Any fans of *Firesign Theater*?

We're bring the war back home!

 

I believe it was sometime in 1975 I saw 'Everything You Know Is Wrong' at the Key Theater in Georgetown. Remember next to nothing about the film and would like to see it again but it doesn't appear to ever have made it to DVD.

"The future is fun! The future is fair! You may already have won! You may already be there! Welcome to the future!"

 

Thanks Robin! Never thought to look on U2b... duh!

 

I see you are a sailor.

 

May I see your passport please.

 

....from the record, the intro.... "I don't know how you came by this record but you are now embarked on a journey that will certainly change your life forever. If you were never a special person, you are a special person now..."

Myself and some friends were so taken by Firesign Theatre that we started our own comedy group patterned after them, the Trout Commandos. We, of course did not become famous and did not pass Go or Collect $200.

 

Yes, I am a fan. And please don't make me listen to "40 Great Unclaimed Melodies" but I would enjoy "Bob's Brazerko Lounge" with my "Dear Friends".

 

I've never seen a show or video, but I heard Don't Crush That Dwarf ... more than once on the radio, back when CHUM-FM was a hip station, i.e., decades ago.

... from the Department of Redundancy Department ...

I always remembered the moment where the school bigwig was addressing a crowd of students (grads?) and, after he rattles off some boilerplate, there follows a barely audible "who cares"

 

"We need more schooling, for more students, for Morse Science High!"

"Eat me! Eat me, raw!"

"Rah, rah, rah... that's the spirit!"

I just finished working on a new film that co-stars Phil Proctor as an attorney, Love Addict, and he's very good in the film. Very glad to see Phil still busy.

"It's just this little chromium switch right here!"

 

See the video I posted on page one of the thread (post #13) which I still think is hilarious. Seeing
the entire "High School Madness" with closely matching clips/editing from the 30's must have been
a labor of love. And the entire graduation speech/comments are in there. I especially liked hearing the
one student in the back yell "What Is Reality?......"

 

Why does the porridge bird lay his egg in the air?

 

Schicklgruber

 

Everything You Know is Wrong

"He broke the President"

I never had the pleasure of seeing the Firesign Theater live. However, I saw Proctor and Bergman open for Patti Smith, in early 1976. Patti was touring in support of her recently released debut album, "Horses." She, and her band, were a raw burst of loud, ragged energy for their entire set. It was not a good match of artists for a double bill.

Sadly, Proctor and Bergman were boring--everyone in the audience seemed to think so. They were just not very weird or funny on their own.

 

If you are seriously into Firesign you need to find these:
TV Or Not TV-Proctor And Bergman(local cable/Shakespeare parody)
Roller Maidens From Outer Space- Phil Austin(I Love Lucy Parody)

 

So it didn't work in front of a Patti Smith show. Their LP that they were promoting was Firesign GOLD!

 

Their solo/duo albums really were pretty interesting, if only to highlight each member's personality/approach away from the group. There's also Ossman's How Time Flys and Proctor and Bergman's What This Country Needs and Give Us a Break.

 

I remember that they talked in a rather mundane way about what it is like to be a college student in a library, looking for a hard to find book. The audience grew restless--when was the good stuff going to start. But it never really did. Maybe it was just an off night for them.

 

Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers is probably the the best uncredited adaption of Finnegans Wake ever. Miles better than The Skin of Our Teeth.

 

Oh, Porgie! Oh mah, oh mah, oh mah!

Porgie... Tirebiter...
he's a spy and girl delighter...
Porgie... Tirebiter...
Just a student like you...

Read me, Dr. Memory!

 

Roller Maidens is not quite a "Lucy" parody, might be the most perfectly Pynchonian Prophylaxis of endtimes, ever. It's the biblical apocalypse as presented in the form of Fresno daytime TV re-runs that start running into each other. The "Lucy" thread is "Juicy and Tricky", the great and powerful Ozzie is rendered as "Ethyl and Regular", "Mannix" is now "Dick Private, Private Dick", the senate hearings continue non-stop and Nick Exxon wants to sell you a used car, or perhaps a younger girl. Stick around for the closing credits.

I have seen the Firesign Theater in concert, performing, mostly, "Give Me Immortality or Give Me Death", a continuation of "Everything You Know Is Wrong" packaged as Art Bell. I have spoken to them on the radio, in the persona of Rocky Rococco, they [collectively] in the persona of Richard Nixon, claimed no knowledge of me [Rocky]. But My introduction to the Firesign Theater was before the Firesign Theater, in the form of "Radio Free Oz", on KRLA in 1967, top 40 am radio after they sampled the electric punchbowl. I was reading "Book of Revelations" for the first time. They were reading "Eeyore's Birthday Party". This permanently affected me.

"Hello, this is Aleister Crowley and I hope you're enjoying the all-night images . . ."

 

"Don't eat with your hands, boy, use your entrenching tool."

 

If you're an old time radio fan, check out a couple of episodes of "Crime and Peter Chambers" (1954), with an almost exact foreshadowing of Lieutenant Bradshaw in the part of NYC Homicide Detective Louis Parker (played by Bill Zuckert).