clay’s audience had a list of things they didn’t like, and on that list was “Jewish”!)

Will watch a few more of these and report back to you.
In particular, I’m hoping that my opinion of him continues to get better, because, for years I disliked his “ponytailed old cuss” persona on the basis of watching one of his last specials (either It’s Bad For Ya or Life Is Worth Losing) and I came back to this board and had a discussion with someone (Dave Weigel, maybe?) about how he really did just come across as an old fuck who wanted everyone to die. I’m also not a big fan of most of whom he influenced (Andrew Dice Clay, Bill Hicks, Penn Jillette, Denis Leary, Dennis Miller, and of course Bill Maher, the most miserably inconsistent person ever) but I guess I can’t hold that against him any more than I can hate Van Halen for inspiring years of garbage (and VH ended on a bad note, too.)