The Firesign Theatre

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 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, 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 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. ==Radio Free Oz==

The Firesigns initially chose an improvisational style and carried it to a level which revolutionized radio comedy. According to Proctor: 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 a fan after forming the Firesigns. According to Ossman: In the fall of 1967, the Firesign Theatre was broadcasting Sunday nights from The Magic Mushroom, in Studio City, formerly a Bob Eubanks's Cinnamon Cinder. In September 1967, they performed an adaptation of Jorge Luis Borges's 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 the characters of Christian Cyborg (Bergman), Coco Lewis (Proctor), Bob Chicken (Austin), and Tony Gomez (Ossman). ==Golden age==

Early recording career 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. This event also caught 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. Their contract with Columbia, in exchange for a low royalty rate, gave them unlimited studio time, allowing them to perfect their writing and recording. 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 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 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." 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, 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. 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 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. Proctor and Bergman turned their attention in 1975 to producing 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. 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 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 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 was not recorded. ==Reagan era==

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 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 the Edge in L.A. ==1990s revival==

Following the 1992 United States presidential election, The Firesigns followed this with 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 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 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". ==21st century==

They created a live show, Radio Now Live in 2001 using characters from Give Me Immortality and released it on a live album, which also includes updated cuts from Anythynge You Want To. In December 2001, the Firesigns appeared in a 90-minute PBS television show Weirdly Cool. This contained live, updated performance material based on Waiting for the Electrician, How Can You Be in Two Places..., and ''Don't Crush That Dwarf''; and included interviews and two Jack Poet Volkswagen commercials. From November 2002 through early 2003, Bergman produced a political satire series True Confessions of the Real World, three times weekly on Pasadena non-commercial KPCC FM. The Firesigns appeared on the NPR show All Things Considered on US holidays from July 4 to December 31, 2002; They could claim to be the longest surviving group from the "classic rock" era to still be intact with the original members (45 years). Bergman died in a Santa Monica hospital on March 9, 2012, from complications of leukemia. According to Austin, the remaining three Firesigns' April 21, 2012, memorial for Bergman was their last live performance. Austin died in Fox Island, Washington, on June 18, 2015, from complications of cancer. A compilation album distilled from the Duke of Madness Motors set, Dope Humor of the Seventies, was released by Stand Up! Records in November 2020. The title is another Firesign inside joke: it was first used in 1972 for a fictional album hawked by Austin as "Dexter Fogg" in Martian Space Party (heard on Not Insane). Ossman called Dope Humor a sort of "dark side" to the Dear Friends album, since both were compiled from the same source, but the sketches on Dope Humor had not been constrained by the desire to keep the material radio-friendly, as had been the case for Dear Friends. Proctor called the release a tribute to Austin and Bergman. ==Firesign members==

Peter Bergman (born under the fire sign Sagittarius in Cleveland, Ohio,) started his radio career on his high school radio system during the Korean War. He was kicked off the air by the principal when, as a prank, he announced a Communist takeover of the school. He studied economics at Yale (class of 1961) and was managing editor of the university's comedy magazine. In his second graduate year he became a fellow in playwriting. As a member of the Yale Dramatic Association, he co-wrote two musical comedies with Austin Pendleton. Later, he considered attending medical school and helped produce a machine for viewing angiocardiograms and measuring blockage of the arteries of the heart.), was the youngest Firesign. He attended college but never graduated. He was an accomplished lead guitarist, and he was responsible for adding much of the music to Firesign works. He also appeared as an actor and voice actor on television. He used his natural, sonorous baritone voice for Nick Danger, but affected a phony Japanese accent for his "Young Guy, Motor Detective" self-parody of Danger in Not Insane and a stereotypical, tough-guy voice and accent for the similar hardboiled detective Dick Private in Roller Maidens From Outer Space. He also could do an old-man voice as Doc Technical in the Dear Friends radio "Mark Time" episode, and he applied his impersonation of Richard Nixon as presidents in several Firesign and solo works (Bozos, How Time Flys, Roller Maidens, and Everything You Know Is Wrong). He also did an Elvis Presley impersonation singing the news in the Roller Maidens track "The Bad News". David Ossman (born under the fire sign Sagittarius in Santa Monica, California, Associate Firesigns Several people have been accorded unofficial "associate Firesign" status over the years, by virtue of performing on several records with the group. Austin's first wife Annalee performed in support of the group on several golden age albums. She is credited as a member of "the St. Louis Aquarium Choraleers" (singing the hymn "Marching to Shibboleth") and as "the Wake-Up Lady" and for birdsong on ''Don't Crush That Dwarf; as "Mickey" and with keyboard stylings on I Think We're All Bozos; with film footage on the Dear Friends album; and organ, piano, and vocals on Not Insane''. Ossman's first wife Tiny (Tinika) performed as a St. Louis Aquarium Choraleer and as part of the "Ambient's Noyes Choral" (singing the Peorgie and Mudhead theme song) on ''Don't Crush That Dwarf; as "Ann" on I Think We're All Bozos; as Nurse Angela and news reporter Chiquita Bandana on How Time Flys; and vocals and percussion on Not Insane''. She and Ossman co-hosted a Sunday night radio program of pre–World War II music on KTYD. Austin married his second wife Oona in 1971. She is credited as an anonymous extra in ''I Think We're All Bozos; was photographed as one of the Roller Maidens From Outer Space and sang backup vocals for the Austin solo album; and appeared as a Reebus Caneebus groupie in the film version of Everything You Know Is Wrong. She is the model for the blonde femme fatale on the cover art of the Box of Danger CD set, She also performed on the Give Me Immortality ..., Boom Dot Bust, and Bride of Firesign albums and supported the group in the Radio Now Live'' show. 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In 1997, Entertainment Weekly ranked the Firesign Theatre among the "Thirty Greatest Comedy Acts of All Time". In 2005, the US Library of Congress added ''Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers'' to the National Recording Registry, and called the group "the Beatles of comedy." Comedians George Carlin, Robin Williams, and John Goodman enjoyed the Firesigns' comedy and lent their comments to the 2001 PBS television special Weirdly Cool. Williams referred to Firesign albums as "the audio equivalent of a Hieronymus Bosch painting." Beatle John Lennon was photographed wearing the Firesign's "Not Insane – Papoon for President" campaign button they had made for Martian Space Party (Not Insane album). Musical satirist "Weird Al" Yankovic paid homage to the Firesigns by giving the title "Everything You Know Is Wrong" to an original song on his 1996 album Bad Hair Day. Steve Jobs paid homage to the Firesigns' ''I Think We're All Bozos'' album by programming an "Easter egg" in Apple's Siri intelligent personal assistant. Siri responds to the prompt "This is worker speaking. Hello" with "Hello Ah-Clem. What function can I perform for you? LOL". On several occurrences of the Association for Consciousness Exploration (ACE)'s Starwood Festival, director Jeff Rosenbaum has organized performances of Firesign Theatre radio plays performed by organizers and guest speakers of the event under the name "Firesign Clones". Copyright infringement In Madison, Wisconsin, in 1974, a pair of University of Illinois students opened the first of a regional chain of pizza restaurants they named "Rocky Rococo" after the Nick Danger character, without any mention of connection to the Firesign Theatre. They hired an artist to design, as their logo, a moustachioed Italian with a white hat and sunglasses, suggested by the White Spy from Mad Magazine, and hired comic actor Jim Pederson to portray this "Rocky Rococo" wearing a white suit. The Firesigns visited the first Rocky Rococo Pizza when on tour in Madison in 1975 and reacted with good humor, joking around with the owners and giving them pictures that said, "To Rocky, from Rocky" which were hung on the wall. But in 1985, by which time the chain had grown to 62 restaurants and the Firesigns had passed their "golden age", they sent the owners a letter claiming ownership of the name. The pizza chain's lawyers found a similar case where an Austin, Texas pizzeria named Conan's ran afoul of the copyright owners, producers of the 1982 film Conan the Barbarian. Since the creator of the Conan the Barbarian comic had similarly endorsed the restaurant by drawing Conan on its walls, the suit lost in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, so the Firesigns settled out of court. • Nick Danger prize for best mystery/detective fiction • The Bradshaw prize (after Bergman's cop character) for "service to the field" • The Betty Jo (But Everyone Knew Her as Nancy) prize, judged by Phil Proctor and his wife, for best "multi-gender" vocal performance ==Media==

Radio • Radio Free Oz (1966–1969) • The Firesign Theatre Radio Hour Hour (1970) • Dear Friends (1970–1971) Syndicated • ''Let's Eat'' (1971–1972) Syndicated • A Firesign Chat with Papoon (1972 Columbia) • The Proctor-Bergman Report (1977–1978) • The Cassette Chronicles (1980 Rhino Entertainment) A six-cassette collection of the Firesign Theatre's presidential and campaign commentaries which aired on NPR during the 1980 election season. • Daily Feed 1988 Newsreel – The Daily Feed (1988, DC Audio) A solo cassette by Austin • A Capital Decade Daily Feed 1989 Newsreel – The Daily Feed (1989 DC Audio) A solo cassette by Austin • Power: Life on the Edge in L.A. (summer 1990) Proctor and Bergman on NPR's Heat with John Hockenberry • True Confessions of the Real World (November 2001 – 2002) Peter Bergman's commentary and interviews with imaginary "news makers" on KPCC • All Things Considered (July 2002 – March 2003) Ten appearances on NPR Podcast • Radio Free Oz Podcast (2010–2012) Albums • Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him (1968, Columbia Records) • ''How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All'' (1969, Columbia) • ''Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers'' (1970, Columbia) • ''I Think We're All Bozos on This Bus'' (1971, Columbia) • Dear Friends (1972, Columbia) • Not Insane or Anything You Want To (1972, Columbia) • The Tale of the Giant Rat of Sumatra (1974, Columbia) • Everything You Know Is Wrong (1974, Columbia) • ''In the Next World, You're on Your Own'' (1975, Columbia) • Forward Into the Past (1976, Columbia) Compilation, includes 1969 singles • Just Folks . . . A Firesign Chat (1977, Butterfly Records) • Nick Danger: The Case of the Missing Shoe (1979, Rhino Records EP) • Fighting Clowns (1980, Rhino) • ''Lawyer's Hospital'' (1982, Rhino) • ''Shakespeare's Lost Comedie (1982, Rhino) (re-released 2001 in expanded edition as Anythynge You Want To'') • The Three Faces of Al (1984, Rhino, without David Ossman) • Eat or Be Eaten (1985, Mercury Records, without David Ossman) • Shoes for Industry: The Best of the Firesign Theatre (1993, Sony Records) • ''Back From the Shadows: The Firesign Theatre's 25th Anniversary Reunion Tour'' (1994, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab) • Pink Hotel Burns Down (1998, LodeStone Media) • Give Me Immortality or Give Me Death (1998, Rhino) ''We're Doomed'' trilogy • Boom Dot Bust (1999, Rhino) ''We're Doomed'' trilogy • Bride of Firesign (2001, Rhino) ''We're Doomed'' trilogy • Radio Now Live (2001, Whirlwind Media) • Papoon for President (2002, Laugh.Com) • All Things Firesign (2003, Artemis Records) Solo albums • TV or Not TV (1973, Columbia) Proctor and Bergman • How Time Flys (1973, Columbia) Written and co-directed by Ossman, including all Firesign members plus a cast of guest stars • Roller Maidens From Outer Space (1974, Epic Records) Written and directed by Austin, including all Firesign members plus a cast of extras • What This Country Needs (1975, Columbia) Proctor and Bergman live, based on material from TV or Not TV • Give Us a Break (1978, Mercury Records) Proctor and Bergman • Nick Danger: The Daily Feed Tapes (1988-1990, Austin) • Down Under Danger (1994, Sparks Media) a solo cassette by Austin • ''David Ossman's Time Capsules'' (1996, Otherworld Media) a solo cassette by Ossman • ''George Tirebiter's Radio Follies'' (1997, Twin Cities Radio Theatre Workshop) a solo cassette by Ossman Films • Zachariah (co-written by Firesign Theatre) (92 min., 1971) Comedy western, inspired by the Hermann Hesse novel Siddhartha • Martian Space Party (Firesign Theatre with Campoon workers) (27 min., 1972) • Love is Hard to Get (Peter Bergman) (26 min., 1973) • ''Let's Visit the World of the Future (44 min., 1973) based on characters from I Think We're All Bozos on This Bus'', directed by Ivan Stang • Six Dreams (Peter Bergman - executive producer, Phil Proctor) (13 min., 1976) • Tunnel Vision (featuring Phil Proctor) (70 min., 1976) • Everything You Know is Wrong (40 min., 1978) lip-synch to the album • TV or Not TV (33 min., 1978) based on the Proctor and Bergman album • Americathon (86 min., 1979) based on a sketch created by Proctor and Bergman • J-Men Forever (75 min., 1979) Proctor and Bergman; compilation of Republic Science Fiction serial clips with new dialogue overdubbed • The Madhouse of Dr. Fear (60 min., 1979) • Nick Danger in The Case of the Missing Yolk (60 min., 1983) Originally an Interactive Video, Pacific Arts PAVR-527; broadcast on the USA Network series Night Flight • Eat or be Eaten (30 min., 1985) Austin, Bergman, and Proctor, RCA Columbia 60566 • Hot Shorts (73 min., 1985) Austin, Bergman, and Proctor, RCA Columbia 60435 • ''Back From the Shadows: The Firesign Theatre's 25th Anniversary Reunion Show'' (1994) • Firesign Theatre Weirdly Cool DVD Movie (2001) • Just Folks: Live at the Roxy (2018), S'More Entertainment; live performances (1974-1981) Books Straight Arrow Press, Rolling Stones book publishing arm, published two books authored by the Firesign Theatre: ''The Firesign Theatre's Big Book of Plays, and The Firesign Theatre's Big Mystery Joke Book''. These feature background information, satirical introductions and parodic histories, as well as transcripts from their first seven albums. • Exorcism In Your Daily Life: The Psychedelic Firesign Theatre at the Magic Mushroom. 1967 • Profiles in Barbecue Sauce: The Psychedelic Firesign Theatre On Stage. 1970 • ''The Firesign Theatre's Big Book Of Plays''. San Francisco: Straight Arrow, 1972. • ''The Firesign Theatre's Big Mystery Joke Book''. San Francisco: Straight Arrow, 1974. • The Apocalypse Papers, a Fiction by The Firesign Theatre. Topeka: Apocalypse Press, 1976. Limited edition, 500 copies • ''George Tirebiter's Radiodaze'' (1989 Sparks Media) a solo cassette by Ossman • The George Tirebiter Story Chapter 1: Another Christmas Carol (1989, Sparks Media) by Ossman • The George Tirebiter Story Pt.2 Mexican Overdrive / Radiodaze (1989 Company One) by Ossman • The George Tirebiter Story Pt.3 The Ronald Reagan Murder Case (1990 Midwest Radio Theatre Workshop) by Ossman • Tales Of The Old Detective And Other Big Fat Lies (1995) by Austin • The Ronald Reagan Murder Case: A George Tirebiter Mystery by Ossman. (Albany: BearManor Media) (2006) • ''Dr. Firesign's Follies: Radio, Comedy, Mystery, History'' by Ossman. (Albany: BearManor Media) (2008) • Marching to Shibboleth (Download Edition, firesigntheatre.com) reproduces both of Firesign's Big Books, originally published in 1972 and 1974 by Straight Arrow; the original paperback edition (BearManor Media) is out of print • ''Dr. Firesign's Perpetual Almanack 1970-1981 (PDF download, firesigntheatre.com) features Firesign’s long out-of-print self-publications: The Mixville Rocket & Sun-Duck, The Apocalypse Papers, The Young Tom Edison Club’s Edison Electric Journal & Firesign Times, and Bozobook; plus the Firesign sections from Crawdaddy!'' magazine. Games • In 1983 Mattel released two Intellivision video games with Intellivoice: Bomb Squad, with Proctor as the voice of Frank and Bergman as the voice of Boris; and B-17 Bomber, with Proctor as the voice of the Pilot and Austin as the Bombardier. • In 1996, a computer game written by Bergman, Pyst, a parody of the game Myst, was released by Parroty Interactive. ==See also==