Customer Reviews

How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All?

5 star:		(48)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

On 1969's "How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All?" the Firesigns really began to hit their stride. The content of this, their sophomore effort, is two side-length tracks encompassing stories involving war, changes, murder, and again, Beatles and Dylan references aplenty.
Side One begins with an ad for Ralph Spoilsport Motors, a slick auto salesman who manages to draw our hero, Babe, onto the lot through squealing brakes and honking horns. As Babe checks out his new car, which seems to be loaded with all sorts of amazing features, we hear Ralph in all his incarnations on the radio and the TV (very futuristic car); Babe goes for a spin on the Antelope Freeway, with its close-together mileage markers, sets his climate control, and soon finds himself on an African safari. The antics of those around him ("He's no fun, he fell right over!") culminate with his arrival at The Only Nice Motel in Town and some sort of American history lesson/pageant, at the end of which Babe finds himself inducted into the army and marching off to war. The various twists and turns of this bit have to be heard to be believed.
Side Two is the real classic here, though: "The Adventures of Nick Danger, Third Eye." It's a parody of hard-boiled murder-mystery tales from classic '40s radio and film noir, as Nick pursues his old girlfriend, Betty Jo Bialaski (but everyone knew her as Nancy) and the little crook Rocky Rococo ("My nostrils flared at the scent of his perfume: Pyramid Patchouli. There was only one joker in L.A. sensitive enough to wear *that* scent...and I had to find out who he was!") in search of an old tin ring from a Cracker Back jox (you read that right) and Nancy's mysterious husband.
On the whole, very funny and quotable, and much more coherent than "Waiting for the Electrician"...and again, long overdue for remastering.

The Firesign Theatre - - the subversive gods of improvised social satire and sketch humore : closest thing to Monty Python America ever had... with a bit of Lord Buckley and Lenny Bruce thrown in ! - - Oddly enough, when I first listen to their stuff (when I was 18 or so) I found it very '60s (no duhhhhhh...) but for some reason, listening now, their stuff seems surprizingly fresh and contemporary. Actually, WAITING FOR THE ELECTRICIAN OR SOMEONE LIKE HIM is my favorite FIRESIGN album - - but this album is definitely QUINTESSENTIAL MUST HAVE material because of... THE ADVENTURES OF NICK DANGER (!) obviously their most famous bit (and off the wall hillarious to anyone who grew up listening to the old radio detective shows... and even funny to those who didn't !) - - my favorite bit though is LONESOME AMERICAN CHOO CHOO... forget the humor, we're talking mind expanding social consciousness here... ! ! !

Possibly the most talented and well-read comedy troupes of all time, the Firesign Theatre was the only comedy group whose pricipal medium was record and radio. Thus, their routines don't suffer the limitations of being translated from visual to audial. How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere At All (1969) is a hilarious romp involving a used-car lot ("Ralph Spoilsport Motors"), a time-traveling automobile, a warped lesson in American history, an American president named Schicklgruber (Hitler's original surname), and Nick Danger: third eye (a Sam Spade/film noir satire). It's difficult to describe the album any better than that. This is an album that requires multiple listenings and a large amount knowledge of history and literature (James Joyce is liberally quoted). I had to listen to it four or five times before I caught and/or understood the thing. There is so much to enjoy on many different levels. Unfortunately, it is the sole original Firesign Theatre album available on CD. If you own a turntable, I highly recommend you search out other Firesign albums on vinyl, particularly Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him (1968); Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers (1970); Everything You Know is Wrong (1974); In the Next World, You're on Your Own (1975); and Forward into the Past: A Firesign Anthology (1976). Shoes for Industry!

Like sophisticated radio comedy with layers of dialogue piled on top of each other, you can listen to this album many times and hear jokes you missed previously. Very funny, very fast, good use of vocal impressions. Intelligent comedy, and unlike what the previous writer said, this is not dated. "Nick Danger, Third Eye" parodies detective films noir like "The Maltese Falcon". This album is heaven for the trivia hound.

Bottom line - if you haven't got a copy or your vinyl copy is worn out, get this CD. This is one of the best the guys ever did and is one of the most accessible for new fans.

Side One is the story of "Babe" who buys a car and promptly drives off into the Twilight Zone or something very close to it. Along the way, any number of political and cultural targets are skewered in the course of several deeply layered interconnected sketches.

Side Two is the great Radio Defective...er Detective, Nick Danger. Nick is a hard boiled Sam Spade type of character but with a little Timothy Leary mixed in. This story is told in narrative linear style (despite a little time travel) and is one of the easiest Firesign sketches for first-tiime listeners and yet it's deeply layered double and triple entendres will satisfy die-hard fans.

"What's all this about the layers?" you may be asking. One of the hallmarks of Firesign Theatre is the way in which they layered the dialog so that there are double, triple and deeper meanings in their choice of words. There is a plot which exists at a superficial level but underneath, the double meanings contain their own sub plots and running jokes. As if that were not enough, the writing is self-referential ("It had been snowing in Santa Barbara since the top of the page...") and there are connections between characters which cross from album to album. On this album, Nick Danger receives a wrong-number phone call and we hear half of a conversation for which the other half originated on another album. Another reference will be lost on CD but at one point Nick Danger listens to 10 seconds of "dialog" which is really a backward masked sound clip from the other side of the album - not just the other side but at precisely the same physical location!

All of these "references" and allusions may seem arcane to the uninitiated but then so do crossword puzzles and word searches to some folks. If rebuses (rebi?) and crossword puzzles have an audio equivalent, Firesign Theatre would be it. You like comedy? Radio theater? History? Puns? Puzzles? Fractured Fairy Tales? This album is for you.

True master of freakdom, The Firesign Theatre are still making new material. But I must say that this by far their best. The first track goes through bying a car to renting a hotel room and somehow appearing in the land of the Pharoahs in between. Track two is the great Nick Danger, third eye and is a slam on every hard boiled detective out there. If you haven't heard these guys before, this is the album to get and if you know these guys... why don't you already have this brilliant album?

This archetype of a generation was actually created by men who related better to an earlier time. Do you really want to experience Nick Danger fully?

Listen to The Smithsonian CD Collection of classic radio broadcasts, particularly the "Sam Spade" series. In addition to the Maltese Falcon told for radio in 40 minutes [just TRY to follow it], Dashiell Hammett wrote quite a few radio scripts for liquor money. There are whole phrases taken right from them without alteration - and you thought it was the marijuana!

Doesn't matter - the material was so durable that we still get it weekly today, courtesy of Garrison Keillor. We all still search for the answers to life's persistent questions, thank goodness.

At one point I either owned or had heard nearly every Firesign Theatre album, and while they were a highly erratic bunch of boys (many of their albums are simply awful), at their best they produced the greatest comedy albums in the history of recording. Of their three masterpieces, this is probably my least favorite. Even better are the currently out-of-print DON'T CRUSH THAT DWARF, HAND ME THE PLIERS (with the extraordinary SCHOOL DAYS sequence and multiple incarnations of George Tirebiter) and my own personal favorite, EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG! (in which we learn such important truths as "Dogs came from outer space!", "Our forefathers used drugs!", and, of course, "Everything you know is wrong!"). These are cultural treasures that someone ought to reissue as a service to humanity.

I first encountered the Firesign Theatre by accident late, very, very late, one winter's evening on the the legendary but sadly lamented KPPC-FM. Recently returned from an all-expenses-paid tour of South VietNam, courtesy of my favorite Uncle, I was well-acquainted with absurdity-in-reality, but I wasn't yet accustomed to the then-burgeoning FMradio scene. I had found KPPC quite by accident, spinning the dial to get away from the stations that were trying to treat FM as an adjunct to their powerful AM broadcast base. I loved the unprofessional approach by the DJ's and the programming fit my all-encompassing tastes, and the ads were definitely off the wall, at times bordering on not really achieving the goal of convincing the listener to actually purchase the products of the advertiser. It was all very loopy and spacey, with an appropriate sense of the absurd and irreverence, particularly since the station was broadcasting from the basement of a church! Just the antidote to a season in the insane asylum that was VIetNam in 1968, if not for the country itself, after a year in which Bobby and Martin Luther were murdered and a sinister character nicknamed Tricky had just been elevated from dog-to-be-kicked-around to president of the good old US of A!
One of the loonier ads on KPPC was for a local car dealer, well known in the LA area for his hard-sell approach (he was succeeded by an equally TV-zany type, still selling cars today). The commercials bordered on turning off buyers, with a nasally monotone voice delivering the "facts'" about various cars, along with glib references to financing and silly puns that made the whole presentation just wacky enough to keep the listener's attention. At times they ran on and on, and I was used to hearing them, then tuning them out. One night the commercial just ran on and on and on.....and on! I realized, finally, (I HAD been in VietNam for a year, after all!) that it wasn't a commercial. but was a recording by the very group of zanies who had done the commercials, now "recording artists" for Columbia Records. I was howling as the jokes, puns and pratfalls fell about my ears! I finally found out who was responsible for this madness, and ran out to buy their SECOND album (the one I was listening to, as it turned out), and the 1st a few days later. From that time on I followed their recording careers faithfully, devouring whole Don't Crush That Dwarf, the 3rd LP, and Dear Friends, a compilation of their early stuff, including the afore-described commercial and other zaniness. When they released Everything You Know Is Wrong, I terrorized my friends with lengthy recitations of parts of what I felt was their masterpiece (and still do!). If you haven't treated yourself to the wide dimensions the English language can be stretched to, you have done yourself an immense disservice! The Firesign Theatre's works require multiple listenings, and are not for the mentally challenged, nor for those whose vocabulary can be measured in 3-letter words or word-counts less than 4 digits! This is rich stuff, as fully challenging as Shakespeare, or Dylan, for that matter, and as rewarding, on repeated listenings. Run, do NOT walk, to your keyboard to order these CD's and dive in head-first. The word soup is invigorating!

"How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All" is beyond hilarious. Nothing can match this album in terms of verbal slapstick. I have many fond memories of this album and the 'other' fab four who created it. There's nothing fishy about it.