Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Strange, inexplicable genius, January 22, 2002
The closest analogy I can think of with listening to Firesign Theatre is catching a radio broadcast from a parallel universe. Their weird, layered tales of sound and fury project the feeling of being allowed a glimpse into another world, another culture, a warped version of our own with people that operate under alien logic and a completely different perception. This is a world where everything is normal to the inhabitants but foreign and nearly incomprehensible to an external eavesdropper - sort of like a shipwrecked Englishman trying to comprehend the language and rituals of the tribesmen on the south pacific island he's been stranded on.Firesign Theatre often goes beyond simple satire or parody and into a state difficult to define. A brilliantly constructed alternate reality is the best way I can describe it. And it is brilliant. The universe may be stranger than we CAN imagine, but if anyone can imagine that strangeness, it's the people behind Don't Crush that Dwarf - thinking this original doesn't need any revelatory insights into the human condition attached to it - though you may stumble upon a few anyway. Don't listen to this while attempting to derive philosophical truths on a level of profundity equal with Shakespeare's plays. Just sit back and enjoy the mind-bending ride. This stuff is better than acid.
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29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Comedy Gold Standard, September 12, 2002
The magic that was and is the Firesign Theatre really came into its own in a very public way with this, their third studio production. Now that it's available on CD for the first time since 1987, perhaps the time has come for a new generation of humor potential."Don't Crush That Dwarf" is unusual for comedy, in that, rather than focusing on live monologues or studio gags, it's a unified concept album that encompasses the full space of an album (both sides of the original vinyl) and comes together more like a novel than a joke. The story that unifies the piece features George Leroy Tirebiter, who is handed some food physically THROUGH his TV and finds himself involved in an unfolding story of a life in hell. Fans disagree on what the story means. Firesign aficionado Fred Wiebel insists Tirebiter has sold his soul to the media and now has to live a life of constant sellouts just to keep his head up. Others have suggested that Tirebiter is watching his own wasted life flash before his eyes, or that Tirebiter is an old actor who has to watch his painful old movies time and again. Not surprisingly, the boys themselves have remained largely silent on the issue. The album features a non-linear story in which we observe our hero as an idealistic youth, an embittered soldier, a middle-aged bachelor, and an old recluse, all out of sequence. The chosen format allows us to see how each part of his past plays into his current identity. More than mere comedy, this album becomes an incisive examination of what makes a human being, and what damns him in the end. But don't take this to mean the album isn't funny. Its deadpan delivery and biting wit give it a depth and breadth of humor unmatched in most of modern comedy. The Firesign Theatre themselves were doomed never again to create something of this caliber, but the insights and groundbreaking unity of the album are an unmistakable influence on a well-known rival troupe who were first finding their legs about the time this album came out, Monty Python. I usually refrain from using superlatives because of the risk of contradiction. Who says something is the best? What scale? When? But I have to where it comes to this album. Truly seminal in late Twentieth Century humor, groundbreaking in its use of media, shockingly literary in its humor, "Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers" is easily the best recorded comedy ever. Don't hesitate-get this album NOW, before you spend another minute in unwilling ignorance.
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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Still the funniest, February 29, 2004
A few millenia ago, when I was a college freshman, my roommate would mumble to himself something about "Eat it Raw....Raw, raw, raw, that's the spirits..." Then, later in that year, I heard this album, then an LP. It caught me instantly. So I got all the other Firesign albums, thinking they'd gone a little downhill with "We're All Bozos..." which I also now have on CD...(Just an aside: a comedy act that followed Firesign Theatre consisted of two guys with their constant adolescent reference to drugs. As Amazon.com probably has their stuff on CD too I won't specify here who they are. But they led to a virtual generation gap about two years after these Firesign albums were released: the 18 year olds thinking this duo was superior. To the 20 year olds--among them me at the time--Firesign was obviously superior! Hail (Groucho) Marx and (John) Lennon!) Amazing is that when one rarely encounters a Firesign fan, we can spout off quotes from largely this CD--as if we'd just heard them five minutes ago. I was at the Firesign show in Washington in the 90s, a birthday gift from my wife who wasn't familiar with Firesign--and she was amazed by how much the audience shouted out Firesign's lines before they did! What does one call this humor? Someone called it "layered." Yeah, I guess that'll do. Whatever, it's spectacular. I suspect while lying on my deathbed some day, I'll be chuckling and spouting lines from here..."Right, Jack. So far a complete broken set of kellet bars for Mrs. P's new home..." And on, and on, and on. Oh, and, even after all these years, people point out the sometime esoteric sources for the lines Firesign uses. Amazing. Like "Star Trek" and "The Outer Limits," I have a weakness for the originals (despite, in the case of those series, their inferior effects and sets.) Same goes with Firesign. I try to get into their newer stuff--have several on CD as I couldn't resist. But the earlier displays of their talent are overwhelming with this still the best. The script goes from one "subject" to the next with extremely limited connections between them. But, despite seeming incongruities, somehow it all makes "sense," as much sense as can be made of it all. (I tried to put this one on a few minutes ago. But my wife, who's working on taxes, was distracted. I guess I'll have to go for a ride to listen to this in the car. Then I can distract her with more quotes....) Firesign Theatre? They're irresistible. And this is one of the funniest CDs ever produced.
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by The Firesign Theatre 
