Firesign Theatre’s ‘Dope Humor of the Seventies’
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Firesign Theatre’s ‘Dope Humor of the Seventies’
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Re: Firesign Theatre’s ‘Dope Humor of the Seventies’
#2I envy pot heads who are just discovering Firesign Theater for the first time. You've got a lot of laughter ahead of you.
And this reminds me of an interview I just heard with the actress that played the little girl in Manos: The Hands of Fate. She said she and her friends were huge Firesign Theater fans in high school, and would exasperate their other friends by quoting Firesign Theater all the time.
Re: Firesign Theatre’s ‘Dope Humor of the Seventies’
#3MORE SUGAR
Re: Firesign Theatre’s ‘Dope Humor of the Seventies’
#4A camp counselor introduced a bunch of us to "Nick Danger" one summer back in the '70's, and it was instant infatuation for me. I bought all of their albums I could find and listened to them all the time. No drugs involved at all, on my side at least. Their love of language play, political stances, satire and parody, and obvious skill and love of what they did made Firesign Theater amazing.
Re: Firesign Theatre’s ‘Dope Humor of the Seventies’
#5A camp counselor introduced a bunch of us to "Nick Danger" one summer back in the '70's, and it was instant infatuation for me. I bought all of their albums I could find and listened to them all the time. No drugs involved at all, on my side at least. Their love of language play, political stances, satire and parody, and obvious skill and love of what they did made Firesign Theater amazing.
FT is great even without drugs, but while high I found them even more hilarious, the sensory aspects of their performance were way more effective at transporting me in to the worlds they were conjuring up, and I felt I made a lot more connections in the many references they were making.
Pot has often had a similar effect for me with other comedies, but the multisensory, multi-level nature of Firesign Theater brings the whole experience to another level that's rarely been matched by anything else.
Re: Firesign Theatre’s ‘Dope Humor of the Seventies’
#6"I think we're all bozos on this bus" is the first recorded hack iirc.
Re: Firesign Theatre’s ‘Dope Humor of the Seventies’
#7"I think we're all bozos on this bus" is the first recorded hack iirc.
Fascinating - I was ready to downvote the idea that this was the first recorded hack (MIT students had been doing hacks many decades or perhaps even the better part of a century earlier) but reading up on "I think we're all bozos on the bus" [0] I believe you mean the first fictional hacker in film or video, which could well be the case.
[0] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/AudioPlay/IThinkWereA...
Re: Firesign Theatre’s ‘Dope Humor of the Seventies’
#8Word to the wise: TFA overlooks this, but Firesign Theatre's humor didn't end in the seventies. Probably my FT favorite album is Give Me Immortality or Give Me Death, which came out in 1998 and is their darkly optimistic take on the millennium. It's just as profound and multilayered as their earlier work, and to someone not of the hippie generation it's waaay more relevant.
Another standout is Eat or Be Eaten, which is from 1985 and is entirely about video games. FT didn't milk their hippie/pothead schtick, they changed a lot with the times and their later work is still very much worth checking out.
"Hi friends, Ralph Spoilsport here to tell you that everybody must die, but you don't have to be there when it happens!"
Re: Firesign Theatre’s ‘Dope Humor of the Seventies’
#9My dad introduced me to FT; they are amazing. You really need to pay attention though; there's a lot going on, and rarely are you hit over the head with what's going on.
Re: Firesign Theatre’s ‘Dope Humor of the Seventies’
#10Word to the wise: TFA overlooks this, but Firesign Theatre's humor didn't end in the seventies. Probably my FT favorite album is Give Me Immortality or Give Me Death , which came out in 1998 and is their darkly optimistic take on the millennium. It's just as profound and multilayered as their earlier work, and to someone not of the hippie generation it's waaay more relevant. Another standout is Eat or Be Eaten , whic…
I had mixed feelings about GMIOGMD when it was released. I didn't like how self-referential it was, the reintroduction of Ralph Spoilsport being a great example. The album eventually grew on me, but it lacks the timeless charm of their 70s efforts.