Live at Carnegie Hall

1	Carnegie Hall 1:42
2	Italian and Jewish 5:37
3	Bachelor Party 2:31
4	Potato Chips 1:48
5	Juice 1:17
6	Stupid Joke 1:38
7	Politically Incorrect Joke 0:46
8	Forty 3:28
9	The Shower 2:35
10	The Bed 4:32
11	The Duties 3:23
12	The Shopper 3:11
13	Adult Movie 2:05
14	The Baby 3:03
15	Diapers 1:06
16	2 Year-Olds 4:57
17	Twins 3:45
18	They Say Funny Things 2:11
19	The Tub Story 1:58
20	Sex 2:18

Barnes & Noble

Carnegie Hall is not exactly your neighborhood comedy club...but the star of CBS-TV's Everybody Loves Raymond, who played a whole lot of little comedy clubs on his long road to the top, makes the place feel just like home in this easygoing 54-minute set of personal anecdotes and reflections. We hear about how his mother covered the furniture with plastic and kept stacks of fine china that were never used -- "Everything in my mother's house is for a special occasion that hasn't happened yet," he deadpans. Romano's oral autobiography perks up when he hits 40, with a hilariously discreet account of his first rectal exam. The final half hour is about his marriage, with its conflicts and compromises -- my favorite part is about how Mr. & Mrs. Romano divide up the real estate on their king-size bed -- and about raising the real-life Romano youngsters. Neither potty-mouthed nor squeaky-clean, Romano reminds us that there are lots of laughs in that place in between, where most of us live and love. There's virtually none of the nastiness that pervaded comedy in the 1990s, but there are plenty of clever touches to keep us entertained, making this disc appropriate fare for the whole family. Dr. Demento

All Music Guide

Everybody Loves Raymond, which began a lengthy stay in network prime time in 1996, is yet another in the endless string of half-hour situation comedies built around the talents of a standup comic, in this case Ray Romano. So, it stands to reason that if you enjoy the show, you'll enjoy this album (released to coincide with the start of the show's sixth season), which is based on the same sensibility. Romano begins by using an adjectival variant on the "F" word to express his wonder about appearing at Carnegie Hall. (The word is bleeped out even though everyone knows what he's saying, as a means of avoiding a parental advisory sticker -- rather like television, that.) His humor touches on enough risqué subjects to earn the album at least the equivalent of a PG-13 movie rating, but he is far from being a shock comic. His jokes and stories arise out of domestic situations, especially marriage and children. Affectionate pecks at his wife, funny observations about his children, and occasional bits of self-deprecation, all spoken in the accent and vocabulary of a working-class man from the Northeast suburbs, make for a likable comedic sensibility that anyone in young middle age can identify with. Sounds like an ideal persona to build a situation comedy around, doesn't it? As he says at the end of the performance, "Keep watching." William Ruhlmann