The Firesign Theatre's Big Book of Plays

Genius,once in print, and funny as hell, to boot. Those younger than 50, have no idea what they missed. By and large, they don't get it, either. Too bad....." Heck no.....I'm thirty years old"!!!!

"The Big Book of Plays" is the first of two books put out by the legendary comedy troupe the Firesign Theatre (Phil Austin, Peter Bergman, Philip Proctor, and David Ossman) during their heyday (it was published in 1972). It is a collection of pieces from the troupe's first four albums. As such, it allows the reader to finally fully penetrate the oft-times impenetrable texts of the group's records. The pieces included are "Waiting For the Electrician or Someone Like Him" and "How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All?" from the albums of the same name, and the titles "Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers" and "I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus" in their entirety. The plays are accompanied by a plethora of photos, a foreword from each member, and a chronology of the group's career to that point. Good luck finding a copy but, if you do, grab it! It's great.

I have not read or seen this book since the early 70's, and by then I had committed FST's albums to memory. However, given that there was always multiple dialogs going on, at a variety of levels, it was great to see the dialog in print.The dialog on the T.V. as Ralph Spoilsport sells the 1968 Narc Avenger is revealed, as it the censored newcast regarding the man-made baby Adam One-Three.While I do have most of the material committed to memory, I highly recommend this book. Not only does it clarify certain passages in "How Can You Be In Two Places..." and "Don't Crush That Dwarf..." it also brings FST's broader vision into view.Definitely a must have.

We need a term for all those expressions we utter so commonly these days: little soundbites, references drawn from films or commercial ads, that sum up so many situations, so perfectly, that they get used over and over again and enter common parlance. "Where's the Beef?" is an example. These references obviously don't just serve to succinctly express a sentiment; they reinforce our sense of belonging to the community of people who get the reference. I am a member of one such community, for whom the works of FT remains a mother load of these kinds of expressions; I literally use them daily. When I utter one of these expressions half-consciously at a party, and someone I don't know recognizes and riffs the next line out, there is a bond revealed, as strong as those between veterans of the Lincoln Brigade. Still, this is not even the central genius of FT. Neither is it to be found in their unequalled mastery of the subtlest details of the aural landscape of the late 20th century, as filtered through it's various media: the distinct equalizations, dynamics compression and fidelities of various radio and TV talkshows, news programs and ads, the educational 16 mm film with its invariably bad framing loops. FT's ear for such textures, and their perfect mastery at reproducing them, is simply instrumental: this is a vehicle, as is their vaudville humour, for something much more important.The legacy of this troupe will be how perfectly they realized the attitude of my generation toward its own culture: that we found (and still find) its reality and portend so surreal, so alien, and so odious, that the only way to adequately represent it was with social criticism in the form of psychodelic satire. FT brought precognition to that effort as well, although prophesy is not much appreciated by subsequent generations, because the world that was prophesied is now their context, their backdrop, and they find it unremarkable that their reality was once presented as just one disturbing, even improbable, possible future. Given that during the late sixties, pop music defined (not expressed, defined!) the historical moment, the Record Album was the only possible medium for this literature. And yes, for many of us, FT played a significant role in that moment-definition. These days, music rarely even truly expresses the historical moment, much less defines it. So if you manage to find and read a copy of FT's Big Book of Plays, and you've never heard the performance of these pieces, you may very well not get it. Instead, buy "Dwarf" or "Bozos", put on a good set of headphones, drop a hit of something clean, and enter their world. Later, when you're "grounded, safe and sound...trailing clouds of glory..." you can get out that Big Book and marvel at all the scripting that subliminally zipped right by you. By then, hopefully, you'll be changed forever.

As a Firesign Theater addict I can only say that it is imperitave that all other fans find this book. It will reveal word-for-word all the inticacies and nuances of the troop. By READING the plays one can truly understand their brilliance. I no longer have a copy, but I have been searching for one for a while now.