Firesign Theatre back, skewering pop culture

By Andy Seiler
USA TODAY

For a comedy troupe associated with a long-past era, the Firesign Theatre sure is keeping a high profile:

• The quartet's third and latest compact disc for Rhino, "The Bride of Firesign," has been nominated for a Grammy (the show airs Wednesday). It's the group's second nomination.
• Sony Legacy has re-released Firesign's first four albums, including mind-meltingly titled masterpieces "How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All" and "Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers."
• Their TV special "Weirdly Cool," spotlighting some of their best bits, has become a PBS fund-raising mainstay. They are planning another "bizarre satire" for PBS, "Everything You Know Is Wrong" (a concept they have explored before), featuring Bigfoot sightings, Loch Ness monsters and religious cults.
• They are again doing live radio, where they started, with a monthly show on the newly launched XM digital satellite radio.

And that's just the beginning, as a cursory glance at their elaborate firesigntheatre.com Web site reveals.

Not bad for a countercultural phenomenon formed in 1966 and once primarily listened to in the smoke-filled dorm rooms of the early 1970s.

"Ten years ago, if you had wanted to buy something by Firesign Theatre, there would have one album available," says Phil Austin, 60, who's joined by David Ossman, Peter Bergman and Phil Proctor. "Today, we've got something like 20 pieces of product on the Internet or Tower Records or Blockbuster. This is a pretty odd and interesting situation for people in their 60s."

Firesign is still skewering the latest in pop. Their previous album was prophetically entitled "Boom Dot Bust." The new CD features a company that sells sex-symbol robots, including a Britney Playborg and an Anna Nicole model that contains every body part but the heart.

"Audio books have taken to the road," explains Proctor, 61, a busy voice actor for everything from the "Dr. Dolittle" movies to TV's "Rug-rats." "And nowadays, people want to listen to recorded material when they're driving around rather than listening to the same old drivel on the radio all the time."

Firesign never officially broke up but disappeared for almost a decade during the Reagan-Bush era. The troupe didn't fit in and nobody would take a chance on them.

"Two things have happened to change that," Ossman says, joking that he doesn't know what one of them is. "The other is that there is once again a Nixonian, LBJ-esque smell out there. I know we deserve this. I just hope it stays alive for a while. Writers need to have their work in print."