Customer Reviews

Everything You Know Is Wrong

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In my opinion, this album is by far the finest that Firesign Theatre have produced in their long and illustrious career. As far as I am aware, it has never been released on CD in the US, and this import might be the one shot anyone in the US has of owning this essential album. While they have produced other albums that are extraordinarily funny--such as DON'T TOUCH THAT DWARF, HAND ME THE PLIERS and HOW CAN YOU BE IN TWO PLACES AT ONCE WHEN YOU ARE NOWHERE AT ALL? (aka MARX/LENNON)--in EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG the guys utterly transcended themselves to create the finest comedy album ever released.

The guys were never more creative than they were on this album. From the first seconds of the album, with the scratchy refrains of Strauss's ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA playing over "Happy" Harry Cox's introduction to his latest work, until the very end as everyone marches into the crater created by a meteor (and our missed opportunity at "Contact," in the Carl Sagan sense), this is a flat out laugh riot, as well as a prescient commentary on some of the flakier aspects of the 1970s. It could also be viewed as a critique of New Age thought (or Nude Age, in Firesign parlance). Harry informs us that there are very, very many things that we do not know: Dogs came from Outer Space! Indians can be in two places at once! Our forefathers used drugs! And he has proof! Some of the funniest parts of the album occur when he plays tapes for his fellow seekers (as he puts it at the beginning, "There's a seeker born every minute"). For instance, a tape recording of the Founding Fathers doing drugs (i.e., smoking hemp), which inspires one of them to cry out, "Let's have a revolution!" Mention is also made of Benjamin Franklin, "The only president of the United States, who was never president of the United States." We then manage to hear a very, very rare recording of "Uncle Tom" returning home after the Civil War. Someone tells him, "Uncle Tom, you're free!" To which he replies, "No I'm not. I's expensive."

The album contains an extended parody of both New Age thought and the stunts of Evel Knevel, and the way they anticipate much of the preoccupations of the eighties and nineties in paranormal phenomena is almost creepy. The album ends up not only being funny, but prophetic, too.

There is only one truly awful moment on the album. Harry, in the last seconds of the album, asks if the events he is witnessing is a new beginning, only to answer the question himself, "No . . . it's the end." The only criticism of this marvelous album is that it has to end at all.

Anyone who has enjoyed any of the Firesign Theatre albums absolutely must acquire this one. Anyone unfamiliar with the group could find absolutely no better place to start enjoying their own bizarre form of comedy than with this album. Hopefully, this album will never be out of print again.

I owned a copy of this LP as a kid; the wordplay and the beer commercial parody alone were enough to keep me and my friends howling with laughter whenever we'd listen.

The Firesign Theatre represents a form of entertainment that has become something of a lost art: what used to be referred to as "theater of the mind". Much like radio plays, Firesign Theatre albums tell a story through characters and dramatization, with each listener's imagination providing the visuals. This kind of experience is hard to beat. (I got to see the Everything You Know Is Wrong video a couple of years ago and was actually a little disappointed by it; the visuals in my head were far more intriguing.)

The review posted below mentions most of the highlights on this album, though my favorite part (other than the opening: "Dogs flew spaceships! The Aztecs invented the vacation! Men and women are the same sex! Our forefathers took drugs! Yes! That's right! Everything you know is WRONG!") was always the Bear Whiz Beer commercial, which perfectly parodied the Olympia Beer commercials of the day (1973).

I've always been a little surprised that Sony didn't include this album when they reissued some of the Firesign Theatre catalog on CD a few years ago. But, leave it to a small label like Laugh.com to step in and fill the void. I'm not sure why this disc is listed as an import, though; the label's fulfillment center is in California. Still worth picking up, though. This will be my first Firesign Theatre CD purchase, that's for sure.

This title is one of the best of the Firesign Theatre's canon... and that's saying a lot. It is a satire of New Age beliefs (or what were "New" back in 1974) which, remarkably, has aged very little. It's almost as if the album was so prophetic (as well as hilarious) that it's taken until now for everyone else to catch up to the humor. The troupe - David Ossman, Peter Bergman, Philip Proctor, and Philip Austin - all perform several roles a piece (though the lead character of Dr. "Happy" Harry Cox is handled by Austin) and do so remarkably. As with all Firesign efforts, laugh lines reveal themselves with every new listen, though the surrealism of "Don't Crush That Dwarf" and "How Can You Be..." are dialed down a bit, making this somewhat more accessible to neophytes. If you've never heard of the Firesign Theatre, just imagine the "head" (read: drug) humor of the '60s and '70s being pushed through the minds of four highly educated wits with enormous refence levels and then being performed by an Old Time "Golden Age of Radio" cast and you get a fair idea of what you're in for. The themes of power and TV pop up often in their work (especially one's relation to the other) and their media satires are devastating. And, above all else, they're really, really funny. Robin Williams, George Carlin, Chevy Chase, & John Goodman are fans, if that helps! Brainy, hilarious, and formerly out of print for over a decade, so grab a copy now before it goes into moratorium again!

Of all the Firesign Theater's essential recordings, "Everything You Know" is the most accessible. All the signature elements are here: savage wordplay, pitiless skewering of pop culture and political icons, and the pitch-perfect comic timing of the performances.

The TV shows and films within the radioplay are pure genius. The "Happy Hour News" with Pat Hat's interview of motorcycle daredemon Rebus Caneebus (hey, honey, y'ever heard of me?) plays like this evening's local news; the travelogue "The Golden Hind" features a weird alien encounter in the Arizona desert; and the "Army Training Film" with Genl. Curtis Goatheart (they think he is insane - yet he outranks them. His option: command!) is at once hilarious and as chilling as a Donald Rumsfeld press conference.

It sounds heavy, although it's anything but. The action jumps from scene to scene at breakneck speed, and the layers of subtext aren't always apparent - which is why the Firesign Theater's miniature epics demand repeated listenings. It's as absurd as Monty Python, as witty as Oscar Wilde, and as playful as James Joyce.

The story and presentation of "Everything You Know" is a bit more linear than Firesign classics like "Don't Crush That Dwarf" and "Waiting for the Electrician", making it an excellent introduction to Firesign's rich body of comic work. Absolutely essential listening!

The word "prescient" used here is too appropriate. I, too, played the grooves out of the LP when I was in college. (It scared me to death - in a good way - the first time I listened to it.) When I heard, some 20 years later, of the castrating, Nike clad desert cultists who committed suicide in an attempt to rendezvous with an approaching comet, my first thought was of this album. "I was right about the comet!" Happy "Harry" Cox exclaims - and he was. I should also note that there was an actual model for this. My college roommate played for me an album by some guy speaking in a soft, Arkansas drawl, about spaceships and comets and other such stuff. Whether it was a direct model for this album is not certain, but it was certainly a real-world precedent. They come, they go, but this album is one for the ages. One absolutely brilliant piece of work.

If I could give 4.5 stars, or maybe 5 for content and 1 for packaging, I would.

This is their best record. Not quite as weird and dense as "Don't Crush That Dwarf..." (their other great recording), but more consistently funny.

The CD itself is fine, and I'm very happy it's out on CD, but it would've been nice if they'd spent a little money on a booklet that reproduces the album cover art better. It'd be nice also if they'd indexed it better, splitting the audio into 15-20 smaller tracks, instead of just two tracks, one per side of the old LP.

This 1974 outing predicted the whole UFO / Roswell interest that reached it's peak 20 years later on TV and many of the new-age concepts now considered common place. But it's the timing of the jokes, the expert delivery and the well fleshed out characters that make this one of the Firesign's best. A coherent, honestly conceived work that inspires repeated listenings and endless quoting.

Literal minded without being flat footed, this might be my favorite Firesign. Maybe because it hearkens back to the New Age obsessions of the early '70s: Carlos Castaneda, Erich Von D, Uri Gellar. Plus Evel Knievel, Kahoutek, and nudist trailer park managers. (Pardon my spellings) My dad had a bedside table covered with this sort of stuff and the Firesigns send it up with long knives and lucid poetry. It's plenty dense and a marvel of flow, if not as deeply layered as other efforts. But then, I don't quite think "Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers" is the greatest comedy album of all time, just the greatest comedy album title of all time. This is one of their most accessible efforts. I'd be quicker to recommend it over others because, let's face it, their rarefied brand of whimsy is incomprehensible to many. So "Don't feel alone here in the New Age because there's a seeker born every minute".

Like many other reviewers, I owned an LP version of Everything you Know is Wrong. I memorized it, listening to it under the influence of various substances. Even today, the words can activate neuro-receptors deep in a 54 year old brain and produce a mild buzz. And it's multi-leveled humor is still so relevant and ironic today. I am a fan of Whitley Strieber's Dreamland netcasts, but he sounds so much like Happy Harry Cox broadcasting from the nudist trailer court in 1974 that I have to laugh.

This is the Rodney Dangerfield of Firesign Theatre albums--it don't get no respect. If you were to ask any ten FST fans to list the group's best albums, it's unlikely that any of them would include "Everything You Know is Wrong." Yet, to my mind, it's the one that has held up the best over time. With the possible exception of some thinly-veiled references to Carlos Castaneda's "Don Juan" books, there is nothing here that isn't as relevant or funny now as it was when the album was released.

As I've mentioned in other reviews of the FST, if you're not already a fan of this surrealist comedy group, nothing I can say here will convince you to listen to this disc. On the other hand, if you are a Firesign Freak who hasn't given this underrated effort its due, I urge you to listen to it again. You might be surprised.