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Think I Already Know, But...


JSngry

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...has there ever been a OAC/etc, you know, budget repacking of original albums for The Firesign Theatre?

I could really use that for their first four or so or more, but definitely those first four LPs. But I see no evidence of any such thing ever having been made, which means that it never has been, correct?

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The individual albums came out on low-cost CD's.  I got them all for under $5 each.  Amazon has three of the four for $7.98 with free Prime Shipping (Waiting on the Electrician, How Can You Be in Two Places, I Think We're All Bozos). Only Don't Crush That Dwarf is pricey, and that one is cheap on importcds.com and on discogs.   Or you can get Shoes for Industry, a 153-minute 2-CD "best of" (includes the entire 28 minute Nick Danger), for under $10.  There's a lot of cheap used copies of all of these cd's around on ebay and discogs.   The most essential one is "How Can You Be In Two Places at Once", but all have moments of brilliance.

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Thanks for the link! They have to be the easiest people in the world to interview. Ask them one question, and they go on for fifteen minutes.

They gave a good history of how they got together, and created some of the best humor albums of all time. It even explained the meaning of the title of "Don't Crush That Dwarf; Hand Me the Pliers".

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I've had the LPs for decades, listened to them from what seemed like every angle, figured that was that, but for some random reason recently want to go back and check out the layering of cadeces. Did not want to have to fuck with the LPs again, so figured, hell, it's Columbia, there will be some kind of Original Albums Doololly Package, but....no.

 That seems wrong.

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43 minutes ago, JSngry said:

I've had the LPs for decades, listened to them from what seemed like every angle, figured that was that, but for some random reason recently want to go back and check out the layering of cadeces. Did not want to have to fuck with the LPs again, so figured, hell, it's Columbia, there will be some kind of Original Albums Doololly Package, but....no.

 That seems wrong.

OAC series has been inactive for a couple years.  WEA's OAS series has been inactive for even longer.   There were still lots of viable packages that could be done for both.

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41 minutes ago, sgcim said:

Thanks for the link! They have to be the easiest people in the world to interview. Ask them one question, and they go on for fifteen minutes.

They gave a good history of how they got together, and created some of the best humor albums of all time. It even explained the meaning of the title of "Don't Crush That Dwarf; Hand Me the Pliers".

Found this recently, from 2016, and I gotta wonder if Proctor needs a partner to talk in an interveiw, becuase, how do I say this...the guy RAMBLES more than a little. Believe me, I find myself rambling more as I get older (and always kinds did anyway...) but this guy...he had one one hour block to get through the origins on the group and look wha that turned into...

Still, the work speaks for itself, and it's never boring (at least the first time told)...

No matter, I have heroes, and Firesign Is one of them...more than some musicians, actually. Vision out the ass, brilliantly executed.

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51 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Found this recently, from 2016, and I gotta wonder if Proctor needs a partner to talk in an interveiw, becuase, how do I say this...the guy RAMBLES more than a little. Believe me, I find myself rambling more as I get older (and always kinds did anyway...) but this guy...he had one one hour block to get through the origins on the group and look wha that turned into...

Still, the work speaks for itself, and it's never boring (at least the first time told)...

No matter, I have heroes, and Firesign Is one of them...more than some musicians, actually. Vision out the ass, brilliantly executed.

One time, all four of them were on the David Susskind Show. I don't think they let Susskind say a word. They just improvised and free-associated for their entire segment- passing it back and forth at the speed of light. Susskind just sat there flabbergasted. I was literally pissing my pants!

Not a day goes by when I don't think of something of theirs' from the first three or four albums. Even when I was teaching, I'd strum my guitar, and lead the kids in a sing-a-long:

"This land has lots of houses,

This land has lots of mouses;

And pussycats to eat them when the sun goes down". The kids would sing along

When I made the absurd suggestion that we re-name the HS, Com*** Martyrs High School (I got banned from a forum for using that full name) , I just got a bunch of blank stares from my fellow educators...

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Of course, none of this really matters as much as it does if the material is not geniusfunny to begin with, but I think that Don't Crush and Bozos are high-marks not just in terms of comedy/humor, but of recording, period. The whole "studio as an instrument" thing, they layering of the mixing is just phenomenally intricate, creative, and perfectly executed. And none of it digitally on graphs with waveforms and shit, all analog, when bounding tracks was hi-tech.To me, spicing seems like some sort of pact with the devil, I swear. And I grew up watching people kinda do it halfway good. Waveforms, hell, that's actually easy. But splicing is sorcery!

Guess I'll have to bite the bullet and make the shelf space for the single CDs. I really want to revisit the cadences of the speech(es). I did not know taht Proctor had such an extensive background in theater/musical theater pre-Firesign, but that makes sense, thinking about it. Comedy is rhythm, hell, everything is rhythm, so better understand the cadences, better understand the rhythm, better understand the life, better understand....etc.

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19 hours ago, JSngry said:

Of course, none of this really matters as much as it does if the material is not geniusfunny to begin with, but I think that Don't Crush and Bozos are high-marks not just in terms of comedy/humor, but of recording, period. The whole "studio as an instrument" thing, they layering of the mixing is just phenomenally intricate, creative, and perfectly executed. And none of it digitally on graphs with waveforms and shit, all analog, when bounding tracks was hi-tech.To me, spicing seems like some sort of pact with the devil, I swear. And I grew up watching people kinda do it halfway good. Waveforms, hell, that's actually easy. But splicing is sorcery!

Guess I'll have to bite the bullet and make the shelf space for the single CDs. I really want to revisit the cadences of the speech(es). I did not know taht Proctor had such an extensive background in theater/musical theater pre-Firesign, but that makes sense, thinking about it. Comedy is rhythm, hell, everything is rhythm, so better understand the cadences, better understand the rhythm, better understand the life, better understand....etc.

Maybe it's no coincidence that the producer of DCTDHMTP, and ITWABOTB, was sound engineer Bill Driml (along w.The FST), known for the production of the 1968 Monk album, "Monk's Blues". He also did sound engineering on most of the other things FST did in the 70s, so he was probably considered important to their recorded work.

"Don't Crush That Dwarf"  was also their first album to use 16 Track recording, so Driml probably helped out with that.J.W. Guercio is also listed as a producer on the record, but he just did a short segment on side two.The album is a production/comedy masterpiece that had sound engineering that was superior to their first two albums

Proctor also mentions that he did have musical training (he played the violin), and Austin is listed as playing guitar on one of their albums. Proctor can't recall the name of the producer at Columbia who saved them from being dropped by the record company (just calling him John?), but it must have been John Hammond he was thinking of, who along with Guercio, convinced Columbia to retain them.

"I Think We're all Bozos On This Bus" might prove to be their most prophetic utterance of all...

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1 hour ago, sgcim said:

Proctor can't recall the name of the producer at Columbia who saved them from being dropped by the record company (just calling him John?), but it must have been John Hammond he was thinking of, who along with Guercio, convinced Columbia to retain them.

Not Hammond, it waa whoever was in charge of the Spoken Arts division of Columbia at the time. The deal was that as Spoken Arts performers, they would get a slightly smaller royalty, but have unlimited/unbilled studio time. Well HEY!

Those comedy On Vinyl podcasts are just incredibly rambling and repetitive, but there's so much good information in there. Proctor doesn't have memory problems at all, even if he does seem to have zero ability to filter or condense those memories.

Oh well!

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3 hours ago, JSngry said:

Not Hammond, it waa whoever was in charge of the Spoken Arts division of Columbia at the time. The deal was that as Spoken Arts performers, they would get a slightly smaller royalty, but have unlimited/unbilled studio time. Well HEY!

Those comedy On Vinyl podcasts are just incredibly rambling and repetitive, but there's so much good information in there. Proctor doesn't have memory problems at all, even if he does seem to have zero ability to filter or condense those memories.

Oh well!

The only other John who was a producer at Columbia that I can think of was John Simon, but he might have quit to produce the first BS&T album under the advice of Al Kooper.

If you compare the first and second BS&T albums, you can hear what a fine producer Simon was. The brass on the fast part of "God Bless the Child" is simply pitiful. Bobby Colomby must have had a tin ear.

4 hours ago, felser said:

"How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all" might, also...

Yeah, that seems to describe someone we all know...

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