The new Firesign Theatre album has definitely reached a verifiable state
of actuality. Proctor, Ossman, Austin and Bergman have written now for
about 20 days and have therefore accumulated enough pages of script to
go into the studio just as soon as the contract is signed with
Rhino.
According to Frank (the Country Gentleman) Stewart, our lawyer, signing
is imminent. Frank reports as well that
Eagle Products, in Kansas City,
is once again to market their stunningly crude line of
Bearwhiz T-shirts
and so are sending us large amounts of money. We are happy for this, and
we urge you to buy pictures of bears urinating on motorcycles, as a kind
of bizarre ritual whose deeper meanings have their explanations in the
works of Claude Levi-Strauss.
As you can imagine, the experience of having the
Firesign Theatre
itself
in a room,
facing its full self for 6 or 7 hours every day for 20
days, spread from November until (as of now) late January - you can
imagine that this experience is somewhat ... hmmmmm. Metaphorical? Could
be, could be .... I was right about the comet. (But I've forgotten why,
exactly.) In other words, the whole experience has been even more
amazing than I imagined it might be. And when I was imagining, there was
no reason to believe that it would ever happen, for any reason, so many
bridges were burning behind and around us.
Now here's the deal. The piece we're working on - still untitled as
of this moment - is the real thing, this much I can tell you. It's an
actual Firesign Theatre classic album. It's got all
four people working on
something that contains no old material (although a few old favorite
characters show up) and is a completely new story written from the
ground up. It is certainly Millennial:
| BEBOP: |
We've got a developing chase situation out on the Tribulation
Highway. Let's go to Happy Pandit in News Chopper One ... |
| HAPPY: |
We knew it was
going to be a hell of a rush out here through the last hours, but what's
going on down below isn't going to make it any better. Evidently a big
red convertible came right out of the sea and is going the wrong way -
Against the Arrow of Time - and she's inbound, Bebop, she's inbound! |
| BEBOP: |
Madre de dios! Is it a
babe for sure? |
| HAPPY: |
Either that or a clown
with a lot of red hair. She's weaving and drinking out of a Gold Cup ...
hold on ... the Highway Patrol says she's drinking a Bloody Mary ... or
wait a minute, could be the Blood of Martyrs ... |
Here's a letter delivered to your illustrious Freditor from
