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97-515: The Firesign Theatre (also known as the Firesigns ) was an American surreal comedy troupe who first appeared on November 17, 1966, in a live performance on the Los Angeles radio program Radio Free Oz on station KPFK FM . They continued appearing on Radio Free Oz , which later moved to KRLA 1110 AM and then KMET FM , through February 1969. They produced fifteen record albums and

194-495: A 45 rpm single under contract to Columbia Records from 1967 through 1976, and had three nationally syndicated radio programs: The Firesign Theatre Radio Hour Hour [sic] in 1970 on KPPC-FM ; and Dear Friends (1970–1971) and Let'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

291-963: A Robert Chesley play dramatizing the reflections of a man dying of AIDS , aired on KPFK on August 31, 1986. Because it included graphic sexual language, the FCC ruled that it violated an indecency policy. In 1987, Ladysmith Black Mambazo made their first on-air U.S. radio broadcast on KPFK. In 1992, CPB Board member Victor Gold targeted KPFK for strident African American programming and controversial speech aired during Black History Month , by filing an FCC complaint. The station presents nationally syndicated shows (Tom Harman, Ralph Nader) , Pacifica produced shows (Democracy Now) and locally produced shows. The latter include "identity" shows for groups under represented by other media (blacks, Chicanos, California native Americans, LBG, incarcerated Californians) as well as political shows (The Brad Cast, Rebel Alliance). Other shows appeal to hobbiests such as

388-438: A "millennium trilogy" with the 1999 Boom Dot Bust and 2001 Bride of Firesign , which received a third Grammy nomination. Boom Dot Bust used material from their 1979 Roxy show "Welcome to Billville". Surreal humour Surreal humour grew out of surrealism , a cultural movement developed in the 20th century by French and Belgian artists, who depicted unnerving and illogical scenes while developing techniques to allow

485-464: A 1995 book authored by Austin, Tales of the Old Detective and Other Big Fat Lies . 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 program HEAT 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

582-408: A Break , which lampooned radio and television. The Starland Vocal Band also performed short comic radio breaks on this album. Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin 's Tandem Productions bought the rights to Nick Danger for a TV series to star George Hamilton ; and in 1978, New Line Cinema began negotiations to make a movie starring Chevy Chase . Both projects ended in development hell , and rights to

679-530: A certain amount of incongruity, and that absurd jokes require the additional component of an "absurd image," with an incongruity of the mental image. KPFK KPFK (90.7 FM ) is a listener-sponsored radio station based in North Hollywood, California , United States , which serves Southern California , and also streams 24 hours a day via the Internet . It was the second of five stations in

776-477: A fan after forming the Firesigns. According to Ossman: We all listened to The Goon Show , Peter Sellers , Spike Milligan and Harry 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 really surreal and weird kind of situation for a long period of time. They were doing that show for 10 years, all

873-475: A film, J-Men Forever , using clips from old Republic Pictures movie serials with dubbed dialogue, combined with new footage of them as FBI agents tracking down a villain known as "the Lightning Bug" voiced by disk jockey M. G. Kelly . This became popular on the 1980s late-night TV series Night Flight . Austin called Bergman in late 1979 to make peace and reunite the Firesigns. This resulted in

970-463: A group of teenage hijackers . They turned this into a vaudeville -type show which they played on tour. While promoting the show, they did a radio interview with disk jockey Wolfman Jack . Meanwhile, Ossman wrote a solo album How Time Flys , based on the Mark Time astronaut character he created for a Dear Friends skit, used on I Think We're All Bozos and cut from Not Insane . He co-directed

1067-630: A housemaid as creaking bedsprings are heard. This album was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1971 by the World Science Fiction Society , Dwarf brought a level of success to the Firesigns that started to spoil them. Bergman said, "We toured after Dwarf 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." Austin said of this period, "At that point we began not to get along with each other that well, and

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1164-461: A lasting understanding between nations and between the individuals of all nations, races, creeds and colors; to gather and disseminate information on the causes of conflict between any and all of such groups; and through any and all means compatible with the purposes of this corporation to promote the study of political and economic problems and of the causes of religious, philosophical and racial antagonisms. In radio broadcasting operations to promote

1261-414: A level which revolutionized radio comedy . According to Proctor: 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

1358-606: A live show recorded on the Columbia album What This Country Needs , based in part on material from TV 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 compilation Forward Into the Past in 1976. This title came from the A side of a 45 RPM single originally released in November 1969. This track and its B side, "Station Break", were included on

1455-411: A machine that mimics sexual intercourse. This album also received a Hugo nomination in 1972. 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 on 12" LP albums. Their fifth album, Dear Friends ,

1552-467: A nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album , and was followed in 1985 with the album Eat 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 show The Daily Feed . These were published on cassette tape as The Daily Feed Tapes , and later formed the basis for

1649-463: A one-shot eight-page tabloid with the " Los Angeles Free Press " logo appearing on an inside page. While the outside pages were a spoof of the Faire's Renaissance theme, featuring cute stories like one about a "ban the crossbow " demonstration, the inside contained legitimate underground community news and reviews. Five thousand copies were printed, of which 1,200 sold at a price of 25 cents. After

1746-767: A principal exponent of this, especially in The Exterminating Angel . It is a prominent feature in the television and cinematic work of the British comedy troupe Monty Python (1969–2015). Other examples include The Falls by Peter Greenaway and Brazil by Terry Gilliam . Surrealist humor has become increasingly popular in both children- and adult-oriented western animation, most notably in shows such as Regular Show , South Park , SpongeBob SquarePants , Aqua Teen Hunger Force , and more recently, Smiling Friends . Contemporary Internet meme culture, such as Weird Twitter and YouTube poop ,

1843-498: A result, much of their art was intentionally amusing. One example is Marcel Duchamp 's Fountain (1917), an inverted urinal signed "R. Mutt". This became one of the most famous and influential pieces of art in history, and one of the earliest examples of the found object movement. It is also a joke, relying on the inversion of the item's function as expressed by its title as well as its incongruous presence in an art exhibition. The word surreal first began to be used to describe

1940-479: 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, retitled Anythynge You Want To . Ossman left the group in early 1982 to take a producer's job for NPR in Washington DC. The remaining three Firesigns produced a new album in 1984, The Three Faces of Al , with the further adventures of Nick Danger. This received

2037-669: A satire of the Europeans' displacement of the indigenous peoples of the Americas ; followed by "W. C. Fields Forever", a satire of the 1960s hippie culture; leading into "Trente-Huit Cunegonde (Returned for Regrooving)", a projected future in which the roles of the hippie counterculture and the Establishment culture are reversed. Side two, the title track, is a stream-of-consciousness play about an American tourist (Austin) to an Eastern Bloc country, who ends up in prison and

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2134-411: A second Dwarf , which to me is a real disappointment." Their fourth album, I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus (1971), also a single play, centers on a young, early-technology computer hacker (Proctor) and an older "bozo" with a large nose that honks like a clown's (Austin), who attend a Disneyesque Future Fair. The blue comedy was dialed back from explicit to suggestive, as a scientist invents

2231-547: A second five-year contract. On March 30, they ended Let's Eat! with a live broadcast titled Martian 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. The Not Insane album performed poorly, and

2328-447: A series of scenes significantly different from what the audience might ordinarily encounter in daily life. The unique social situations, expressed thoughts, actions, and comic lines are used to spark laughter, emotion, or surprise as to how the events occurred or unfolded, in ways sometimes favorable to other unexpectedly introduced characters. Surreal humour in theater is usually about the insensitivity, paradox, absurdity, and cruelty of

2425-739: A series of shows performed at the Roxy 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 1980 Fighting Clowns . They also produced a show, "Presidents in Hell" ( FDR , Truman , Eisenhower , and Nixon ), which

2522-431: 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 of Norman Corwin 's 1941 patriotic radio pageant We Hold These Truths . Side two, The Further Adventures of Nick Danger , is a parody of 1940s radio, about a hard-boiled detective (Austin) who became possibly the Firesigns' most famous character. Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me

2619-539: A type of aesthetic of the early 1920s. Surreal humour is also found frequently in avant-garde theatre such as Waiting for Godot and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead . In the United States, S. J. Perelman (1904–1979) has been identified as the first surrealist humour writer. Surrealist humour appeared on British radio from 1951 to 1960 by the cast of The Goon Show : Spike Milligan , Peter Sellers , and Harry Secombe . The Goons' work influenced

2716-811: A year working in England on the BBC television program Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life and went to see surrealist comedian Spike Milligan in a play. Bergman went backstage and struck up a friendship with Milligan. Also that year, he saw the Beatles in concert, which gave him the inspiration to form a four-man comedy group. On returning to the US, Bergman started a late-night listener-participation talk show , Radio Free Oz , on July 24, 1966, on listener-sponsored KPFK FM in Los Angeles, working with producers Phil Austin and David Ossman . According to Austin,

2813-467: Is a porn actress, and whose police dispatcher wife (Ossman) lives in a soap opera . In a parody of Marlon Brando 's 1973 Academy Awards protest , the brother and sister stage a terrorist attack on an Oscar awards ceremony. This album, like Not Insane , also sold poorly, and Columbia declined to offer them a third contract in 1976. This time, the Firesigns didn't protest. Bergman said, "The group had really split apart; we had just burned out. I mean it

2910-399: Is also influenced by surreal humour. Mary K. Rodgers and Diana Pien analysed the subject in an essay titled "Elephants and Marshmallows" (subtitled "A Theoretical Synthesis of Incongruity-Resolution and Arousal Theories of humour"), and wrote that "jokes are nonsensical when they fail to completely resolve incongruities," and cited one of the many permutations of the elephant joke : "Why did

3007-587: Is one of the most powerful FM stations in the western United States. The station can be heard from the California/Mexico border to Santa Barbara to Ridgecrest/China Lake. A second 10- watt translator is licensed in Isla Vista, California , a census-designated place outside Santa Barbara. The transmitter for that station is located atop Gibraltar Peak, allowing its broadcast to be heard over a large portion of southern Santa Barbara County. The station

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3104-654: Is part of the Pacifica Network which has 5 radio stations besides KPFK, and provides programming to over 200 affiliates. Operating costs are covered primarily by donations from listener-sponsors and sponsored events. The 501(c)(3) non-profit station runs no paid commercial advertisements or sponsored programming. Memberships at a minimum donation of $ 25 per year allow participation in the election of Local Station Board members. Pacifica lost Corporation For Public Broadcasting Funding after 2012 due to not submitting acceptable audited financial statements. This funding

3201-597: Is primarily English language, but includes twenty-two hours broadcast in Spanish five evenings per week, Monday - Thursday, and Saturday. With the rest of the Pacifica Foundation stations and in accord with the Mission's commitment to dialogue, KPFK maintains community access to the airwaves, which was stated as: To establish a Foundation organized and operated exclusively for educational purposes no part of

3298-829: Is rescued by the CIA . It was recorded in CBS 's Los Angeles radio studio from which The Jack Benny Program and others had been broadcast; the original RCA microphones and sound 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 in folk clubs such as the Ash Grove . Radio Free Oz moved again to KMET FM until February 1969. The Firesign Theatre Radio Hour Hour [ sic ] aired for two hours on Sunday nights on KPPC-FM in 1970. They concentrated their writing on

3395-503: Is the frustrated, hungry caller trying to get food delivered from "Nick's". "He's no fun, he fell right over" became a famous catchphrase 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 albums Not Insane and How Time Flys . The group reunited in late August 1973 to produce the Sherlock Holmes parody The Tale of

3492-660: The 1973 oil crisis , and the Presidency of Richard Nixon . The Firesigns made use of inside humor . They peppered Waiting for the Electrician and How Can You Be in Two Places At Once with Beatles references not found on the band's top 40 material. 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

3589-563: The Chicago Seven case, were among many high-profile visitors at the station during Lewis' leadership. Lewis was a manager ahead of his times. In 1974, he was the first to introduce a radio show produced and hosted exclusively by and for the gay community — "The Great Gay Radio Conspiracy" as Greg Gordon, Enrich Murrello, and Colin McQueen began the program at 11 pm the third Tuesday of every month. This controversial program eventually

3686-493: The FCC withheld the license renewals of KPFA , KPFB , and KPFK, pending its investigation into "communist affiliations." Pacifica was never cited (see The Investigator ). In 1963, KPFK ran the first Renaissance fair as a fundraiser called the Renaissance Pleasure Faire and May Market (the event was managed by Theme Events Limited). At the 1964 fair, Art Kunkin distributed The Faire Free Press ,

3783-655: The National Recording Registry and called the group " the Beatles of comedy." Peter Bergman and Philip Proctor met while attending Yale University in the late 1950s, where Proctor studied acting and Bergman edited the Yale comedy magazine. Bergman studied playwriting and collaborated as lyricist with Austin Pendleton in 1958 on two Yale Dramat musicals in which Proctor starred: Tom Jones , and Booth Is Back In Town . In 1965, Bergman spent

3880-649: The Reagan 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 album Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers was nominated in 1971 for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation by

3977-488: The World Science Fiction Society , and their next album I Think We're All Bozos on This Bus received the same nomination in 1972. Later, they received nominations for the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album for three of their albums: The Three Faces of Al (1984), Give Me Immortality or Give Me Death (1998), and Bride of Firesign (2001). In 2005, the US Library of Congress added Don't Crush That Dwarf to

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4074-407: The unconscious mind to express itself. The movement itself was foreshadowed by English writers in the 19th century, most notably Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear . The humour in surreal comedy arises from a subversion of audience expectations, emphasizing the ridiculousness and unlikeliness of a situation, so that amusement is founded on an unpredictability that is separate from a logical analysis of

4171-540: The "Nouvelle Nouvelle Vague Vague movement" and director of a documentary Two Weeks With Fred , which lasts a full two weeks. By 1967, Bergman had the Firesign Theatre appear regularly on Radio Free Oz . The Firesigns were strongly influenced by the British Goon Show ; Proctor, Austin, and Ossman were big fans since the NBC program Monitor broadcast Goon Show episodes in the late 1950s, and Bergman became

4268-937: The 1976 album. Meanwhile, Austin and Ossman toured the west coast, billing themselves as "Dr. Firesign's Theatre of Mystery". They produced a live stage show Radio Laffs of 1940 , which included a second episode of the private eye character Nick 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. 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". The Firesigns took it easy for

4365-585: The 1998 album Pink 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 became Eat or Be Eaten ; the soap opera "Over the Edge" from Austin and Ossman's 1976 Dr. Firesign's Theatre of Mystery tour, and several clips from their radio work, including

4462-597: The 19th century, such as in Lewis Carroll 's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass , both of which use the illogical and absurd ( hookah -smoking caterpillars , croquet matches using live flamingos as mallets, etc.) for humorous effect. Many of Edward Lear 's children's stories and poems contain nonsense and are basically surreal in approach. For example, The Story of

4559-455: The American radio comedy troupe the Firesign Theatre (1966–2012). The Firesigns wrote sophisticated comic radio plays, many of which were recorded on albums . Surrealist humour is predominantly approached in cinema where the suspension of disbelief can be stretched to absurd lengths by logically following the consequences of unlikely, reversed or exaggerated premises. Luis Buñuel is

4656-522: The Buckinghams ] and John Hammond ." Austin says, "With Hammond backing us up, CBS came around." They went on to produce three more Columbia studio albums from 1969 to 1971. Each grew technically more sophisticated, taking advantage of up to 16 tape tracks and Dolby noise reduction by 1970. How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All , released in 1969, consists of

4753-460: The Car Show, The Bike Show (from KPFA). Musical shows represent soul, gospel, reggae, and America standards. In 2024, the station building, which had been gifted to the station in the 1950s, was sold to a private party . It was purchased for the purpose of converting it to a music studio. Broadcasting continued from temporary quarters. On the air it was stated that part of the sale

4850-829: The Edge in L.A. Following the 1992 United States presidential election , 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. The title was taken from a parody of the Gene Autry song " Back in the Saddle Again ", which they wrote for I 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 , and Bozos ),

4947-557: The Extra-Terrestrial ) using the album as the soundtrack. The film was shown in a live appearance at Stanford University and released on VHS video tape in 1993. In 1975, they released the black comedy album In the Next World, You're on Your Own , written by Austin and Ossman. The story centers on Random Coolzip (Proctor), an alcoholic dirty cop whose son (Bergman) is a by-the-book cop, whose daughter (Proctor)

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5044-449: The Faire ended, Kunkin circulated a brochure to potential investors and found enough backing to start putting out the paper on a regular weekly basis in July 1964. The Los Angeles Free Press was initially produced mostly by unpaid volunteers, many of them were the same people who volunteered at KPFK, where Kunkin had his own political commentary radio show. Peter Bergman 's Radio Free Oz

5141-455: 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 criticized Not 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

5238-571: The Four Little Children Who Went Round the World (1871) is filled with contradictory statements and odd images intended to provoke amusement, such as the following: After a time they saw some land at a distance; and when they came to it, they found it was an island made of water quite surrounded by earth. Besides that, it was bordered by evanescent isthmuses with a great Gulf-stream running about all over it, so that it

5335-517: The Giant Rat of Sumatra , 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 writer Harlan Ellison for Book Three of Ellison's anthology The Last Dangerous Visions , which Ellison never completed. In October 1974, the Firesigns released their eighth album, Everything You Know Is Wrong , which satirized

5432-460: 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: a Henry Aldrich parody High School Madness (in which he is named Porgie Tirebiter), and the Korean War film Parallel Hell . Dwarf marked a high point in the Firesign's use of blue comedy : Porgie has explicit sex with

5529-515: The album it should have been and I think that caused us to slope off rapidly in sales." 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, producing TV or Not TV : A Video Vaudeville in Two Acts . The record predicts the rise of pay cable TV, and it depicts an amateur station run by two men who must constantly block

5626-533: 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 of The Credibility Gap , and broadcast journalist Lew Irwin . Mark returns on New Year's Eve, 1999, from a twenty-year round trip to Planet X , only to find the space program has been dismantled, and no one cares about him except for an eccentric impresario (Bergman) who kidnaps him for his video recordings of encounters with alien life. Austin wrote

5723-497: The attention of Columbia Records staff producer Gary 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 recording contract with the label. Usher also used the Firesigns' audio collages on songs by The Byrds ("Draft Morning") and Sagittarius (the 45 RPM version of "Hotel Indiscreet") in 1967 and 1968. The album

5820-477: 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

5917-420: The being taken so seriously — Rolling Stone did a long article on us, and we were being compared to James 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

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6014-470: The character reverted to the Firesigns. In December 1978, they began writing five short (2:24) episodes of Nick Danger: The Case of the Missing Shoe for a possible syndicated daily radio series. When the syndication went unsold, Austin approached Rhino Records and secured a deal to release the five episodes in 1979 on a 12-minute extended play (EP) record. Meanwhile, Proctor and Bergman produced

6111-478: The characters of Christian Cyborg (Bergman), Coco Lewis (Proctor), Bob Chicken (Austin), and Tony Gomez (Ossman). 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. The Firesigns performed there, which led to Radio Free Oz moving to KRLA 1110 AM , which had a much wider audience than KPFK FM. This event also caught

6208-496: The creative skills and energies of the community; to conduct classes and workshops in the writing and producing of drama; to establish awards and scholarships for creative writing; to offer performance facilities to amateur instrumentalists, choral groups, orchestral groups and music students; and to promote and aid other creative activities which will serve the cultural welfare of the community.{mosimage} In radio broadcasting operations to engage in any activity that shall contribute to

6305-432: The developing New Age movement. Ossman said this record "grew out of our basic interest in those parapsychological things ... from Castaneda to the hollow Earth theory to the 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 by Allen Daviau (who later filmed E.T.

6402-598: The earliest recorded appearance on Radio Free Oz . The Firesigns satirized the turn-of-the-millennium Y2K scare with the 1998 album Give Me Immortality or Give Me Death , in which they revived some of their classic characters such as used car salesman Ralph Spoilsport (Proctor) from How Can You Be In Two Places At Once , news reporters Harold Hiphugger (Ossman) and Ray Hamberger (Proctor) from Everything You Know Is Wrong , and game-show contestant Caroline Presskey (Proctor) from Don't Crush That Dwarf . This earned them their second Grammy nomination, and they developed it into

6499-444: The elephant sit on the marshmallow?" "Because he didn't want to fall into the cup of hot chocolate." "The joke is incompletely resolved in their opinion," noted Elliott Oring , "because the situation is incompatible with the world as we know it. Certainly, elephants do not sit in cups of hot chocolate." Oring defined humour as not the resolution of incongruity, but "the perception of appropriate incongruity," that all jokes contain

6596-611: The fall of 1967, the Firesign Theatre was broadcasting Sunday nights from The Magic Mushroom , in Studio City , formerly a Bob Eubanks ' Cinnamon Cinder . In September 1967, they performed an adaptation of Jorge 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

6693-500: The folk-club material and produced improvisational skit material for the Radio 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 came James William Guercio [producer of

6790-591: The full distribution of public information; to obtain access to sources of news not commonly brought together in the same medium; and to employ such varied sources in the public presentation of accurate, objective, comprehensive news on all matters vitally affecting the community. KPFK was founded in 1959 as the second station of the Pacifica Foundation . Terry Drinkwater was its first General Manager. In 1960, KPFK won Pacifica's second George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting. In 1962,

6887-414: The group inventing the name "4 or 5 Krazy Guys Publishing" to copyright their work. Their contract with Columbia, in exchange for a low royalty rate, gave them unlimited studio time, allowing them to perfect their writing and recording. Electrician revolutionized the concept of the comedy album : it consists of four radio plays. Side one is a trilogy of pieces: starting with "Temporarily Humboldt County",

6984-426: The group the "Oz Firesign Theatre" because all four were born under the three astrological 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 from Disney and MGM , who owned movie rights to The Wizard of Oz and other associated works . The Firesigns initially chose an improvisational style and carried it to

7081-712: The local station board meet on both regular and ad hoc bases. Like all Pacifica stations, KPFK has, since its inception run an eclectic schedule of performing arts, public affairs, and news. Many programs are available through the Pacifica Network for rebroadcast to affiliate stations and are streamed for a limited period on the Online Archives. Maintaining its adherence to Pacifica founder Lew Hill's Mission, KPFK focuses on news, public affairs, and performance of local interest, while blending in nationally and internationally focused programming. Programming

7178-461: The modern world. Absurd and surrealist cinema often deals with elements of dark humour : disturbing or sinister subjects like death, disease, or warfare are treated with amusement and bitterness, creating the appearance of an intention to shock and offend. Surreal humour is the effect of the illogical and absurd being used for humorous effect. Under such premises, people can identify precursors and early examples of surreal humour at least since

7275-788: The net earnings of which inures to the benefit of any member of the Foundation. To establish and operate for educational purposes, in such manner that the facilities involved shall be as nearly self-sustaining as possible, one or more radio broadcasting stations licensed by the Federal Communications Commission and subject in their operation to the regulatory actions of the Commission under the Communications Act of 1934, As Amended. In radio broadcasting operations to encourage and provide outlets for

7372-848: The non-commercial, listener-sponsored Pacifica Foundation network. KPFK 90.7 FM began broadcasting in April 1959, twelve years after the Pacifica Foundation was created by pacifist Lewis Hill , and ten years after the network's flagship station, KPFA , was founded in Berkeley . KPFK also broadcasts on booster KPFK-FM1 along the Malibu coast, K258BS (99.5 MHz) in China Lake , K254AH (98.7 MHz) in Isla Vista and K229BO 93.7 MHz in Rancho Bernardo, San Diego . With its 110,000- watt main transmitter atop Mount Wilson , KPFK

7469-536: 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 a 70 mm film camera down the Andes mountains ; Austin was Jack Love, making "Living Room Theatre" porn films like The Nun and Blondie Pays the Rent ; and Proctor was Jean-Claude Jean-Claude, creator of

7566-567: The rest of the 1970s, producing a 1977 album Just Folks... A Firesign Chat based largely on unreleased Dear Friends and Let's Eat radio material. Proctor and Bergman appeared as regulars on a 1977 summer replacement TV series hosted by the Starland Vocal Band . Proctor and Bergman gave up their road performances after witnessing the September 4, 1977 Golden Dragon Massacre , and in 1978 released another studio album Give Us

7663-507: The show "featured everybody who was anybody in the artistic world who passed through LA." Guests included the band Buffalo Springfield and Andy Warhol . In November, Proctor was in Los Angeles looking for acting work and watching the Sunset 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

7760-473: The situation. Surreal humour is concerned with building up expectations and then knocking them down; even seemingly masterful characters with the highest standards and expectations are subverted by the unexpected, which the scene emphasizes for the viewer's amusement. Either the " goofball " or " straight " character in the scene can react with dull surprise, disdain, boredom, or detached interest, thus heightening comic tension. Characters' intentions are set up in

7857-469: The solo album Roller Maidens From Outer Space , based on a hardboiled detective in the same vein as his Nick Danger character introduced on the B side of How Can You Be In Two Places... . Roller Maidens , released in March 1974 on Columbia's Epic label , also featured all four Firesigns and included actors Richard Paul and Michael C. Gwynne . The album satirizes series television , televangelists ,

7954-604: The station at the time, famously refused to turn over tapes acquired from the Symbionese Liberation Army after the terrorist group's kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst . After repeated requests by the FBI and being subpoenaed, Lewis cited the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press to no avail at a grand jury and was sent to federal prison for 15 days at Terminal Island . Lewis

8051-429: 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 of The Goon Show and learned a lot of voices from them and such. In

8148-770: 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 show Let's Eat! in 1971 and 1972. Both titles came from lines uttered by televangelist Pastor Rod Flash (Proctor) on his "Hour of Reckoning" program in Don't Crush That Dwarf . In 1970, the group had performed a live stage show, the Shakespeare parody The Count of Monte Cristo , at Columbia University . In January 1972 they decided to expand this and retitle it Anything You Want To for their next album. On March 9, Columbia signed them to

8245-495: 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 in Dwarf , where George Tirebiter

8342-1274: Was a provision that KPFK could continue to use their former building for broadcasting rent free for ten years beginning when the building was expanded and rebuilt. Station announcers stated on the air that the building sale was forced by Pacifica to raise money to cover the continuing losses suffered by flagship Pacifica New York City Station WBAI. Steven Starr : (interim General Manager) January 2002 to June 2002 Eva Georgia: (General Manager) June 2002 to October 31, 2007 Jim Lafferty: (interim General Manager) November 2007 to June 30, 2008 Sean Heitkemper: (General Manager) July 1, 2008 to August 7, 2009 Bob Conger: (interim General Manager) August 8, 2009 to March 2010 Margie Murray: (Acting General Manager) March 2010 to June 2010 Jennifer Kiser: (Interim Acting General Manager) June 2010 to January 2011 Bernard Duncan (General Manager) January 2011 to April 2014 Anyel Zuberi Fields: (interim General Manager) April 2014 Leslie Radford: (General Manager) May 2015 Christine Blosdale: interim General Manager: June 2017 Anyel Zuberi Fields: (General Manager) January 2018 Miquel Calçada : (General Manager) July 2021 - March 2022 Michael Novick: (interim General Manager) November 2022 to present In addition to

8439-399: 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." 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." This resulted in

8536-703: Was finally released by Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas . Lewis shared a prison cell with controversial LSD guru Timothy Leary . Lewis was just the second media representative to ever be sent to jail on a freedom of the press issue. Lewis' progressive changes at KPFK during the 1970s turned the Pacifica station into one of the most popular in the nation, where many celebrity activists were able to express their views without censorship from mainstream media. Actors Martin Sheen , Paul Newman , Jane Fonda and her then-politician husband Tom Hayden , who stood trial in

8633-410: Was first broadcast on July 24, 1966. The Firesign Theatre first appeared on Radio Free Oz on November 17, 1966. The Fireside Theatre produced the live radio program Dear Friends on KPFK in 1970–1971. Twenty-one episodes aired between September 16, 1970, and February 17, 1971. Dear Friends was followed with the KPFK show Let's Eat! in 1971 and 1972. In 1974, Will Lewis, the general manager of

8730-498: 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." 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. Proctor and Bergman turned their attention in 1975 to producing

8827-407: Was given the non sequitur title Waiting 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

8924-509: Was not recorded. The popularity of the group cooled off after 1980 as the social and political climate of the United States changed with the election of President Ronald Reagan . In 1982, they produced the album Lawyer's Hospital from a collection of live appearances, National Public Radio (NPR) performances, and the Jack Poet Volkswagen commercials from Radio Free Oz . They also expanded their 1972 Shakespeare parody into

9021-440: Was perfectly beautiful, and contained only a single tree, 503 feet high. In the early 20th century, several avant-garde movements, including the dadaists , surrealists , and futurists began to argue for an art that was random, jarring and illogical. The goals of these movements were in some sense serious, and they were committed to undermining the solemnity and self-satisfaction of the contemporary artistic establishment . As

9118-494: Was previously spread between the five Pacifica stations. In two years during a three-year cycle, station members and staff elect the Local Station Board as required by the Pacifica Foundation bylaws. The KPFK local station board elects members from its body to the Pacifica Foundation board of directors and has support and advisory duties for the station. The full local station board meets monthly, and committees of

9215-493: 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 , and Roller Maidens From Outer Space . In 1996, Bergman revived Radio Free Oz as an Internet -based radio station, www.rfo.net, calling it "the Internet's funny bone." The Firesigns followed this with

9312-498: Was referred to as "IMRU," as it created great consternation for a mostly conservative audience. Today, the program is still a fixture on KPFK as the longest-running LBGTQ program some 48 years later. KPFK was the only full-service public radio station in Los Angeles during the early 1970s. Lewis and the station won awards for its Watergate coverage, including the Golden Mike Award for reporter Mike Hodel . Jerker ,

9409-409: Was the brainchild of Peter Bergman , and all of its material was conceived, written, and performed by its members: Bergman, Philip Proctor , Phil Austin , and David Ossman . The group's name stems from astrology , because all four were born under the three " fire signs ": Aries (Austin), Leo (Proctor), and Sagittarius (Bergman and Ossman). Their popularity peaked in the early 1970s and ebbed in

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