a not so brief history of the firesign theatre

The name The Firesign Theatreevokes many mental images. A nostalgic warmth for the good old days that never were. Of thousands of Americans gathering around their citizen radios listening to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's weekly fireside chats. Zodiacal puns for the pot smoking patrons of the psychedelic sixties and seventies, trying to escape from a club swinging world gone mad with war and political upheaval. Guerrilla Theatre in the streets, humorously deprogramming a populous from the narcotic of pop culture. Fighting clowns against the powers that be. Of Shakespearean comedy in a time of Orwellian tragedy. A Theater of the Mind, built with the bricks of politics and poetry on the solid foundation of the golden age of radio. The images pile on and on, and on, with double, triple, quadruple entendres and non-sequiturs, layering a baklava of subconscious surreal and blatantly silly humor acting as a political poultice for the wounds of a sick society. The Firesign Theatre is all of things and none of these things.
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thanks to wood s lot

One of the Firesign Theatre almunus, David Ossman, happens to live here on Whidbey Island. He came over to my living room one night last April for a TestingTesting show to read some of his poetry with the TT House Band.

I need to get hold of him to come back on TT soon.