In Nick Danger:The Case of the Missing Yolk, The Firesign Theatre construct a Chinese box puzzle of parallel universes. Hillbillies, mortgaged to the hilt in order to acquire their home of the future, sit stupefied in front of the TV while neo-noir detective, Nick Danger, uses his third eye to investigate the kidnapping of their adult children. Beneath a machine gun patter of bad puns, those yolks will inevitably be cracked and cracked again, The Firesign Theatre’s TV satire feels like what would happen if Marshall McLuhan had got his hands on the Marx Brothers.
The Firesign Theatre had their origins in live radio in LA in the mid 60’s, performing breathless skits for KPPC-FM and KPFK. Peter Bergman, who claims to have organized the first ever “love in” in Los Angeles in 1967, was (and is) the host of the popular show, Radio Free Oz. When the station recruited Philip Proctor and they hooked up with Phil Austin and David Ossman, the Firesign Theatre was born. Amongst the group’s first projects was a radio adaptation of Borges’ tale of a Kabalistic killing spree, Death and the Compass.
They took their name from their collective star sign but also as a knowing wink to NBC’s Fireside Theatre and FDR’s Fireside Chats. The Goons influenced stream of consciousness of The Firesign Theatre was to gain them a cult following and a discography that stretches to 28 releases.
An irreverent mixture of verbal slapstick, zany sound effects and silly voices, to the uninitiated Firesign’s work for radio can be little grating but as they draw you in to their world what makes them special, what makes this “zoo” unique, are the casually tossed asides about masturbating dentists, ego death and a brief soliloquy in which God takes up residence in an empty green room inside the head of one of the character’s dogs.
As Philip Proctor put it in an interview with Richard Metzger “First we seduced you into the clubhouse then you found yourself paying attention to the man behind the curtain.”
Beneath the pile ‘em high sell ‘em cheap approach to gag writing that will be familiar to fans of Airplane, there is a relentless deconstruction of the media itself. Fake ads jostle for space amongst sound effects and fragments of popular song, as the cast rush to speak over each other, speeding Yippie sympathizers, embellishing improvised comedic riffs on the hoof. Much of this ephemeral material had been thought lost until the tireless work of archivist Taylor Jessen brought original tapes to light. A number of these recordings are available at WFMU.
Originally made as an experiment in interactive television in 1983 by Pacific Arts, Nick Danger: Case of the Missing Yolk briefly doffs its hat to Steve Martin in Carl Reiner’s, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, that had hit cinemas the year before, however HYPERLINK "http://www.thrillingdetective.com/danger_n.html" Danger (played by Austin) had made many previous appearances in the Theatre’s work and had debuted on their 1968 record, How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All.
Pacific Arts was Michael Nesmith’s company, and it will come as no surprise to fans of Head that the former Monkee was a devotee. The Case of the Missing Yolk seems both of its time and incredibly timely. In 1983 the Jetsons’ future promised by the American dream was already being retrofitted with dystopian cynicism. Virtual reality (here the promise is incarnated in the form of interactive TV) can offer paradise but at what cost?
Instant wish fulfillment at the flick of the remote enables The Firesign Theatre to play with formats and genres, channel surfing from an ad for Old Blind, the duck coffee with an unfortunate side effect, to Lawyers Hospital, a daytime soap within a soap featuring chain smoking doctors. Elsewhere a ventriloquist’s dummy moonlights as a news reporter and ends up being taken hostage, an ad for Booby Chew promises breast enhancing chewing gum.
The comedy of The Firesign Theatre borders on the hypertextual. Dizzying layers of freely associated thought are disguised as throwaway frat boy humour. Tin foil sets and cheap video FX are deployed with gleeful abandon. Their amphetiminized delivery is often reminiscent of Robin Williams as Mork at his most manic, their infatuation with the nascent possibilities of tape as exuberant as the U.K’s Kenny Everett Video Show but The Firesign Theatre hinted at deeper, more rebarbative and satirical possibilities than either of the latter.
With 360 years between them the Firesign Theatre can easily lay claim to be “the longest surviving group of the classic rock era.” Their longevity making them more of a venerable institution than the Fireside Theatre, which they once so viciously lampooned. The Firesign Theatre continue to delight audiences and release books and DVDs, most recently Anythynge You Want To a complete documentation of their Shakespeare parodies.