Live at the Magic Mushroom collects the fully-scripted plays that the group performed at a Venture Blvd. Firesign Theatre Live at the Magic Mushroom is a book/DVD rom put together by their archivist and historian, my esteemed pal Taylor Jessen, who deserves a fucking Grammy award for this production, and for all the detective work that he’s undertaken to locate so many long thought lost tapes of the group’s work.įor Firesign fans, THIS IS AN EVENT. Trust me, it’s fantastic.)Īll of this is a preamble to informing you, dear friend, that there is a major new product available at the Firesign Theater website. (For a really amazing look at the now almost forgotten cultural importance of Firesign Theatre during the 60s and 70s, from Ivy League dorm rooms to the foxholes of Vietnam, listen to this NPR show. And then you’ll both start slipping Firesign references into your conversations. When you meet a fellow Firehead, you become instant friends. In the same way someone can study James Joyce for a lifetime and never tire of it, Firesign Theatre holds a similar place in my life and in the lives of many others. It’s not dated as it exists in a self-contained, self-referential Firesign universe of their devising. Their comedy is multi-leveled, chock full of puns and time travel. The Firesign Theatre created extremely complex “theater of the mind” comedy albums that were-unavoidably for obvious reasons-in the form of radio plays. Fifty-year-old comedy albums and radio shows? The assumption is that it must be something like Fibber McGee and Molly or The Great Gildersleeve. The reaction tends to be rather muted in most cases. Having said all this-and I have complained about this before-Firesign Theatre is an extremely difficult thing to try to get other people interested in. My love for them is a part of my very identity. Studies have shown that young minds exposed to surrealism develop better critical thinking skills and I can honestly say that my own mind was rewired, permanently, by my extreme Firesign Theatre fandom. I’d listen to their albums with headphones on, in the dark, practically memorizing them. Often called America’s Monty Python, they’re better described as America’s acid-drenched answer to The Goon Show. Oh yeah, I was totally obsessed with Firesign Theatre. I am a man of many enthusiasms, and one of the things that I am, for certain, the MOST enthusiastic about is Firesign Theatre, the legendary psychedelic “Beatles of Comedy.” I’ve been a lifelong Firesign Theatre freak, having discovered them at a very young age.
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