Firesign: The Electromagnetic History of Everything as Told on Nine Comedy AlbumsA cultural clearinghouse of the American 1960s and '70s told through the story of the period's most important forgotten comedy group. This expansive book reclaims the Firesign Theatre (hazily remembered as a comedy act for stoners) as critically engaged artists working in the heart of the culture industry at a time of massive social and technological change. At the intersection of popular music, sound and media studies, cultural history, and avant-garde literature, Jeremy Braddock explores how this inventive group made the lowbrow comedy album a medium for registering the contradictions and collapse of the counterculture, and traces their legacies in hip-hop turntablism, computer hacking, and participatory fan culture. He deploys a vast range of material sources, drawing on numerous interviews and writing in tune with the group's obsessive and ludic reflections—on multitrack recording, radio, television, cinema, early artificial intelligence, and more—to focus on Firesign's work in Los Angeles from 1967 to 1975. This ebullient act of media archaeology reveals Firesign Theatre as authors of a comic utopian pessimism that will inspire twenty-first-century recording arts and urge us to engage the massive technological changes of our own era. |
Contents
Liner Notes | 1 |
album Talking Book | 10 |
radio Duplicity Is the Double of Duality | 49 |
Satellite | 78 |
CINEMA Remediating the Studio System in May 1970 | 88 |
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Up Against the Wall | 129 |
Man Conforms | 142 |
You Have Violated Robots Rules of Order and Will | 148 |
TELEVISION What Is Television? | 163 |
Cable | 164 |
Reruns Dreams | 185 |
coda RunOut Groove | 201 |
Forward into the Past | 218 |
Notes | 233 |
Bibliography | 259 |
| 283 | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
album American Angeles audience aural Beatles Bozos broadcast Century of Progress characters Chicago Christgau cinema Clem Columbia Records Columbia Square comedy Counterculture Creem critical critique Crush That Dwarf culture David Ossman diegetic Dolby dramatic early edited effect ELIZA fans film Firesign Theatre Firesign Theatre Collection Future Fair genres George Tirebiter Hall of Science High School Madness Hollywood Hopi Indians industry interview KPFK KRLA later Lennon listening live Madlib Martian Space Party media archaeology movie narrative Nick Danger Nixon Papoon Parallel Hell Peorgie performance Peter Bergman Phil Austin Philip Proctor Places at Once play political president Proctor Proctor and Bergman put-on Radio Free Oz Radio Hour Hour reading released rock Roller Maidens Rolling Stone satire script sound stereo studio tape television Theatre's tion Tirebiter's track University Press Vietnam voice Weizenbaum Williams York