Anyone else here a fan of the old radio comedy group Firesign Theatre? I’ve been listening to them literally for decades now. I know Joel is a fan and he refers to them as “The Pundits” at one point in tribute.
If you are a fan, what’s your favorite album? I probably have to go with Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers, though others are right there with it.
To quote Joel (quoting the Firesign Theater): “Fightin’s outta style, fun’s where the fear is.”
I love The Firesign Theatre. I found out about them a couple of years back and listened to everything I could find. Hard to pick a favorite, but I’d probably go with “Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him.”
Top choice, another of my faves. I especially love the title track. Beat The Reaper!
Holy Mudhead, Mackerel!
My comedy touchstones are the Firesigns, SCTV and MST3K and reading some threads here, I’m remembering random other important things: someone mentioned midnight Rocky Horror viewings… that was basically physical riffing. Forgot how many times I went to those shows.
I lucked out in high school that my best friend had way older siblings who turned us onto Electrician, Pliers, Bozos, TwoPlaces and most importantly: Everything You Know Is Wrong
Comedy with amazing sound design! No comedians ever got that kind of backing from a major label with great engineers (Only half a key? I had to split it with the sound effects man… Thanks, Rocky!)
BTW, Phil Austin has a new audiobook of short stories on bandcamp that’s worth a listen
In 1976 when I was 12, one of the first albums I ever bought was not a rock album, but Firesign Theatre’s EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG. I played that thing constantly, confusing my dad who probably would have been happier if I was listening to satanic rock music. I’ve been a fan ever since.
Forward! Into the past!
There are some videos available on YouTube - I found 6 or 7.
C’mon, squeeze the wheeze! Many people like to.
Oh, good grief yes, since 1974. I can’t pick one favorite – up at the top are I Think We’re All Bozos On This Bus, The Three Faces of Al and Boom Dot Bust, but only marginally ahead of the rest of the canon.
I really like this one as well, excellent late FT. As is Give Me Immortality Or Give Me Death.
And I’m probably in the minority on this one, but I love the semi-canon album Eat Or Be Eaten. It’s a borderline FT case because one member didn’t participate in it. But the structure of the album as an old text adventure game is brilliant.
Agreed – really, about the only FT/semi-FT project that never fully landed for me was Anythynge You Want To: Shakespeare’s Lost Comedy.
I could listen to The Further Adventures of Nick Danger all day long, and the sound layering in How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You’re Not Anywhere At All is so deep that almost 50 years after first hearing it, I still find things in the background that I never noticed before.
Also, since the FT guys regularly referenced them as an inspiration, do try to check out some Goon Show episodes. Since they were rarely (and on those rare occasions, barely) topical, they’ve aged well despite having first aired in the 50s.
Fun bit of trivia: if Harry Secombe or Spike Milligan couldn’t make it to a recording, Peter Sellers often could (and did) cover their voices. The one episode Sellers couldn’t make it to, they brought in about six other people to cover his voices. XD
Yes indeed, there’s brilliant surreality to the Goons. I’ve been grabbing the episodes as the BBC re-airs them and have pretty much as full set a set as the Beeb has now. I especially love those where Valentine Dyall guests, he’s deliciously wicked and stentorian.
Cool, not surprising there’d be other Fireheads here. I think my favorite is “I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus”, with its speculative fiction kind of vibe, and some real serious undercurrents to the humor (though I think that’s true of most of their best bits).
Cool! I sometimes feel like the only American who even knows who the Goons are. Good to hear there’s other folks out there. I love absurdist humor, and Spike Milligan was top of the game.
I often wonder if I got into computers just hearing AhClem reprogram the exhibit at the end. Either way, it was better than my other option: Book Seller!
Hahaha! It is funny there is a topic on this as I made mention of it in another comment. My dad would listen to Firesign Theatre CDs. I recall Nick Danger and just loving the audio performance. I miss my dad every day but his humor lives on when I listen to this.
I recently found five of the classic vinyls (Don’t Crush that Dwarf, I Think We’re All Bozos, etc) in a record store dollar bin and I shrieked and made everyone in the store very uncomfortable but you better believe I bought those records.
One other bit of MST3K/Goons overlap - the Goons actually reference the novelty song “Peeking Through The Knothole In Grandma’s Wooden Leg” in an episode. Whether Joel’s use of that song in Robot Monster is a deliberate Goons reference or not only he knows. I suspect he may actually have first-hand experience with the tune himself.
We were recently visiting my in laws in Northwest Montana and visited a store in Libbey that had a ton of old vinyls. My wife found a copy of National Lampoon Radio Dinner. We gave it a listen just the other day, it was pretty fantastic. It reminded me a lot of The Firesign Theater. It got me on a kick, now I’m listening to those albums again as well.
What time is it, Eccles…?