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Proctor And Bergman
Proctor and Bergman was a comedy duo consisting of Philip Proctor and Peter Bergman. The two started performing in 1973 while taking a break from the four-man comedy act The Firesign Theatre, with the comedy album "TV or Not TV", on which they based a short film in 1978. They reunited the Firesign Theatre in 1974, but resumed their duo act in 1975 during a second temporary split of the Firesigns, and continued to perform as a duo during several breaks of the Firesign Theatre until Bergman's death in 2012. History Peter Bergman and Philip Proctor met while attending Yale University in the late 1950s, where Proctor studied acting, and Bergman edited the Yale comedy magazine. Bergman studied playwriting and collaborated as lyricist with Austin Pendleton on two Yale Dramat musicals in which Proctor starred: '' Tom Jones'', and ''Booth Is Back In Town''. Proctor was in Los Angeles in 1966, looking for acting work and watching the Sunset Strip curfew riots. When he discovered he was s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sound Recording And Reproduction
Sound recording and reproduction is the electrical, mechanical, electronic, or digital inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording technology are analog recording and digital recording. Sound recording is the transcription of invisible vibrations in air onto a storage medium such as a phonograph disc. The process is reversed in sound reproduction, and the variations stored on the medium are transformed back into sound waves. Acoustic analog recording is achieved by a microphone diaphragm that senses changes in atmospheric pressure caused by acoustic sound waves and records them as a mechanical representation of the sound waves on a medium such as a phonograph record (in which a stylus cuts grooves on a record). In magnetic tape recording, the sound waves vibrate the microphone diaphragm and are converted into a varying electric current, which is then converted to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edwin Booth
Edwin Thomas Booth (November 13, 1833 – June 7, 1893) was an American actor who toured throughout the United States and the major capitals of Europe, performing Shakespearean plays. In 1869, he founded Booth's Theatre in New York. Some theatrical historians consider him the greatest American actor, and the greatest Prince Hamlet, of the 19th century. In Wells and Stanton (2002, 230–258). 35–237 His achievements are often overshadowed by his relationship with his younger brother, actor John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated the 16th US President, Abraham Lincoln. Early life Booth was born in Bel Air, Maryland, into the Anglo-American theatrical Booth family. He was the son of the famous actor Junius Brutus Booth, an Englishman, who named Edwin after Edwin Forrest and Thomas Flynn, two of Junius' colleagues. He was the elder brother of John Wilkes Booth, himself a successful actor who gained notoriety as the assassin of President Lincoln. Nora Titone, in her book ''My Thoug ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Starland Vocal Band
Starland Vocal Band was an American pop band, known for " Afternoon Delight", one of the biggest-selling singles of 1976. Career The group began as Fat City, a husband/wife duo of Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert. Danoff and Nivert co-wrote the song "I Guess He'd Rather Be in Colorado" and then, with John Denver, "Take Me Home, Country Roads" which became a hit single in 1971 and became an official song of West Virginia in 2014. The duo recorded two albums as Fat City (''Reincarnation'', ''Welcome to Fat City''), and two more as Bill & Taffy (''Pass It On'', ''Aces''), all released from 1969 to 1974. In the mid 1970s, Starland Vocal Band was formed and subsequently signed to Denver's label Windsong Records. Starland Vocal Band also included Jon Carroll (keyboards, guitar, vocals) and Margot Chapman (vocals). Carroll and Chapman also became a couple, marrying in 1978. The group's debut album was the self-titled ''Starland Vocal Band'' and included " Afternoon Delight". The song w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
What This Country Needs (Proctor And Bergman Album)
''What This Country Needs'' is the second comedy album by the duo Proctor and Bergman of the Firesign Theatre. It was originally released in September 1975 on Columbia Records, and was among the Firesign Theatre's last Columbia albums, along with ''In the Next World, You're on Your Own'' and ''Forward Into The Past''. It was recorded from a live performance at The Bottom Line which contained material adapted or re-used from their 1973 studio album ''TV or Not TV'', plus several new sketches. Title and cover art The title is taken from a song Philip Proctor and Peter Bergman wrote, which parodies Vice President Thomas R. Marshall's famous quote, "What this country needs is a good five-cent cigar". The song says what this country needs is "a good five-cent ''joke''". The album's cover art mimics a cardboard cigar box lid, with a painting of Proctor dressed as a field worker in jean overalls and a straw hat, with Bergman dressed in a suit as the plantation owner. Proctor holds up a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Black Comedy
Black comedy, also known as dark comedy, morbid humor, or gallows humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discuss. Writers and comedians often use it as a tool for exploring vulgar issues by provoking discomfort, serious thought, and amusement for their audience. Thus, in fiction, for example, the term ''black comedy'' can also refer to a genre in which dark humor is a core component. Popular themes of the genre include death, crime, poverty, suicide, war, violence, terrorism, discrimination, disease, racism, sexism, and human sexuality. Black comedy differs from both blue comedy—which focuses more on crude topics such as nudity, sex, and Body fluids—and from straightforward obscenity. Whereas the term ''black comedy'' is a relatively broad term covering humor relating to many serious subjects, ''gallows humor'' tends to be used more specifical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
In The Next World, You're On Your Own
''In the Next World, You're on Your Own'' is the ninth and last comedy album recorded by the Firesign Theatre for Columbia Records. It was released in October 1975. Track listing Side one #"Police Street" – 21:30 Side two #"We've Lost Our Big Kabloona" – 22:30 Detailed track information and commentary The first side of the album, "Police Street", features a group of sketches interconnected by the kind of police show satire reminiscent of Phil Austin's detective fiction (Austin being best known as the detective character Nick Danger). The highlight sketch is "Give It Back," a mock game show in which losing contestants have to surrender their parents' material possessions to the Native Americans. In surreal fashion, the police satire also plays out a family drama. In this drama the main characters are: the hard-boiled Lieutenant Detective Random Coolzip; his wife, Peggy, who is also his dispatcher; their son, Skip Coolzip, a junior policeman; and their daughter, K ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wolfman Jack
Robert Weston Smith (January 21, 1938July 1, 1995), known as Wolfman Jack, was an American disc jockey active from 1960 till his death in 1995. Famous for his gravelly voice, he credited it for his success, saying, "It's kept meat and potatoes on the table for years for Wolfman and Wolfwoman. A couple of shots of whiskey helps it. I've got that nice raspy sound." Early life Smith was born in Brooklyn on January 21, 1938, the younger of two children of Anson Weston Smith, an Episcopal Sunday school teacher, writer, editor, and executive vice president of ''Financial World'', and his wife Rosamond Small. He lived on 12th Street and 4th Avenue and went to Manual Training High School in the Park Slope section. His parents divorced while he was a child. To help keep him out of trouble, his father bought him a large Trans-Oceanic radio, and Smith became an avid fan of R&B music and the disc jockeys who played it, including Douglas "Jocko" Henderson of Philadelphia, New York's "Dr. Ji ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition or light poetry, interspersed with songs or ballets. It became popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s, but the idea of vaudeville's theatre changed radically from its French antecedent. In some ways analogous to music hall from Victorian Britain, a typical North American vaudeville performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. Types of acts have included popular and classical musicians, singers, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, ventriloquists, strongmen, female and male impersonators, acrobats, clowns, illustrated songs, jugglers, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities, minstrels, and movies. A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Not Insane Or Anything You Want To
''Not Insane or Anything You Want To'' is the sixth album released by the Firesign Theatre on Columbia Records. It was released in October 1972 and includes some material that was recorded in the studio as well as some material that was recorded before a live audience. The full title is listed on the spine of the record album as ''Not Insane or Anything You Want To''. The abbreviated title ''Not Insane'' appears on the front of the album cover, while ''Or Anything You Want To'' appears on the back cover. It is usually referred to simply as ''Not Insane''. The album was mixed from parts of a live performance recorded during the ''Martian Space Party'' radio broadcast and film, a 1970 live performance of a Shakespeare's plays, Shakespeare parody ''The Count of Monte Cristo'', and newly recorded studio material. The album was a commercial and critical failure, and the group years later would call it "a serious mistake". They immediately went on hiatus for a year, with Proctor and Be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the " Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. He remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted. Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna Hall, Susanna, and twins Hamnet Shakespeare, Hamnet and Judith Quiney, Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Astrological Sign
In Western astrology, astrological signs are the twelve 30-degree sectors that make up Earth's 360-degree orbit around the Sun. The signs enumerate from the first day of spring, known as the First Point of Aries, which is the vernal equinox. The astrological signs are Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. The Western zodiac originated in Babylonian astrology, and was later influenced by the Hellenistic culture. Each sign was named after a constellation the sun annually moved through while crossing the sky. This observation is emphasized in the simplified and popular sun sign astrology. Over the centuries, Western astrology's zodiacal divisions have shifted out of alignment with the constellations they were named after by axial precession of the Earth while Hindu astrology measurements correct for this shifting. Astrology (i.e. a system of omina based on celestial appearances) was developed in Chinese and Ti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Ossman
David Ossman (born December 6, 1936 in Santa Monica) is an American writer and comedian, best known as a member of the Firesign Theatre and screenwriter of such films as '' Zachariah''. Early life Ossman attended Pomona College, where he starred in productions including ''The Crucible'' and ''Fumed Oak''. He transferred to Columbia University. Career Ossman's roles during his Firesign years include George Leroy ("Peorgie") Tirebiter on '' Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers'' and Catherwood in the "Nick Danger" series. In 1973, he recorded the solo album ''How Time Flys''. During the 1980s, he left the Firesign Theatre, primarily to produce programs for National Public Radio. During the 1990s Ossman and his wife Judith Walcutt formed Otherworld Media, through which they produced audio theatre for children, as well as a series of major star-studded audio theatre broadcasts for NPR, including ''We Hold These Truths'' (1991), ''Empire of the Air'', ''War of the Worlds 50t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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