Firesign

The Electromagnetic History of Everything as Told on Nine Comedy Albums

Author: Jeremy Braddock

Paperback

New

$42.40

Or pay later with

Free 30 day returns Secure transaction

Check delivery options

Paperback

PRODUCT INFORMATION

Description

A cultural clearinghouse of the American 1960s and '70s told through the story of the period's most important forgotten comedy group.

This expansive book reclaims the Firesign Theatre (hazily remembered as a comedy act for stoners) as critically engaged artists working in the heart of the culture industry at a time of massive social and technological change. At the intersection of popular music, sound and media studies, cultural history, and avant-garde literature, Jeremy Braddock explores how this inventive group made the lowbrow comedy album a medium for registering the contradictions and collapse of the counterculture, and traces their legacies in hip-hop turntablism, computer hacking, and participatory fan culture.

He deploys a vast range of material sources, drawing on numerous interviews and writing in tune with the group's obsessive and ludic reflections—on multitrack recording, radio, television, cinema, early artificial intelligence, and more—to focus on Firesign's work in Los Angeles from 1967 to 1975. This ebullient act of media archaeology reveals Firesign Theatre as authors of a comic utopian pessimism that will inspire twenty-first-century recording arts and urge us to engage the massive technological changes of our own era.

Critic Reviews

"A more compelling book of this kind could hardly be imaginable." Los Angeles Review of Books
"Jeremy Braddock has done absolutely astonishing work in putting together this history of the group, how it leveraged the technology of the moment in real time (as it was released), and all the obscure references and connections in it from history, current affairs, and pop culture. An enormous achievement." David Wineberg's "The Straight Dope"
"Tremendously informative and enjoyable." Mindplex Magazine

"A significant addition to the literature of the period often called the Long Sixties. . . . From Braddock’s discussion of the troupe’s influences and personal histories to the clever and erudite analysis of the group’s work, his exploration of the Firesign Theater is certainly well worth the wait."

CounterPunch
". . . perceptive and well grounded. Braddock delivers his analysis with clarity, precision, and, as the title suggests, at least a dose of humour." Popular Music
"This book argues for Firesign’s spot in the canon of classic comedy troupes and album-makers, if only for how it also used technology creatively, brought back Surrealism, and briefly made literate comedy popular." Vulture

About the Author

Jeremy Braddock teaches literature, media, and sound studies at Cornell University and is author of Collecting as Modernist Practice, which was awarded the Modernist Studies Association Book Prize.