I have a short article in the Calendar section of today’s Los Angeles Times. It was clear to me when I read what my editor there, Dean Kuipers, added to my original draft that he, too, was a big Firesign Theater fan:

The Library of Congress called the Firesign Theatre “the Beatles of Comedy” when its 1970 album “Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers” was selected for the National Recording Registry.

An apt comparison, considering that, along with contemporaries Monty Python in Britain, the searing and psychedelic satirical troupe helped invent a literary brand of album comedy that lodged itself in the culture of college students across the country. The group paved the way for later arrivals such as Cheech & Chong, “Saturday Night Live” and Second City.

Celebrating the 40th anniversary of one of its most popular characters, detective Nick Danger, Third Eye, the four-man troupe makes a rare local appearance next week, performing Oct. 14 to 17 at the Barnsdall Gallery Theatre with a new show, “Forward Into the Past.”

Read the entire article at the Los Angeles Times

Tickets on sale for the Firesign Theatre show in Los Angeles next week here