The great English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, Noël Coward was one of the most celebrated wits of the 20th century. He’s what they used to call a “sophisticate.”
But when Sir Noël wanted to throw down, he could throw down. Coward’s rapid-fire patter and clipped diction in this televised 1955 performance of his “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” could give any of today’s top rappers a run for their Benjamins.
Out today on Cherry Red Records is Setting The Dogs On The Post Punk Postman, the latest installment of Luke Haines’ whimsical muse. What’s been on his mind lately you might wonder? Wonder no more, the album is filled with songs about German U-Boat captains, ex-Stasi spies, Nixon and Mao, humorous Scottish poet Ivor Cutler, a nefarious pumpkin up to no good, landscape gardening, and of course, Andrea Dworkin’s knees. In other words, it’s the new Luke Haines album! Setting The Dogs On The Post Punk Postman features guest contributions from REM’s Peter Buck and Julian Barratt. It is the creation of a man who certainly knows how to amuse himself. I applaud this. I prefer artists who do it for themselves first. I mean, why should they do it for you?
I posed a few questions to Luke over email, here’s how he responded.
Some people think it’s Vic Godard. It isn’t. Vic’s great anyway…I’d had the title for ages – and what are you gonna do with a title like that? Use it. I hate the ‘idea’ of ‘post punk.’ It didn’t exist. It went from punk, to new wave. Post punk doesn’t come into it. The notion of post punk is just another example of curator culture. ‘Waiter there’s a curator in my soup.’ In the song – the post punk post man is very much the ‘messenger.’ You should always shoot the messenger (or set the dogs on them) The messenger is invariably an idiot and up to no good; Brother number 1, or 2. Another thought: I’d been thinking about Epic Soundtracks. I didn’t know him well, but I was very sad when he died. He deserves more thought…so this song is a kind of tribute to Epic.
What did this person do to piss you off? Did you argue about Swell Maps and Throbbing Gristle? What happened?
(answered above)
Do you reckon he’ll know that the song is about him?
As explained – the song isn’t about anyone in particular. However, when you write a song about someone, then that person should always know, otherwise what’s the point.
Was there a particular reason that you were photographed in front of the Ace Cafe?
There’s an unreconstructed element to the record. Musically and lyrically. The Ace Cafe is the most unreconstructed place I could think of. They sell posters of scantily-clad biker ‘chicks’ that are slightly tatty. It’s all very un ironic. It’s just assumed that bikers who go there might like that kind of poster on the wall of their workshop. I love everything about the Ace especially its location – in the middle of nowhere but slightly near Neasden. Jim Fry (the photographer) and I had been talking about that great Bob Marley documentary when the Wailers come to tour the UK for the first time, and they end up holed up in a terraced house in Neasden and then cutting the tour short because of the snow. Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh took the snow as an omen of London being Babylon, and they hopped it back to Kingston JA. From there I got to the idea of the sleeve being the Ace Cafe.
What about Ivor Cutler? Did you see him taking the bus one day and years later this is what inspired the song?
Ivor used to live near me. I used to get on the C11 bus and Ivor would as often or not be aboard. He would often strike up conversations with strangers on the bus, not in a mad’ way, just in a curious way. The line about the ‘hat’ is an actual conversation he had with a school kid. I made a mental note of it, knowing i’d use it one day.
I won’t ask you about “Yes, Mr. Pumpkin,” the inspiration there seems far too personal.
Right. It started out as a Syd Barrett kind of singalong ditty, which I couldn’t get out of my head. When I started recording it it reminded me of a song by The Mighty Boosh. During the first lockdown the only person I kept bumping into was Julian Barratt, I figured that as I’d had Julia (Davis) on one of my albums that all the signs were telling me to get Julian on this one!
I should. Since working with Peter Buck I’ve got really into guitars again. I’ve become almost obsessive. It’s a good job I’m not wealthy otherwise I’d just blow it all on guitars. The electric guitar is the greatest invention of the 20th century. We should worship guitars (not the people who play them so much) as wooden (or metal) gods.
There was “Breaking Up” towards the end of the Auteurs. I kind of hid that one away, as I thought writing love songs was kind of redundant. I was wrong on both counts.
Did the missus approve of that one?
I think she would have disapproved if it had been anything other than what it is. I still don’t really understand why pop songs don’t get down to the nitty gritty of carnality more often. The song is kind of funny but it’s also dead serious. It came out like Man Who Sold The World-period Bowie, sung by Judge Dredd. I’m pretty happy about that.
As reported at Pitchfork and elsewhere, Lydia Lunch is selling the rights to her life’s work. According to a March 25 press release, this would transfer “all intellectual rights and copyright ownership” of “all of her written articles, compositions, the majority of her Master Recordings, books, artworks, photography and more.” This would include 61 published works, nearly 400 compositions, and Lydia’s “ownership interest” in 326 master recordings. The ultimate buyer—obviously a person of wealth and refined taste who would respect the cultural and historical significance of such a body of work—will be able to exploit the material as they see fit.
Valuing transgressive art might have been a difficult thing in the past, but with a few decades of distance, what was once underground and perhaps violated cultural norms—like Fingered for instance—becomes history. (And in this case, it also gets uploaded to PornHub.) And that’s not to say that it’s “safer”—we’re talking about Lydia Lunch, for chrissakes—but that it can be more readily turned into a more mainstream commodity than in the past.
It will be interesting to see what happens here. I asked Lydia a few questions over email, her answers below, but I think it’s worth mentioning that in the past two years, I personally have purchased seven Lydia Lunch authored, or related items—vintage vinyl pressings of Queen of Siam and 13.13, a newer vinyl version of 13.13, and three books, one by Lydia, the recent “oral history” Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over by Nick Soulsby (which I contributed to) and a book of her interviews with RE/Search’s V. Vale that I just bought. I realize that my spending habits aren’t the same as most people’s, but I’m a good example of someone who has spent, you know, more than $100 on Lydia-related products in the past 24 months.
What made you decide to do this?
Lydia Lunch: I have managed to own everything I’ve done, was able to release as much material as I have in various formats over the years, produce other artists, curate spoken word shows for decades, host workshops for writers, collaborate with so many incredibly creative artists, tour extensively…it would be a great relief if someone would step in and conceive possibilities that can allow me to carry on.
It would be extremely helpful to have support for my podcast The Lydian Spin with Tim Dahl, which has over 90 episodes online available for free. I consider it an audio museum where we promote other artists, musicians, filmmakers, etc. It is a mandatory platform not only to give voice to other artists to express their vision, but a vehicle for myself and Tim to try to make sense of the almost unfathomable mess this country is trying to lift itself out of after four years of complete absurdity.
I’m working on a documentary with Jasmine Hirst - Artists-Depression/Anxiety & Rage. We’ve interviewed over 35 artists and a few therapists and will have it finished by fall. An important subject especially now.
I have an LP finished with Tim Dahl’s psycho-ambient trio GRID, and a slinky jazz-noir LP with the amazing chanteuse and songwriter Sylvia Black. I’m working on a play. RETROVIRUS is waiting for shows to open up. All of this, as usual, self produced amd self financed…even I can only do so much without some financial support especially now for fuck’s sake. HA! Or should I wait for Spotify to cough up half a cent for every song they play?
How do you put a dollar value on your life’s work?
I can’t. But I’m open to proposals. Also after 43 years it begins to feel like a humongous invisible beast of sound and vision hanging over my head, or to quote Lawrence Ferlinghetti a “Coney Island of the Mind”. It would be great if someone stepped in who wanted to run The Cyclone.
“My Amerikkka” by Lydia Lunch
How would a potential purchaser do the same?
They would have 100 years to figure it out! There must be someone creative enough to find methods that I don’t have the time or energy to pursue, since I continue to create in multiple formats and have no intention of slowing down.
“Collateral Damage” by Lydia Lunch
What’s the process you envision?
Getting the word out that this material is available, targeting forward-thinking people who understand not only the future possibilities, but have an understanding of history as well. I was lucky to work with Nicholas Martin who recently acquired my archives for the Fales Library at New York University and is establishing a digital museum. But I still own the copyright on over 380 musical compositions, and partial ownership in most of the master recordings, 61 published works, my artwork and photography, etc. It’s all just really too much for me to manage as I continue to create. Selling this to the right party would also allow me to independently continue to produce and collaborate with other artists which is extremely important to me.
“Casualty” by Lydia Lunch
How does a serious possible buyer contact you?
Through my manager Tom Garretson at tgarretson@lydia-lunch.net
The trailer for Beth B’s documentary ‘Lydia Lunch: The War is Never Over.’
‘Long live the new flesh!’ A digital design based on David Cronenberg’s 1983 film ‘Videodrome.’
Outside of the fact that he is a talented artist with a deep love of classic 60s, 70s, and 80s horror, unfortunately, I do not know, nor was I able to dig much up on self-professed “comic enthusiast, music freak, horror lover, and videogame collector” Nache Ramos. But here’s what I do know. Ramos is based in Alcoli (or Alcoy), Spain where he has been a graphic designer and illustrator for over a decade. His art has been used to decorate snowboards made by Wi-Me Snowboards, and for Australian snowboard company Catalyst. In 2018, he won a Guns ‘N’ Roses contest which asked fans of the band (via Twitter), to create artwork based on their 1987 album Appetite for Destruction. Other than well-deserved accolades for his submission, I’m not sure what Ramos got as a prize, but I suppose gaining exposure to G’N'R’s 6+million Twitter followers is very much a good thing. This was also the same year Ramos moved from using traditional artistic mediums to creating his work digitally. This brings me to Nache’s nostalgic interpretations which infuse the look of old-school comic books with Ramos’ love of science fiction and horror films he grew up with.
Like any horror fan worth their VHS collection, Ramos digs the films of director John Carpenter and has created several digitally designed homages to Carpenter’s films in vintage comic book style. Others include David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (pictured at the top of this post), Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street, Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Richard Donner’s bone-chilling 1976 film, The Omen. If this all sounds good to you (and it should), Ramos also accepts commissions via his Instagram. You can also pick up very reasonably-priced prints of Ramos’ super-cool fictional movie posters on his Red Bubble page. I myself picked up Nache’s take on Videodrome. Scroll on to see more of Ramos’ fantastic faux-vintage comics.
There is a (relatively speaking) lesser-known recording of David Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel” that was done in New York in 1974 and commonly known as the “U.S. Single Version.” Some of you will know this, some of you won’t. Even if you do, it’s fun to hear it again.
This furious variation on the song, released only as a 7” record (backed with “Lady Grinning Soul” and attributed only to “Bowie”) was out just for a few months when it was withdrawn and replaced with the album version. It’s a more uptempo, far more aggressive take on “Rebel Rebel” with Bowie himself allegedly playing all the instruments, save for the frenzied congas which were played by Geoff MacCormack.
Bowie’s guitar sounds like Keith Richards playing a rusty Strat through a transistor radio and he’s added the chorus of the “li li li li li li li li li li” bits not present on the LP version. It’s heavily phase-shifted and the vocals are a bit more shouted. All in all, I think it’s actually slightly superior to the better-known album track, although I love that one, too. Just an opinion.
This was (and still is) the loudest cut record I have ever heard. If you drop the needle on this baby with the stereo at a normal volume, it will blow your speakers (and ear drums) out. It always sends me diving for the volume knob before my speaker cones blow.
Here’s something from a posting about “Rebel Rebel (U.S. Single Version)” from the merry audiophile maniacs at the Steve Hoffman Forums:
Rebel Rebel (Bowie): three different versions exist. The familiar version was released in edited and remixed form (4’22” instead of 4’31” and much more echoey than the album version) as the the first single from Diamond Dogs (RCA LPBO 5009). The Australian Rebel Rebel EP (RCA RCA 20610) features a shorter 4’06” edit. Further mixes of this version are found on bootlegs: a ‘dry mix’ (“BBC Version”) was released on Absolutely Rare (no label) and The Axeman Cometh (DB003) has a “Mix 1”, supposedly from a 1973 acetate, but this version is very similar (if not completely identical) to the regular single edit.
The second version (often referred to as the US or “phased” version) is rumored to be played entirely by Bowie. It was released in May 1974, three months after the first issue, but only in the US, Canada (both RCA APBO-0287) and Mexico (RCA SP-4049). The US single version was re-released on several bootleg singles and albums, before officially appearing on Sound + Vision II and the 30th Anniversary 2CD Edition of Diamond Dogs.
There are two versions that you can pick up on Discogs. It’s the Hollywood pressing that’s the really crazy loud one.
Lip-syncing to the more familiar album edit on Dutch television’s TopPop in 1974. Afterwards, Bowie is presented the Dutch Edison award for sales of Ziggy Stardust and served “an old fisherman’s drink” called Schelvispekel.
They’re back. Brown Acid: The Twelfth Trip returns with another heaping helping of obscure and unknown gems of heavy psych, freak outs, proto-metal riffmeisters, and pre-stoner rock from long forgotten acts. This volume sees unearthed hard rockers from Louisville, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Dallas, Youngstown, Hawaii and other more far-flung locales.
Just imagine being a 75-year-old guy getting an email from Brown Acid compilers Lance Barresi and Daniel Hall about a one off single a band you were in recorded 50 years ago. And they want to release it. And they want to pay you, too?
“I essentially go through hell and high water just to find these records,” Barresi says. “Once I find a record worthy of tracking, I begin the (sometimes) extremely arduous process of contacting the band members and encouraging them to take part. Daniel and I agree that licensing all the tracks we’re using for Brown Acid is best for everyone involved, rather than simply bootlegging the tracks. When all of the bands and labels haven’t existed for 30-40 years or more, tracking down the creators gives all of these tunes a real second chance at success.
“There’s a long list of songs that we’d love to include,” Barresi says. “But we just can’t track the bands down. I like the idea that Brown Acid is getting so much attention, so people might reach out to us.”
On April 22nd, New York City’s avant psych fuzz-rockers White Hills will premiere their new live set Splintered Metal Sky: The Concert exclusively on the newly launched platform Supernovasect, an online space presenting special weekly events that occur one-time only.
When 2020 began, the band—Dave W (guitar, vocals, synths) and Ego Sensation (bass, drums, synths, vocals)—were preparing an extensive US tour that would lead up to the release of a new album in the fall and then a European tour to support the record. We all know what happened next. Undaunted the duo opted to record a concert showcasing the album for people to watch at home. The catch is, it airs just the one time, so use it or lose it. Splintered Metal Sky: The Concert was filmed at Martin Bisi’s legendary BC Studios in Gowanus, Brooklyn with renowned producer Bisi (Sonic Youth, Swans) helming the audio board. A small, masked video crew transformed the recording studio into an atmospheric concert hall.
The show will air on April 22, 2021 at 9PM EST/CET/PST/AEDT on Supernovasect.
The late Lemmy Kilmister hanging out in bed. Photo by Ray Palmer.
2021 marks my seventh year here at Dangerous Minds. During my time here I’ve posted over 1200 articles on everything from satanic strippers, Axl Rose threatening to kill David Bowie, puppet porn, a fringe film featuring an adult baby, and on several occasions, the subject at hand today-Lemmy Kilmister. On September 12th, 1987, Motörhead released their eighth studio album, Rock ‘n’ Roll with Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor back behind the kit. Prior to the release of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Lemmy had played a meaty role in director Peter Richardson’s film Eat the Rich for which Motörhead configuration of Lemmy, Würzel, Phil Taylor, and Phil Campbell had written and recorded the film’s ripping theme tune (which also appears on Rock ‘n’ Roll), specifically for the film. The soundtrack itself is nearly exclusively comprised of Motörhead and if you’ve never seen it (a massive critical flop upon its release, it deserves the cult status it now holds), I highly recommend you add it to your “must view” queue.
A still from ‘Eat the Rich’ featuring Lemmy and actor Ronald Shiner.
Sadly, like Eat the Rich, Motörhead’s eighth record was also a bit of a letdown for their fans, and even Lemmy has reflected dimly on Rock ‘n’ Roll alluding that it was a “waste of time” (as noted in Lem’s 2002 autobiography White Line Fever). At any rate, regardless of this blip in the vast heavy metal continuum that is/was Motörhead, the point is this—with more than a few silver and one gold record (1980’s Ace of Spades), under their bullet belts, Motörhead were a force to be reckoned with. This was, of course, especially true of Lemmy Kilmister. We’re all familiar with the notion that “looks can be deceiving,” and one should “never judge a book by its cover.” Yet, this is what inevitably happens all the fucking time. Including the time Lemmy got into bed with Emma Freud, the host of the UK television show Pillow Talk, and the great-granddaughter of the founding father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud.
And, as the title of this post states, things get really weird and super uncomfortable fast, and stay that way for nine excruciatingly long minutes. The majority of the awkwardness was caused by some of the dumb questions posed to Lemmy by Freud.
Usually, guests of Pillow Talk would wear their pajamas on the show, just like Freud. As I’m pretty sure Lemmy didn’t actually own any PJ’s, Lemmy showed up dressed as Lemmy, fingers full of his signature silver rings, and got under the covers. As the show begins we hear Freud musing about how she selects guests for her show. Such criteria included being “terribly attractive,” “very handsome,” and “extremely sexy.” For lots of people, Lemmy checks all those boxes and I’m not gonna be the one to say he doesn’t because he checks all those boxes for me as well. Unfortunately, the show rapidly becomes super uncomfortable thanks to Freud’s cringey questions. Perhaps she was merely trying to get a rise out of Kilmister or, respectfully, she just didn’t do her research on Kilmister and Motörhead – the latter being a point Lemmy politely takes Freud to task for. As one YouTube commenter noted of the exchange, Lemmy managed to “intellectually spank her while whacked out on speed,” over and over again. This nine minutes from the life of Lemmy Kilmister is one for the ages, folks.
Adrian and Ari, early 80s, photo by Kishi Yamamoto
On-U Sound released their comprehensive New Age Steppers reissues, four studio LPs (1980’s New Age Steppers, 1981’s Action Battlefield, 1983’s Foundation Steppers and 2012’s Love Forever), Avant Gardening, a newly compiled collection of outtakes, rarities and a 1983 John Peel session, and a five CD box set titled Stepping Into A New Age 1980 - 2012 earlier this month, and today they posted two previously unseen vintage promo videos, which you can watch below.
If the New Age Steppers moniker is unfamiliar to you, Mark Stewart of the Pop Group—himself a participant—called the band “the only ever post-punk supergroup.” New Age Steppers (“stepper” refers to a particular reggae riddim, and is a word in Jamaican patois meaning both dancer and criminal) was more of a long term project helmed by producer Adrian Sherwood and Ari Up of the Slits, than it was a proper band, with a revolving door cast of musical notables that included the Pop Group’s Bruce Smith, Public Image Ltd’s Keith Levene, a young Nena Cherry, Sounds editor Vivien Goldman, Steve Beresford, Slit Viv Albertine, Raincoats violinist Vicky Aspinall, Rip, Rig + Panic’s John Waddington, and vocalist Bim Sherman. The foundation of the New Age Steppers sound was provided by Eskimo Fox, Style Scott, Crucial Tony and George Oban, musicians who’d worked with Aswad, Burning Spear, Prince Far I and Gregory Isaacs and extensively with Sherwood. (There is a lot of personnel overlap in Adrian Sherwood’s various projects and it’s difficult to say where one “band” truly ends and another begins, certainly during his early 80s output.)
The New Age Steppers’ self-titled debut album is an incredibly trippy musical experience. The music is both spacious and spacey. The haunted vocals languid and distant, just floating along in the mix. Inventive sound effects that have been sliced, diced and transformed into something you don’t even know what it is anymore. Time and space are distorted. It’s the dark stuff, druggy, even a little scary. When I first heard it—as part of a cassette only release (which came in a plastic bag with a snap top and poster) titled Crucial Ninety that came out in 1981—it was still a good two years before I would ever hear Jamaican dub, so my idea of the “dub” concept was nearly entirely formed by the first two New Age Steppers albums and a Slits b-side. As a testament to just how far out the sounds were that Sherwood was able to squeeze from his mixing desk, when I first started exploring reggae, none of the “proper” JA dub I was finding sounded nearly as weird or as hard as the New Age Steppers or Creation Rebel and I was initially very discouraged! Crucial.
“Discovering the Firesign Theatre is worse than trying to get into Frank Zappa for the first time.”
Anyone who has read this blog for any period of time knows that this is obviously not a place to read, you know, rock journalism. We don’t tend to review things, either. You’ll find scant “criticism” here. I see Dangerous Minds more as a repository of enthusiasm. We write about stuff we enjoy, in the hopes that our fervor will be contagious. “Here is this great thing, you should check it out” is more or less the editorial policy. We almost never write about things we hate. “Hey, smell this, it smells like shit.” There’s no point in that. We’re digital prospectors, panning for gold, not crap.
I’m certain that we’ve introduced our readers to new things that they, in turn, have become evangelists for over the decade plus since DM launched, because you tell us so in the comments. In many ways a DM blog post is like a conversation you might have in a record store. I see it that way. I’ve even had several small record label owners contact me and tell me that they’d put out this or that reissue of an obscure album that we had covered. And that’s fun for us to hear.
So if you are someone who has ever benefited from being introduced to something here that you developed an unhealthy obsession for, pay attention to this, won’t you? This is one of the best things, ever.
I discovered the Firesign Theatre when I was a ten-year-old in 1976, via a long forgotten nationally syndicated radio program called The Comedy Hour which was 60 minutes of short bits from comedy records that were interspersed with bursts of radio static, as if the station was being changed between each selection. It came on Sunday nights at 11pm, right after The King Biscuit Flower Hour, at least on the radio station that I heard it on, Pittsburgh’s WDRE 105.5 FM. The first time I listened to that show, they played an excerpt from the first Firesign Theatre record, Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him, a section known as “Beat the Reaper.” This sketch involved a mock game show where contestants are injected with a fatal disease and have to guess what it is from the symptoms to win the life-saving antidote. If the contestant’s self-diagnosis is incorrect—sorry—they are sent home to die.
I had never heard anything like this. It made my young brain cells stand up to attention the same way hearing “Space Oddity” had the first time I’d heard that.
At the end of the show a zany announcer would tell you who you’d been listening to in a rapidly delivered cascade of names: “On tonight’s Comedy Hour, you heard Lenny Bruce, Albert Brooks, Nichols & May, Franklyn Ajaye, Beyond the Fringe, Moms Mabley, Robert Klein, George Carlin, the Conception Corporation, Jonathan Winters, Bob Newhart, Richard Pryor, Phyllis Diller…” etc., etc., and then he listed Firesign Theatre. I recognized this name since there were several Firesign Theatre albums selling for $1 each in the comedy cut out section of the local National Record Mart. Within a matter of days, I convinced my mother to buy me one titled, Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers.
I instantly became obsessed with that album. I would listen to it over and over again, often with headphones, trying to wrap my 10-year-old mind around it. I listened to Dwarf—and the other Firesign Theatre records—as much as I listened to any musical album. In fact, 45 years later, due to the innate musicality of the work, I still have large chunks of it committed to memory. In this, I am not alone, as there are probably several thousand other people (99% of them upper age bracket baby boomers) who can also recite Firesign Theatre albums as if they were Shakespeare. Dwarf begins with a sermon about food from a demented televangelist broadcasting from a biplane, which crashes. The scene pulls back and it’s a guy watching TV. He’s hungry and looking around for something to eat, but comes up short. He starts talking back to the manic TV evangelist who then starts talking back to him and eventually food comes through the TV screen. The channel changes abruptly. After that there is a This is Your Life-type program with elderly actor George Leroy Tirebiter, and then it morphs into a teen movie play-within-a-play starring a younger Tirebiter called “High School Madness.” Things were going just fine for the students of Morse Science High until their school vanishes, stolen by their rivals, those bullies at Communist Martyrs High School. Porgy Tirebiter and his loveable sidekick Mudhead investigate… you get the idea (hopefully).
Here is a very good description of Firesign Theatre, taken from the pages of Stereo Review magazine, way back in 1993. (Firesign has always been popular with audiophiles.)
A self-contained four-man comedy troupe of writers/actors whose medium was the audio record, they created brilliant, multi-layered surrealist satire out of science-fiction, TV, old movies, avant-garde drama and literature, outrageous punning, the political turmoil of the Sixties, the great shows of the Golden Age of Radio, the detritus of high and low culture (James Joyce meets the found poetry of used-car pitch men) and their own intuitive understanding of the technological possibilities of multi-track recording. Their thirteen albums for CBS, recorded in various group permutations between 1967 and 1975, reveal them to have been at once the Beatles of comedy, the counter-cultural Lewis Carroll, and the slightly cracked step-children of Kafka, Bob and Ray, Jorge Luis Borges, Philip K. Dick, Stan Freberg, Samuel Beckett and the Goon Show.
And as you’ll hear when you play the album you now hold in your hands, they were also far ahead of their time, not just of it. In fact, while most self-consciously “hip” comedy from the late Sixties or early Seventies is as dated now as love beads and black-light posters (listened to Cheech and Chong lately?) The Firesign Theatre, satire - which dealt from the beginning with such unexpected subjects as the implication of cable network narrow-casting (“UTV! For You, the Viewer!”) or New Age pseudo-philosophy (one of their albums was called Everything You Know Is Wrong) - today seems eerily prophetic. In particular, the futuristic vision of Los Angeles - sprawling, fragmented, fear-ridden, multi-cultural, both low rent and high tech - that threads throughout their “oeuvre” (in particular their 1970 masterpiece, Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers) is not only as poetically detailed as anything in Raymond Chandler, but chillingly on the money in 1993.
Firesign Theatre started to assemble during 1966 at KPFK, a freeform stereo FM radio station in Los Angeles, which was then a very new thing, during Peter Bergman’s “Radio Free Oz” show. Phil Austin and David Ossman worked at the station and would appear on RFO, while Philip Proctor, an actor friend the “Wizard of Oz” (Bergman) knew from Yale, was invited to join a bit later. The name refers to the fact that all four were born under fire signs in the zodiac, and to Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre. The late night Radio Free Oz show was so popular—and they were regularly gigging in Hollywood’s folk and rock clubs—that they were quickly offered a record contract.
There are four undisputed “classics” in the vast Firesign canon, all recorded between 1967 and 1971, titled (in order) Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him, How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You’re Not Anywhere at All (which includes their most famous creation, “The Adventures of Nick Danger, Third Eye”), Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers, and I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus. Their first album was recorded in the same CBS radio studio where The Jack Benny Show was taped using vintage microphones and sound effects. By the time of their second record they were using 16-track tape machines in the studio, constructing tightly assembled radio plays with extremely creative sound effects and spatial cues that suggested time travel, watching something at a domed planetarium, being on a people mover, getting into a car where the inside is bigger than the outside and so on. These four records are the ultimate presentation of their unusual artform—literature as much as performed comedy that’s been carefully sculpted in a recording studio—but there are at least 20 other albums, dozens upon dozens of hours of live performances recorded onstage and during their radio shows, and TV and film work. Dear Friends, a 1972 released two record compilation of the best of their syndicated radio show of the same name is also considered to be a classic Firesign album, but being culled from live radio, it’s less elaborately constructed, and more spontaneous and improvisational.
These five albums represent the cream of the crop and they are all masterworks of surrealist “theater of the mind” sci-fi counterculture comedy. There was nothing else like them, and the sole thing I can think of to compare them to would be the Monty Python albums. Firesign Theatre were often called “the American Monty Python,” but this comparison would stop at the Python albums, as Firesign were a strictly audio proposition for the most part, and certainly during their late 60s/early 70s golden years. [They are actually much more akin to lysergic Goon Show, of which all four of the Firesign Theatre were fanatical fans. In fact, Peter Bergman wrote some TV comedy sketches in London with Spike Milligan in the early 1960s.]
A key element to appreciate in Firesign Theatre is how multi-leveled their humor is. For instance, in their famous “Nick Danger” piece, they constantly drop in references to Beatles lyrics such as Danger describing his old flame, Betty Jo Bialosky, who used several aliases—Melanie Haber, Audrey Farber, and Susan Underhill—but “everyone knew her as Nancy” or creepy butler Catherwood walking out of earshot singing “I’m so tired, I haven’t slept a wink.” If you had never even heard of the White Album, these jokes were no less funny, but if you were really in on it, you knew how densely-layered all of this was. “Joycean” is an adjective often employed to describe Firesign, an observation no doubt inspired by the way Molly Bloom’s soliloquy from Ulysses was put into the mouth of manic used car salesman Ralph Spoilsport in his weird rap at the very end of How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You’re Not Anywhere at All. The relationship of Firesign Theatre to James Joyce’s work is not glib, or overstated. I like to think of the classic FT albums in the same way I regard Joyce’s published books. When airchecks of their (some thought lost) radio shows were collected in the essential Duke of Madness Motors book, I saw this as being analogous to discovering a full trunk of the avant-garde modernist Irish bard’s notebooks. A hundred years from now there will still be graduate students studying the multiple levels of meaning in Joyce and in Firesign Theatre albums.
Did I mention that Firesign Theatre is comedy for smart people? I can’t imagine a dummy even being able to make heads or tails out of it, let alone thinking it was funny. Comedy is almost always made by intelligent people, but theirs was the most intellectual comedy ever made, by some measure. Fifty years later, with all of the comedy that’s washed under the bridge since then, not a single thing—seriously nothing—compares to what Firesign Theatre created. It’s just that distinctive. Their artform cannot be duplicated. Theirs is a uniquely American artform, one that is recognized by the National Registry, and it is theirs alone. Their archive is now housed by the Library of Congress.
Regrettably it’s not that easy to convince people—and I’m talking about one-on-one with friends of mine—to want to get into 50-year-old comedy albums. No one seems to have the attention span. They think it will be dated, but for the most part Firesign Theatre exists in a much more hermetically-sealed and self-referential space than most comedy. There are very, very few outdated cultural references (even in the radio shows), nods to topical events or names that would fail to ring a bell, and 98% of it is as fresh today as it was in 1971. Comedy usually ages very poorly, but this is not the case with Firesign Theatre. A bright 20-year-old armed with an occasional look at Wikipedia would get the vast majority of the jokes, no problem. (As a testament to the long shelf life of their work, there was a fairly recent-ish weekly show of vintage Firesign Theatre radio on WFMU, during drive-time even. It’s evergreen material, I promise you.)
Over the years I have attempted to attract so many converts to the genius of Firesign Theatre, and almost always I have failed. I tend to send out this short clip, of Phil Proctor utterly destroying the rest of them in “The Chinchilla Show.”
[Peter Bergman told me that crazed scenario which I hoped you listened to above, came out of Phil Proctor’s head almost completely spontaneously! The rest of them were just trying to keep up with him. Phil is still like that, btw. When I first met him he told me the story of how he was made an honorary “Kentucky colonel” by the governor of the state while he was attending the Kentucky Derby, and within a matter of two minutes, I was laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes.]
I was able to convince my wife to listen to the four classic Firesign Theatre albums when heavy snowfall saw us (literally) stuck at home for two days, unable to leave. We got high, turned the lights down and listened. She enjoyed all four and told me that she was glad she’d been exposed to it (which was amazingly gratifying to me, I must say.) My other trick is whenever someone is passing through town during a road trip, I’ll burn them some Firesign on a CD-r and tell them not to listen to it until after it’s dark.
The back of the ‘How Can You Be in Two Places at Once’ album cover.
Sadly, my enthusiastic entreaties have invariably fallen upon deaf ears. Most people suppose it’s some sort of 1940s radio show that I am trying to get them to listen to. “Firesign Theatre? Sounds like some old-timey thing.” With others it’s the attention span thing, not enough hours in the day to listen to an hour (gasp!) of spoken word. It recently occurred to me to compare Firesign’s vast oeuvre to podcasts. These days, everybody is always listening to their favorite podcasts, at the gym, in the car, cooking, whatever, they’ve all got a podcast going on in the background. Why not think of the Firesign oeuvre as the greatest comedy podcast ever made?
Well, you’re in luck as all of the major (and much of the minor) works of Firesign Theatre are streaming from the exact same sources as that weekly true crime thing you always listen to. Spotify, TIDAL, YouTube, Amazon Music, Apple Music, all of them are pumping Firesign Theatre directly into your home. The four (or five) classic albums are super easy for you to listen to. Just a few clicks away from where you are reading this…
If any of this has sounded tempting to you, I suggest listening, preferably in the dark, or better still in the dark with headphones on, and stoned as fuck. If not then Firesign is perfect during your commute. Or when you are painting or doing the gardening. The point is that you MUST PAY ATTENTION or you will be lost. Immediately. You cannot multitask. You can’t surf the internet. You can’t be on Twitter or texting. If you don’t pay attention, not only would it be confusing, it would be annoying. I suggest starting where I did, with Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers. Or maybe with “The Further Adventures of Nick Danger, Third Eye.” After that listen to Electrician, the album-length Bozos and the Dear Friends radio show compilation.
For more advanced Fireheads, there’s a brand new release—the first on vinyl in 35 years—titled Dope Humor of the Seventies. The handsomely designed two-record set—produced by longtime Firesign Theatre associate, my pal Taylor Jessen—includes 83 minutes of material, with a further hour or so that can be downloaded online, or streamed at all of the usual places. The collection was culled from their Dear Friends, Let’s Eat and The Firesign Theatre Radio Hour Hour series, and there’s an insert with excellent liner notes that begins with the (absolutely true) statement I quoted at the start: “Discovering the Firesign Theatre is worse than trying to get into Frank Zappa for the first time.” Yes, it might seem daunting that there are well over 100 hours of Firesign Theatre to wade through, but if you think of these albums and radio shows the same way you think about podcasts, and you start with what I suggest, you might just discover something that you’ll obsess over for the rest of your life. I reckon that a high percentage of you who have read this far will be wondering “where has this been all my life?” unless you are already a Firesign Theatre fan, of course,
Seriously, just spark one up, turn out the lights and listen to this. Do it. Do it now…
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