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Phil Austin
Philip Baine Austin (April 6, 1941 – June 18, 2015) was an American comedian and writer, best known as a member of the Firesign Theatre. Early life and education Austin was born in Denver, Colorado and later grew up in Fresno, California, attending Fresno High School. His mother was a drama teacher which influenced his upbringing as an actor. He attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine because it was the most distant point in the continental United States from Fresno. He also attended Fresno State College and UCLA, but did not graduate from any of them. He was in the UCLA Drama Department at the same time as another dropout, Ray Manzarek of The Doors. Career Radio In Los Angeles in the late 1960s, he was one of the first apprentices for the Center Theatre Group and worked on the staff of KPFK radio in Los Angeles. At KPFK he worked with other staffers David Ossman and Peter Bergman who hosted Radio Free Oz on that station. Along with Bergman's friend Phil Proctor, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Denver
Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the United States and the fifth most populous state capital. It is the principal city of the Denver–Aurora–Lakewood, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area and the first city of the Front Range Urban Corridor. Denver is located in the Western United States, in the South Platte River Valley on the western edge of the High Plains just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. Its downtown district is immediately east of the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte River, approximately east of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. It is named after James W. Denver, a governor of the Kansas Territory. It is nicknamed the ''Mile High City'' because its official elevation is exactly one mile () above sea level. The 105th meridian we ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
KPFK
KPFK (90.7 FM) is a listener-sponsored radio station based in North Hollywood, California, United States, which serves Southern California, and also streams 24 hours a day via the Internet. It was the second of five stations in the non-commercial, listener-sponsored Pacifica Foundation network. KPFK 90.7 FM began broadcasting in April 1959, twelve years after the Pacifica Foundation was created by pacifist Lewis Hill, and ten years after the network's flagship station, KPFA, was founded in Berkeley. KPFK also broadcasts on booster KPFK-FM1 along the Malibu coast, K258BS (99.5 MHz) in China Lake, K254AH (98.7 MHz) in Isla Vista and K229BO 93.7 MHz in Rancho Bernardo, San Diego. With its 110,000-watt main transmitter atop Mount Wilson, KPFK is one of the most powerful FM stations in the western United States. The station can be heard from the California/Mexico border to Santa Barbara to Ridgecrest/China Lake. A second 10-watt translator is licensed in Isla Vi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers
''Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers'' is the Firesign Theatre's third comedy album, released by Columbia Records in July 1970. In 1983, ''The New Rolling Stone Record Guide'' called it "the greatest comedy album ever made". It was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1971 by the World Science Fiction Society. In 2005, the US Library of Congress added the album to the National Recording Registry and called the Firesign Theatre "the Beatles of comedy." Track listing All tracks by The Firesign Theatre Side one #"This Side" – 22:16 Side two #"The Other Side" – 24:12Firesign Theatre. ''Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers''. Columbia Records, 1970. Detailed track information and commentary This was The Firesign Theatre's first album wherein a single theme took up both sides of the album. In Phil Austin's notes to the 1987 Mobile Fidelity re-release of this album he says "''Dwarf'' is the story of the five ages of Man and in particular, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Give Me Immortality Or Give Me Death
''Give Me Immortality or Give Me Death'' is a comedy album by the Firesign Theatre that was released in 1998 on Rhino Records. Its main theme satirizes 1990s radio formats and public hysteria over the Y2K programming bug. ''Give Me Immortality...'' is the first of the Firesign Theatre's Millenium CD trilogy ''We're Doomed'', which includes ''Boom Dot Bust'' and ''Bride of Firesign''. Synopsis The album takes the form of a fictional radio broadcast on the night of December 31, 1999. Radio Now is a FunFunTown (apparently modeled after Los Angeles, California) radio station whose format changes approximately every hour at the slightest whims of overzealous market researchers and focus groups. The album chronicles Radio Now's attempt to operate normally on the final day before the year 2000, a day riddled with apocalyptic omens, rampant computer errors, and dangerous doomsayers. The station is populated by DJ Bebop Lobo (Phil Austin), his producer Dwayne (Peter Bergman), news anchors ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Everything You Know Is Wrong
''Everything You Know Is Wrong'' is the eighth comedy album by the Firesign Theatre. Released in October 1974 on Columbia Records, it satire, satirizes UFO conspiracy theories and New Age paranormal beliefs such as Erich von Däniken's ''Chariots of the Gods?, Chariots of the Gods'' and claimed psychic Uri Geller, which achieved wide public attention by that time. Characters The four main characters are pictured on the album cover: *"Happy" Harry Cox (Phil Austin) — narrator of the album; purveyor of New Age fringe theory, fringe theories. Cox calls his followers "Seekers" and runs a recording studio he calls "Nude Age Enterprises" from his mobile home in a Naturism, nudist trailer park located in the fictional town of Hellmouth, California (surrounded by the towns of Hooker and Heater). Although Cox is depicted on the cover and in the accompanying video as clothed, he apparently is a nudist, as Gary asks "Why are you naked?" when meeting him face-to-face. *Gary (Peter Be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nick Danger
Nick Danger is a fictional character created by the comedy group The Firesign Theatre, portrayed by Phil Austin. Danger is a parody of the hard-boiled detective, and is often announced as "Nick Danger, Third Eye", a parody of the term '' private eye''. Danger stories involve stereotypical film noir situations, including mistaken identity, betrayal, and femmes fatales. Danger originally appears on the 1969 album '' How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All'', and is reprised in the 1979 '' Nick Danger: The Case of the Missing Shoe'', 1984 ''The Three Faces of Al'', and 2001 '' The Bride of Firesign''. Development In January 1969, while the Firesign Theatre's radio show ''Radio Free Oz'' was running on KMET (FM), the Firesigns wrote a pilot script for a show inspired by Fred Allen's 1942 show ''Allen's Alley'', to be broadcast live from the Los Angeles Elks Hall near MacArthur Park. The script contained a third act based on a hardboiled detective Nick ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the database was first made available on the Internet in 1994. AllMusic is owned by RhythmOne. History AllMusic was launched as ''All Music Guide'' by Michael Erlewine, a "compulsive archivist, noted astrologer, Buddhist scholar and musician". He became interested in using computers for his astrological work in the mid-1970s and founded a software company, Matrix, in 1977. In the early 1990s, as CDs replaced LPs as the dominant format for recorded music, Erlewine purchased what he thought was a CD of early recordings by Little Richard. After buying it he discovered it was a "flaccid latter-day rehash". Frustrated with the labeling, he researched using metadata to create a music guide. In 1990, in Big Rapids, Michigan, he founded ''All Music Guide' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comedy
Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term originated in ancient Greece: in Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was influenced by political satire performed by comic poets in theaters. The theatrical genre of Greek comedy can be described as a dramatic performance pitting two groups, ages, genders, or societies against each other in an amusing '' agon'' or conflict. Northrop Frye depicted these two opposing sides as a "Society of Youth" and a "Society of the Old". A revised view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a relatively powerless youth and the societal conventions posing obstacles to his hopes. In this struggle, the youth then becomes constrained by his lack of social authority, and is left with little choice but to resort to ruses w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to leader André Breton, to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality", or ''surreality.'' It produced works of painting, writing, theatre, filmmaking, photography, and other media. Works of Surrealism feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and '' non sequitur''. However, many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost (for instance, of the "pure psychic automatism" Breton speaks of in the first Surrealist Manifesto), with the works themselves being secondary, i.e. artifacts of surrealist experimentation. Leader Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was, above all, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Firesign Theatre
The Firesign Theatre (also known as the Firesigns) was an American surreal humour, surreal comedy troupe who first appeared on November 17, 1966, in a live performance on the Los Angeles radio program ''Radio Free Oz'' on station KPFK FM broadcasting, FM. They continued appearing on ''Radio Free Oz'', which later moved to KRLA 1110 AM broadcasting, AM and then KMET (FM), KMET FM, through February 1969. They produced fifteen album, record albums and a single (music), 45 rpm single under contract to Columbia Records from 1967 through 1976, and had three nationally syndicated radio programs: ''The Firesign Theatre Radio Hour Hour'' [sic] in 1970 on KPPC-FM; and ''Dear Friends (radio program), Dear Friends'' (1970–1971) and ''Let's Eat!'' (1971–1972) on KPFK. They also appeared in front of live audiences, and continued to write, perform, and record on other labels, occasionally taking sabbaticals during which they wrote or performed solo or in smaller groups. The Firesign Theat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phil Proctor
Philip Proctor (born 1940) is an American actor, comedian and a member of the Firesign Theatre. He has performed voice-over work for video games, films and television series. Career Of the four members of Firesign Theatre, Proctor has had the greatest amount of mainstream exposure as an actor. A boy soprano in his youth, he worked extensively in musical theatre, including numerous juvenile female roles in productions of Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. In his early adult career, he worked in musical theatre on Broadway, the West Coast and in touring productions. During this period Proctor worked with many famous names, including composer Richard Rodgers, and forged important social connections, becoming close friends with notable figures including Henry Jaglom, Brandon deWilde, Peter Fonda and Karen Black. Proctor also appeared occasionally on television in small roles, including episodes of ''Daniel Boone (1964 TV series), Daniel Boone'', ''All in the Family'', and ''Night Cou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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