The Pirate Review - Shoes for Industry! The Best of the Firesign Theatre

While not perfect, this double-CD album displays the intelligent, fragmented and psychedelic genius of the Firesign Theatre to good advantage

This review owes a debt of gratitude to James L. Wright, Jr.: friend, comedian, Star Trek fan and Renaissance writer. Had I never met Jim, I never would have been exposed to his unique and excellent taste in comedy—everything from Spalding Gray to Allan Sherman to "Weird Al" Yankovic. I wouldn't have had the chance to read his excellent writing (take a peek at his mostly Trek-related stuff at www.reviewboy.com). And without the tape he made for me off his LP (the title, How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere At All, was too long to fit on the cassette), I might never have heard of the four-man comedy troupe called The Firesign Theatre.

The tape intrigued me. Was that really the name of an album, or just Jim's comment by way of explanation? I slipped it into the tape player, pressed PLAY. Click, click... a distant foghorn and footsteps. The stentorian tones of an old-style radio announcer.

"Los Angle-es. He walks again by night!"
*whistling*
"Out of the fog... into the smog..."
*hacking coughs*
"Relentlessly... ruthlessly..."
*I wonder where Ruth is.*
"Doggedly..."
*wuf wuf! hey get away from me!*
"Toward his weekly meeting with... The Unknown."

It sounded like an old radio drama—with some illegally bad puns—but the gumshoe protagonist was "Nick Danger, Third Eye." Third Eye? What WAS this? I was intrigued, drawn in, finding myself cackling at puns and wordplay and pop-culture references from another generation. It took several times to catch all the various nuggets of almost throwaway humor, and that was just on one side of the tape. The other side was even more stream-of-consciousness, with segues from a used-car lot to a tropical paradise to a seedy hotel to a pastiche of an Army enlistment film, fading off into the Molly Bloom sequence from Ulysses. Why hadn't I ever heard of these guys before?

Probably because they broke up while I was still in grade school. Although they've had at least one reunion tour and made a few more albums in recent years, the majority of work for which these guys are known was produced in the late '60s and early '70s.

For those of you who are as much in the dark as I was, the Firesign Theatre were/are Peter Bergman, David Ossman, Phil Proctor and Phil Austin. In the mid-'60s, they put together a three-hour radio program on KPFK, an FM station broadcasting from Los Angeles; "Radio Free Oz" was extremely freeform, a combination of gonzo radio interviews and weird comedy sketches. As their popularity in L.A. grew, they tried their collective hand at LP recordings—most of the material on Shoes for Industry!, including the Nick Danger show, comes from their early albums. Popularity, unfortunately, went to their heads; the Firesigns split up in 1973 without Yoko Ono ever rearing her fearsome noggin.

If, like Britney Spears, you're now muttering "Who's Yoko Ono?" to yourself, this album will be a puzzler—the Firesign Theatre made a lot of pop culture references, not only from their own era of high counterculture, but from their childhoods in the '40s and '50s. Much of their stuff, at first listen, is like a convoluted inside joke which only people of a very specific demographic—over a certain age and/or relatively well-read—are likely to "get." But discovering the source material for some of these sketches can be an education in itself.

The following material is on Shoes for Industry!:

Disc 1
Temporarily Humboldt County
Beat The Reaper!
I Was A Cock-Teaser For Roosterama!
Ralph Spoilsport Motors
The American Pageant
The Chinchilla Show
The Further Adventures Of Nick Danger
Stab From The Past
Ersatz Bros. Coffee
"High School Madness!"
Napalmolive
Shoes For Industry!
40 Great Unclaimed Melodies!
Station Break

Disc 2
Forward Into The Past
The Holygram's Song (Back From The Shadows Again)
The Breaking Of The President
Deputy Dan Has No Friends
La Bomba Shelter
Young Guy, Motor Detective
Toad Away
Not Quite The Solution He Expected
Bear Whiz Beer
Happy Hour News
The Golden Hind
The Army Training Film
Police Street
Communist Love Song
C'mon Jesus
Nasi Goring
Give Up This Day

One of the only problems I have with Shoes for Industry! has to do with the nature of compilation albums. Most of the Firesigns' material was composed specifically for the LP format; as such, when the various sketches are torn free of their mooring material and presented alone, they don't have as much punch as they did in the original albums. (Case in point: during the middle of his adventure, Nick Danger wonders aloud "Didn't I say that on the other side of the record?" and proceeds to listen to the opposite side of the LP—of course, it's all backwards, so he thinks they're "speaking Chinese." It's a clever bit, but it doesn't translate well to a CD compilation.) Also, having come from a time when political correctness was in its nascency, these guys don't pull punches—there are occasional bad words and minority references that may offend, so be warned.

If you're a child of the '60s, into goofy free-form comedy, or you're just insane enough to trust any recommendation I make (heh heh, the power, THE RAW POWER!!!), Shoes for Industry! isn't a bad way to introduce yourself to the psychedelic brain candy of the Firesign Theatre.

This review has been brought to you by Fantastic Cigarettes ("long in the leaf and short in the can"), Loostner's Castor Oil Flakes (with real Glycerine Vibrafoam) and Napalmolive (endorsed by Sgt. Sphincter of the Dirt Patrol). And, of course, Jim Wright. Thanks, Jim.