The Firesign Theatre | |
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 The Firesign Theatre performing at the Magic Mushroom club in 1967: Proctor, Ossman, Bergman, Austin | |
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| Years active | 1966–1985, 1993–2012 |
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| Website | www |
The Firesign Theatre (also known as theFiresigns)[1][2] was an Americansurrealcomedy troupe who first appeared on November 17, 1966, in a live performance on the Los Angeles radio programRadio Free Oz on stationKPFKFM. They continued appearing onRadio Free Oz, which later moved toKRLA 1110AM and thenKMET FM, through February 1969. They produced fifteenrecord albums and a45 rpm single under contract toColumbia Records from 1967 through 1976,[3] and had three nationally syndicated radio programs:The Firesign Theatre Radio Hour Hour [sic] in 1970 onKPPC-FM; andDear Friends (1970–1971) andLet's Eat! (1971–1972) on KPFK. They also appeared in front of live audiences, and continued to write, perform, and record on other labels, occasionally taking sabbaticals during which they wrote or performed solo or in smaller groups.
The Firesign Theatre was the brainchild ofPeter Bergman, and all of its material was conceived, written, and performed by its members: Bergman,Philip Proctor,Phil Austin, andDavid Ossman. The group's name stems fromastrology, because all four were born under the three "fire signs":Aries (Austin),Leo (Proctor), andSagittarius (Bergman and Ossman). Their popularity peaked in the early 1970s and ebbed in theReagan era. They experienced a revival and second wave of popularity in the 1990s and continued to write, record and perform until Bergman's death in 2012.
In 1997,Entertainment Weekly ranked the Firesign Theatre among the "Thirty Greatest Comedy Acts of All Time". Their 1970 albumDon't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers was nominated in 1971 for theHugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation by theWorld Science Fiction Society, and their next albumI Think We're All Bozos on This Bus received the same nomination in 1972. Later, they received nominations for theGrammy Award for Best Comedy Album for three of their albums:The Three Faces of Al (1984),Give Me Immortality or Give Me Death (1998), andBride of Firesign (2001). In 2005, the USLibrary of Congress addedDon't Crush That Dwarf to theNational Recording Registry and called the group "the Beatles of comedy."
Peter Bergman andPhilip Proctor met while attendingYale University in the late 1950s, where Proctor studied acting and Bergman edited the Yale comedy magazine. Bergman studied playwriting and collaborated as lyricist withAustin Pendleton in 1958 on twoYale Dramat musicals in which Proctor starred:Tom Jones, andBooth Is Back In Town.[4][5]
In 1965, Bergman spent a year working in England on theBBC television programNot So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life and went to seesurrealist comedianSpike Milligan in a play. Bergman went backstage and struck up a friendship with Milligan.[6] Also that year, he sawthe Beatles in concert, which gave him the inspiration to form a four-man comedy group.[7]
On returning to the US, Bergman started a late-night listener-participationtalk show,Radio Free Oz, on July 24, 1966, on listener-sponsoredKPFKFM in Los Angeles, working withproducersPhil Austin andDavid Ossman. According to Austin, the show "featured everybody who was anybody in the artistic world who passed through LA." Guests included the bandBuffalo Springfield andAndy Warhol.[7] In November, Proctor was in Los Angeles looking for acting work and watching theSunset Strip curfew riots. When he discovered he was sitting on a newspaper photo of Bergman, he called his college buddy, who recruited him as the fourth man for his comedy group.
Bergman originally named the group the "Oz Firesign Theatre" because all four were born under the threeastrological fire signs (Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius), and the group debuted on his November 17, 1966 show. Bergman had to drop "Oz" from the name after legal threats fromDisney andMGM, who owned movie rights toThe Wizard of Oz andother associated works.[7]
The Firesigns initially chose animprovisational style and carried it to a level which revolutionizedradio comedy. According to Proctor:[7]
We each independently created our own material and characters and brought them together, not knowing what the others were going to pull. And it was all based on put-ons; that is, we were assuming characters that were assumed to be real by the listeners. No matter how far out we would carry a premise, if we were tied to the phones we discovered the audience would go far ahead of us. We could be as outrageous as we wanted to be and they believed us—which was astonishingly funny and interesting and terrifying to us, because it showed the power of the medium and the gullibility and vulnerability of most people.
On nights when he had no guests, Bergman would have the Firesigns come on the air and pretend (including himself) to be outrageously interesting guests. On their November 17, 1966 debut, they pretended to be the panel of an imaginary "Oz Film Festival": Bergman was film critic Peter Volta, "writing a history of world cinema one frame at a time"; Ossman was Raul Saez, maker of “thrown camera” films, who had just won a grant to roll a70 mm film camera down theAndes Mountains; Austin was Jack Love, making "Living Room Theatre" porn films likeThe Nun andBlondie Pays the Rent; and Proctor was Jean-Claude Jean-Claude, creator of the "Nouvelle Nouvelle Vague Vague movement" and director of a documentaryTwo Weeks With Fred, which lasts a full two weeks.[8]
By 1967, Bergman had the Firesign Theatre appear regularly onRadio Free Oz.[9] The Firesigns were strongly influenced by the BritishGoon Show; Proctor, Austin, and Ossman were big fans since theNBC programMonitor broadcastGoon Show episodes in the late 1950s, and Bergman became a fan after forming the Firesigns. According to Ossman:[6][10]
We all listened toThe Goon Show,Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan andHarry Secombe, at various times in our lives. We heard a lot of those shows. They impressed us when we started doing radio ourselves, because they sustained characters in a reallysurreal and weird kind of situation for a long period of time. They were doing that show for 10 years, all the way through the 1950s. So we were just listening to them at the end. It was that madness and the ability to go anywhere and do anything and yet sustain those funny characters. So when we first did written radio, where we would sit down and write half hour skits and do them once a week, which we did in the fall of 1967, we did things that were imitative ofThe Goon Show and learned a lot of voices from them and such.
In the fall of 1967, the Firesign Theatre was broadcasting Sunday nights fromThe Magic Mushroom, inStudio City, formerly aBob Eubanks'Cinnamon Cinder.[11][12][13] In September 1967, they performed an adaptation ofJorge Luis Borges' short story "La Muerte y La Brujula" ("Death and the Compass") on Radio Free Oz.
In 1969, they created improvised television commercials for Jack Poet Volkswagen in Highland Park, California, with the characters of Christian Cyborg (Bergman), Coco Lewis (Proctor), Bob Chicken (Austin), and Tony Gomez (Ossman).[14]
Bergman coined the term "love-in" in 1967, and he promoted the first Los Angeles Love-In, attended by 40,000 in Elysian Park, on his program.[7] The Firesigns performed there, which led toRadio Free Oz moving toKRLA 1110AM, which had a much wider audience than KPFK FM.[15][8] This event also caught the attention ofColumbia Records staffproducerGary Usher, who sensed commercial potential for the Firesign Theatre and proposed to Bergman they make a "love-In album" for Columbia. Bergman countered with a proposal for a Firesign Theatre album, and this led to a five-year[16] recording contract with the label.[7] Usher also used the Firesigns' audio collages on songs byThe Byrds ("Draft Morning") andSagittarius (the45 RPM version of "Hotel Indiscreet") in 1967 and 1968.
The album was given thenon sequitur titleWaiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him, from Bergman's undeveloped 1965 idea for a comic film. The Firesigns changed their improvisational style, producing tightly scripted and memorized material. According to Bergman: "There was no leader." The Firesigns always billed themselves alphabetically on their album jackets and other printed materials. "Everything was communally written, and if one person didn't agree about something, no matter how strongly the other three felt about it, it didn't go in."[7] The resulting synergy created the feeling of a fifth Firesign; according to Austin: "It's like, suddenly there is this fifth guy that actually does the writing. We all vaguely sort of know him, and a lot of the time take credit for him."[7] This resulted in the group inventing the name "4 or 5 Krazy Guys Publishing" to copyright their work.[17] Their contract with Columbia, in exchange for a low royalty rate, gave them unlimited studio time, allowing them to perfect their writing and recording.[7]
Electrician revolutionized the concept of thecomedy album: it consists of four radio plays. Side one is a trilogy of pieces: starting with "Temporarily Humboldt County", a satire of the Europeans' displacement of theindigenous peoples of the Americas; followed by "W. C. Fields Forever", a satire of the 1960shippie culture; leading into "Trente-Huit Cunegonde (Returned for Regrooving)", a projected future in which the roles of thehippie counterculture andthe Establishment culture are reversed. Side two, the title track, is astream-of-consciousness play about an American tourist (Austin) to anEastern Bloc country, who ends up in prison and is rescued by theCIA. It was recorded inCBS's Los Angeles radio studio from whichThe Jack Benny Program and others had been broadcast; the originalRCA microphones andsound effects devices were used. It was released in January 1968, selling a modest 12,000 copies in its first year.
The Firesigns continued to work on the radio and began performing infolk clubs such as theAsh Grove.[7]Radio Free Oz moved again toKMET FM until February 1969.The Firesign Theatre Radio Hour Hour [sic] aired for two hours on Sunday nights onKPPC-FM in 1970.[8] They concentrated their writing on the folk-club material and produced improvisational skit material for theRadio Hour and its successors.
The Firesigns almost lost their recording contract after their first album. According to Bergman: "Columbia was going to kick us off the label, so we scripted the next record and the old guard at Columbia took a look at the script and said 'This isn't funny—this is dirty!' And to our rescue cameJames William Guercio [producer ofthe Buckinghams]andJohn Hammond." Austin says, "With Hammond backing us up, CBS came around."[7] They went on to produce three more Columbia studio albums from 1969 to 1971. Each grew technically more sophisticated, taking advantage ofup to 16 tape tracks andDolby noise reduction by 1970.[7]
How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All, released in 1969, consists of a stream-of-consciousness play on side one about a man named Babe (Bergman) who buys a car and goes on a road trip that turns into a parody ofNorman Corwin's 1941 patriotic radio pageantWe Hold These Truths.[18] Side two,The Further Adventures ofNick Danger, is a parody of 1940s radio, about ahard-boiled detective (Austin) who became possibly the Firesigns' most famous character.
Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers (1970) is a single play centered around an actor named George Tirebiter (Ossman), who gradually ages into an old man while watching his old movies on television: aHenry Aldrich parodyHigh School Madness (in which he is named Porgie Tirebiter), and theKorean War filmParallel Hell.Dwarf marked a high point in the Firesign's use ofblue comedy: Porgie has explicit sex with a housemaid as creaking bedsprings are heard. This album was nominated for aHugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1971 by theWorld Science Fiction Society,[19]
Dwarf brought a level of success to the Firesigns that started to spoil them. Bergman said, "We toured afterDwarf and we began to realize the extent we were influencing people. We realized that FM radio was playing our albums whole, and that people were memorizing them."[7] Austin said of this period, "At that point we began not to get along with each other that well, and the being taken so seriously —Rolling Stone did a long article on us, and we were being compared toJames Joyce — there was a prideful attitude that took over. But we weren't making money; we might as well have been teaching school somewhere and worrying about making tenure for all the money we were making. So in some sense we didn't really understand what we were doing, which is why we were never able to make a secondDwarf, which to me is a real disappointment."[7]
Their fourth album,I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus (1971), also a single play, centers on a young,early-technology computerhacker (Proctor) and an older "bozo" with a large nose that honks like a clown's (Austin), who attend aDisneyesque Future Fair. The blue comedy was dialed back from explicit to suggestive, as a scientist invents a machine that mimics sexual intercourse. This album also received a Hugo nomination in 1972.[20]
Meanwhile, from September 9, 1970 to February 17, 1971, they were performing a one-hour weekly live series on KPFK,Dear Friends. These programs were recorded and then edited into slightly shorter shows and syndicated to radio stations across the country on12" LP albums. Their fifth album,Dear Friends, was a double-record compilation of what they considered the best segments from the series, released in January 1972.Dear Friends was followed with the KPFK showLet's Eat! in 1971 and 1972.[8] Both titles came from lines uttered by televangelist Pastor Rod Flash (Proctor) on his "Hour of Reckoning" program inDon't Crush That Dwarf.
In 1970, the group had performed a live stage show, theShakespeare parodyThe Count of Monte Cristo, atColumbia University. In January 1972 they decided to expand this and retitle itAnything You Want To for their next album. On March 9, Columbia signed them to a second five-year contract.[21] On March 30, they endedLet's Eat! with a live broadcast titledMartian Space Party, which was also recorded on 16-track tape and filmed. The Firesigns combined parts of the two shows with some new studio material to produce their sixth album,Not Insane or Anything You Want To. But before releasing the album in October 1972, they had discarded their original story line idea and some newly written scenes.[21]
TheNot Insane album performed poorly, and the Firesigns later claimed to be disappointed with it. In the liner notes to the group’s 1993 greatest hits album,Shoes for Industry: The Best of the Firesign Theatre, Bergman criticizedNot Insane, saying it "was when the Firesign was splitting apart; it was a fractious, fragmented album." Ossman called it "a serious mistake" and said it “was incomprehensible, basically," and "it was not the album it should have been and I think that caused us to slope off rapidly in sales."[7]
The four decided to take a break from the group in 1973 to work in separate directions.Proctor and Bergman decided to perform as a duo, and made a separate record deal with Columbia,[22] producingTV or Not TV: A Video Vaudeville in Two Acts.[23] The record predicts the rise ofpay cable TV, and it depicts an amateur station run by two men who must constantly block a group of teenagehijackers. They turned this into avaudeville-type show which they played on tour. While promoting the show, they did a radio interview with disk jockeyWolfman Jack.[22]
Meanwhile, Ossman wrote a solo album,How Time Flys, based on the Mark Time astronaut character he created for aDear Friends skit, used onI Think We're All Bozos and cut fromNot Insane.[21] He co-directed the album with Columbia producer Stephen Gillmor, and the other three Firesigns starred on it, along with several guest personalities including Wolfman Jack,Harry Shearer ofThe Credibility Gap, and broadcast journalistLew Irwin. Mark returns on New Year's Eve, 1999, from a twenty-year round trip toPlanet X, only to find the space program has been dismantled, and no one cares about him except for an eccentricimpresario (Bergman) who kidnaps him for his video recordings of encounters with alien life.
Austin wrote the solo albumRoller Maidens From Outer Space, based on ahardboiled detective in the same vein as hisNick Danger character introduced on the B side ofHow Can You Be In Two Places....Roller Maidens, released in March 1974 on Columbia'sEpic label, also featured all four Firesigns and included actorsRichard Paul andMichael C. Gwynne. The album satirizesseries television,televangelists, the1973 oil crisis, and thepresidency of Richard Nixon.
The Firesigns made use ofinside humor. They pepperedWaiting for the Electrician andHow Can You Be in Two Places At Once with Beatles references not found in the band'stop 40 material.[7] Firesign characters quoted lyrics from songs such as "The Word", "I'm So Tired", and "I Am the Walrus". The name of Danger's criminal nemesis Rocky Rococo was a parody of the Beatles' "Rocky Raccoon", and Danger's girlfriend has multiple names but "everyone knew her as Nancy" just like Rocky Raccoon's girlfriend.
Later the Firesigns created their own inside jokes by referring to their own previously released material. A famous example is when a confused caller tries to order a pizza from Nick Danger; the other side of this phone conversation is portrayed inDwarf, where George Tirebiter is the frustrated, hungry caller trying to get food delivered from "Nick's".
"He's no fun, he fell right over" became a famouscatchphrase delivered by Austin in "How Can You Be In Two Places at Once" and repeated on side two in "The Further Adventures of Nick Danger". This line was repeated on the albumsNot Insane andHow Time Flys.
The group reunited in late August 1973 to produce theSherlock Holmes parodyThe Tale of the Giant Rat of Sumatra,[21] based on one of the plays from their 1967 Magic Mushroom broadcasts,By the Light of the Silvery. This was released on vinyl in January 1974. The Firesigns sold this script to science fiction writerHarlan Ellison for Book Three of Ellison'santhologyThe Last Dangerous Visions, which Ellison never completed.
In October 1974, the Firesigns released their eighth album,Everything You Know Is Wrong, which satirized the developingNew Age movement. Ossman said this record "grew out of our basic interest in thoseparapsychological things ... fromCastaneda to thehollow Earth theory tothe guy who bends spoons. Originally, when we started writing it, it was going to be a much more complicated and 'cinematic' record; we were trying to write a radio movie." The Firesigns produced a film made byAllen Daviau (who later filmedE.T. the Extra-Terrestrial) using the album as the soundtrack.[7] The film was shown in a live appearance atStanford University and released onVHS video tape in 1993.
In 1975, they released theblack comedy albumIn the Next World, You're on Your Own, written by Austin and Ossman. The story centers on Random Coolzip (Proctor), analcoholicdirty cop whose son (Bergman) is a by-the-book cop, whose daughter (Proctor) is a porn actress, and whose policedispatcher wife (Ossman) lives in asoap opera. In a parody ofMarlon Brando's1973 Academy Awards protest, the brother and sister stage aterrorist attack on anOscar awards ceremony. This album, likeNot Insane, also sold poorly, and Columbia declined to offer them a third contract in 1976.[7] This time, the Firesigns didn't protest. Bergman said, "The group had really split apart; we had just burned out. I mean it was five years non-stop work. We would stop one album and start writing the next. Frankly, we didn't have five more albums in us at that point."[7]
As Austin looked back on this period from September 1993, he wrote that he saw Proctor and Bergman wanting to take the Firesign Theatre in a different direction than he did, moving away from intensely written albums released one per year, to more live performances with lighter material.[24] Proctor and Bergman turned their attention in 1975 to producing a live show recorded on the Columbia albumWhat This Country Needs, based in part on material fromTV or Not TV and named for a song added to the show.
The Firesign Theatre closed out their Columbia Records contract with a greatest-hits compilationForward Into the Past in 1976.[7] This title came from the A side of a45 RPM single originally released in November 1969. This track and its B side, "Station Break", were included on the 1976 album. Meanwhile, Austin and Ossman toured the west coast, billing themselves as "Dr. Firesign's Theatre of Mystery".[24] They produced a live stage showRadio Laffs of 1940, which included a second episode of the private eye characterNick Danger, "School For Actors"; and a soap opera "Over the Edge". This was performed at the Los Feliz Theatre in Los Angeles in May 1976 and at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco in June.[25] Austin wrote in 1993 that this tour "was meant to be an antidote to confusion but ... had not turned out to be much fun at all".[24]
The Firesigns took it easy for the rest of the 1970s, producing a 1977 albumJust Folks... A Firesign Chat based largely on unreleasedDear Friends andLet's Eat radio material. Proctor and Bergman appeared as regulars on a 1977 summer replacement TV series hosted by theStarland Vocal Band. Proctor and Bergman gave up their road performances after witnessing the September 4, 1977Golden Dragon Massacre, and in 1978 released another studio albumGive Us a Break, which lampooned radio and television. The Starland Vocal Band also performed short comicradio breaks on this album.[22]
Norman Lear andBud Yorkin'sTandem Productions bought the rights to Nick Danger for a TV series to starGeorge Hamilton; and in 1978,New Line Cinema began negotiations to make a movie starringChevy Chase. Both projects ended indevelopment hell, and rights to the character reverted to the Firesigns.[25] In December 1978, they began writing five short (2:24) episodes ofNick Danger: The Case of the Missing Shoe for a possible syndicated daily radio series. When the syndication went unsold, Austin approachedRhino Records and secured a deal to release the five episodes in 1979 on a 12-minuteextended play (EP) record.[25]
Meanwhile, Proctor and Bergman produced a film,J-Men Forever, using clips from oldRepublic Picturesmovie serials withdubbed dialogue, combined with new footage of them as FBI agents tracking down a villain known as "the Lightning Bug" voiced by disk jockeyM. G. Kelly. This became popular on the 1980s late-night TV seriesNight Flight.
Austin called Bergman in late 1979 to make peace and reunite the Firesigns. This resulted in a series of shows performed at theRoxy Theatre in Los Angeles: "The Owl and the Octopus Show"; "The Joey Demographico Show"; "Nick Danger: Men in Hats"; and "Welcome to Billville". These included songs with music written by Austin, and were recorded; the live recordings were used to produce their last album of the decade, the 1980Fighting Clowns. They also produced a show, "Presidents in Hell" (FDR,Truman,Eisenhower, andNixon), which was not recorded.[24]
...there was something about the Eighties – the anti-surrealist politics of the Eighties – that was wrong for the Firesign Theatre. — David Ossman[7]
The popularity of the group cooled off after 1980 as the social and political climate of the United States changed with theelection of President Ronald Reagan.[7] In 1982, they produced the albumLawyer's Hospital from a collection of live appearances,National Public Radio (NPR) performances, and the Jack Poet Volkswagen commercials fromRadio Free Oz. They also expanded their 1972 Shakespeare parody into a road show,Shakespeare's Lost Comedie and released it on a 1982 vinyl LP, which required editing down; it was re-released uncut on CD in 2001, retitledAnythynge You Want To.
Ossman left the group in early 1982 to take a producer's job for NPR in Washington DC.[7][25] The remaining three Firesigns produced a new album in 1984,The Three Faces of Al, with the further adventures of Nick Danger. This received a nomination for theGrammy Award for Best Comedy Album,[26] and was followed in 1985 with the albumEat or Be Eaten, about a character trapped in an interactive video game.
In 1988, Austin was signed by John Dryden to produce over 50 short Nick Danger pieces for his radio satire showThe Daily Feed. These were published oncassette tape asThe Daily Feed Tapes, and later formed the basis for a 1995 book authored by Austin,Tales of the Old Detective and Other Big Fat Lies.[27]
In the summer of 1990, NPR producer Ted Bonnitt called Proctor and asked him if he wanted to contribute some comedy material to Bonnitt's nightly programHEAT with John Hockenberry. Proctor called Bergman, and the duo agreed to write and perform a serial consisting of 13 five-minute episodes,Power: Life on the Edge in L.A.[28]
I dreamed it back. Sure enough, when we kicked the fascists out of office it was time for the Firesign Theatre to come back. — Peter Bergman[7]
Following the1992 United States presidential election,[7] and with Ossman back in the group, the Firesign Theatre reunited in 1993 for a 25th anniversary reunion tour around the US,Back From the Shadows, starting on April 24 in Seattle with an audience of 2,900.[7] The title was taken from a parody of theGene Autry song "Back in the Saddle Again", which they wrote forI Think We're All Bozos on This Bus. The tour, consisting of live performances of material adapted from their first four Golden Age albums (Electrician,Two Places At Once,Dwarf, andBozos), was recorded on CD and a DVD video released in 1994. They also released a 1993 greatest hits album,Shoes for Industry: The Best of the Firesign Theatre containing original material from the first nine albums,TV or Not TV, andRoller Maidens From Outer Space.
In 1996, Bergman revivedRadio Free Oz as anInternet-based radio station, www.rfo.net, calling it "the Internet's funny bone."[29]
The Firesigns followed this with the 1998 albumPink Hotel Burns Down, a collection of material from two 1967 Magic Mushroom broadcasts,Exorcism In Your Daily Life and their early Sherlock Holmes parody "By the Light of the Silvery"; two cuts, "The Pink Hotel" and "The Sand Bar" from their video game record that eventually becameEat or Be Eaten; the soap opera "Over the Edge" from Austin and Ossman's 1976Dr. Firesign's Theatre of Mystery tour, and several clips from their radio work, including the earliest recorded appearance onRadio Free Oz.[30]
The Firesigns satirized the turn-of-the-millenniumY2K scare with the 1998 albumGive Me Immortality or Give Me Death, in which they revived some of their classic characters such as used car salesman Ralph Spoilsport (Proctor) fromHow Can You Be In Two Places At Once, news reporters Harold Hiphugger (Ossman) and Ray Hamberger (Proctor) fromEverything You Know Is Wrong, and game-show contestant Caroline Presskey (Proctor) fromDon't Crush That Dwarf. This earned them their second Grammy nomination, and they developed it into a "millennium trilogy" with the 1999Boom Dot Bust and 2001Bride of Firesign, which received a third Grammy nomination.[26]Boom Dot Bust used material from their 1979 Roxy show "Welcome to Billville".
They created a live show,Radio Now Live in 2001 using characters fromGive Me Immortality and released it on a live album, which also includes updated cuts fromAnythynge You Want To.
In December 2001, the Firesigns appeared in a 90-minutePBS television showWeirdly Cool. This contained live, updated performance material based onWaiting for the Electrician,How Can You Be in Two Places..., andDon't Crush That Dwarf; and included interviews and two Jack Poet Volkswagen commercials.
From November 2002 through early 2003, Bergman produced a political satire seriesTrue Confessions of the Real World, three times weekly on Pasadena non-commercialKPCC FM.[31] He scripted fake interviews with imaginary "newsmakers".[32]
The Firesigns appeared on theNPR showAll Things Considered on US holidays from July 4 to December 31, 2002;[26] these were compiled on a CD,All Things Firesign. They also appeared forPresident's Day on February 17, 2003, andSaint Patrick's Day on March 17, 2003.
In 2008, they released a four-CD boxed setThe Firesign Theatre's Box of Danger, compiling most material which featured their most famous character,Nick Danger, including abootleg recording of a 1976 live performance.
Their penultimate album was the 2010Duke of Madness Motors: The Complete "Dear Friends" Radio Era, a combination book and data DVD comprising a complete compilation, totaling over 80 hours, of their 1970s radio showsFiresign Theatre Radio Hour Hour,Dear Friends, andLet's Eat (the last two in both original broadcast, and syndication-edited form). Their last live performance as a quartet was on December 10, 2011 in Portland, Oregon.[33] They could claim to be the longest surviving group from the "classic rock" era to still be intact with the original members (45 years).[34]
Bergman died in a Santa Monica hospital on March 9, 2012, from complications of leukemia.[31] According to Austin, the remaining three Firesigns' April 21, 2012 memorial for Bergman was their last live performance. Austin died inFox Island, Washington, on June 18, 2015, from complications of cancer.[35]
A compilation album distilled from theDuke of Madness Motors set,Dope Humor of the Seventies, was released byStand Up! Records in November 2020. The title is another Firesign inside joke: it was first used in 1972 for a fictional album hawked by Austin as "Dexter Fogg" inMartian Space Party (heard onNot Insane). Ossman calledDope Humor a sort of "dark side" to theDear Friends album, since both were compiled from the same source, but the sketches onDope Humor had not been constrained by the desire to keep the material radio-friendly, as had been the case forDear Friends.[36] Proctor called the release a tribute to Austin and Bergman.[37]
Peter Bergman (born under thefire signSagittarius in Cleveland, Ohio[7] on November 29, 1939; died March 9, 2012[38]) started his radio career on his high school radio system during theKorean War. He was kicked off the air by the principal when, as a prank, he announced a Communist takeover of the school. He studied economics at Yale (class of 1961) and was managing editor of the university's comedy magazine. In his second graduate year he became a fellow in playwriting. As a member of theYale Dramatic Association, he co-wrote two musical comedies withAustin Pendleton. Later, he considered attending medical school and helped produce a machine for viewingangiocardiograms and measuring blockage of the arteries of the heart.[4] He had a deep voice and frequently took African-American roles in Firesign Theatre and Proctor and Bergman works.
Philip Proctor (born under the fire signLeo inGoshen, Indiana[7] on July 28, 1940) was a boy soprano in a children's choir and studied acting at Yale. There, he met his future partner Bergman in the Yale Dramatic Association, where he starred in the two musical comedies written by Bergman and Pendleton. He became a professional actor, with a role on the soap operaThe Edge of Night, before contacting Bergman and joining him onRadio Free Oz in 1966. Proctor's adult tenor voice enables him to do a convincing female voice without usingfalsetto; therefore he usually did most of the female roles in the Firesign Theatre and Proctor and Bergman works, though the other three Firesigns occasionally did female voices. He also has done celebrity voice impersonations on Firesign material, includingW.C. Fields (Waiting For the Electrician andHow Can You Be In Two Places...),Robert F. Kennedy (Waiting For the Electrician), and aPeter Lorre-like voice for the Nick Danger character Rocky Rococo (Box of Danger). Proctor has also acted and appeared as a voice actor on many television shows and several feature films.
Phil Austin (born under the fire signAries in Denver, Colorado[7] on April 6, 1941; died June 18, 2015[39]), was the youngest Firesign. He attended college but never graduated. He was an accomplishedlead guitarist, and he was responsible for adding much of the music to Firesign works. He also appeared as an actor and voice actor on television.[40] He used his natural, sonorous baritone voice for Nick Danger, but affected a phony Japanese accent for his "Young Guy, Motor Detective"self-parody of Danger inNot Insane and a stereotypical, tough-guy voice and accent for the similar hardboiled detective Dick Private inRoller Maidens From Outer Space. He also could do an old-man voice as Doc Technical in theDear Friends radio "Mark Time" episode, and he applied his impersonation ofRichard Nixon as presidents in several Firesign and solo works (Bozos,How Time Flys,Roller Maidens, andEverything You Know Is Wrong). He also did anElvis Presley impersonation singing the news in theRoller Maidens track "The Bad News".
David Ossman (born under the fire sign Sagittarius in Santa Monica, California[7] on December 6, 1936), the oldest Firesign, is known as the intellectual of the group, and he is known for doing an old-man voice (most famously as Catherwood the butler in the original Nick Danger story, George Tirebiter onDon't Crush That Dwarf andIn the Next World You're On Your Own, and as the elder ant Cornelius inDisney Pixar's 1998A Bug's Life.) He used his natural voice as astronaut Mark Time and newsman Harold Hiphugger. Outside of the Firesign Theatre, he has performed several voices onThe Tick animated TV series and worked extensively as a producer and on-air narrator onNational Public Radio and several affiliated stations.[41]
Several people have been accorded unofficial "associate Firesign" status over the years, by virtue of performing on several records with the group.
Austin's first wife Annalee performed in support of the group on several golden age albums. She is credited as a member of "the St. Louis Aquarium Choraleers" (singing the hymn "Marching to Shibboleth") and as "the Wake-Up Lady" and for birdsong onDon't Crush That Dwarf; as "Mickey" and with keyboard stylings onI Think We're All Bozos; with film footage on theDear Friends album; and organ, piano, and vocals onNot Insane.
Ossman's first wife Tiny (Tinika)[42] performed as a St. Louis Aquarium Choraleer and as part of the "Ambient's Noyes Choral" (singing the Peorgie and Mudhead theme song) onDon't Crush That Dwarf; as "Ann" onI Think We're All Bozos; as Nurse Angela and news reporter Chiquita Bandana onHow Time Flys; and vocals and percussion onNot Insane. She and Ossman co-hosted a Sunday night radio program of pre–World War II music onKTYD.
Austin married his second wife Oonanée Elliott in 1971.[43][circular reference] She is credited as an anonymous extra inI Think We're All Bozos; was photographed as one of theRoller Maidens From Outer Space and sang backup vocals for the Austin solo album;[44] and appeared as a Reebus Caneebus groupie in the film version ofEverything You Know Is Wrong.[45] She is the model for the blondefemme fatale on the cover art of theBox of Danger CD set,[45] and is credited with performing support functions such as photography and catering on several of the later albums.
Proctor's third wife, actress Melinda Peterson, appeared with Proctor and Bergman on their 1990 NPR serialPower: Life on the Edge in L.A..[28] She also performed on theGive Me Immortality ...,[46]Boom Dot Bust,[47] andBride of Firesign albums[48] and supported the group in theRadio Now Live show.[49]
In 1997,Entertainment Weekly ranked the Firesign Theatre among the "Thirty Greatest Comedy Acts of All Time".[26] In 2005, the USLibrary of Congress addedDon't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers to theNational Recording Registry,[50] and called the group "the Beatles of comedy."[51]
ComediansGeorge Carlin,Robin Williams, andJohn Goodman enjoyed the Firesigns' comedy and lent their comments to the 2001PBS television specialWeirdly Cool. Williams referred to Firesign albums as "the audio equivalent of aHieronymus Bosch painting."
BeatleJohn Lennon was photographed wearing the Firesign's "Not Insane – Papoon for President" campaign button they had made forMartian Space Party (Not Insane album).[21][52]
Musical satirist"Weird Al" Yankovic paid homage to the Firesigns by giving the title "Everything You Know Is Wrong" to an original song on his 1996 albumBad Hair Day.[53]
Steve Jobs paid homage to the Firesigns'I Think We're All Bozos album by programming an "Easter egg" inApple'sSiriintelligent personal assistant. Siri responds to the prompt "This is worker speaking. Hello" with "Hello Ah-Clem. What function can I perform for you? LOL".[54]
On several occurrences of theAssociation for Consciousness Exploration (ACE)'sStarwood Festival, director Jeff Rosenbaum has organized performances ofFiresign Theatre radio plays performed by organizers and guest speakers of the event under the name "Firesign Clones".[55][56]
InMadison, Wisconsin in 1974, a pair of University of Illinois students opened the first of aregional chain of pizza restaurants they named "Rocky Rococo"[57] after the Nick Danger character, without any mention of connection to the Firesign Theatre.[58] They hired an artist to design, as their logo, a moustachioed Italian with a white hat and sunglasses, suggested by theWhite Spy fromMad Magazine, and hired comic actor Jim Pederson to portray this "Rocky Rococo" wearing a white suit.[59]
The Firesigns visited the first Rocky Rococo Pizza when on tour in Madison in 1975 and reacted with good humor, joking around with the owners and giving them pictures that said, "To Rocky, from Rocky" which were hung on the wall. But in 1985, by which time the chain had grown to 62 restaurants and the Firesigns had passed their "golden age", they sent the owners a letter claiming ownership of the name. The pizza chain's lawyers found a similar case where an Austin, Texas pizzeria named Conan's ran afoul of the copyright owners, producers of the 1982 filmConan the Barbarian. Since the creator of theConan the Barbarian comic had similarly endorsed the restaurant by drawing Conan on its walls, the suit lost in theUnited States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, so the Firesigns settled out of court.[58]
Ossman and his second wife Judith Walcutt formed Otherworld Media Productions in 1985 to produceaudio theatre. They created an annual "Mark Time award" for best radio science fiction, named after Ossman's astronaut character. In 2015, they added three new awards named after Firesign Theatre characters:[60]
Syndicated
Syndicated
A six-cassette collection of the Firesign Theatre's presidential and campaign commentaries which aired on NPR during the 1980 election season.
A solo cassette by Austin
A solo cassette by Austin
Proctor and Bergman on NPR'sHeat with John Hockenberry
Peter Bergman's commentary and interviews with imaginary "news makers" onKPCC
Ten appearances on NPR
Straight Arrow Press,Rolling Stone's book publishing arm, published two books authored by the Firesign Theatre:The Firesign Theatre's Big Book of Plays, andThe Firesign Theatre's Big Mystery Joke Book. These feature background information, satirical introductions andparodic histories, as well as transcripts from their first seven albums.
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