Phil Austin, David Ossman, Phil Proctor, and Peter Bergman met in the late '60s through Bergman's groundbreaking alternative radio program, Radio Free Oz. Finding a comedic rapport, the four went on to record their first album together, Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him. From that first record, Firesign Theatre spun forth an enormous amount of material.
But how to describe the kind of comedy that Firesign Theatre produces? It's surreal and chaotic; cerebral and absurd; jam-packed with topical references sharing space with facts made of whole cloth. They're pitched in the style of '30s and '40s radio plays, but they exist in a universe where time has been compressed into 45-minute bursts of words and ideas. It sounds like stream-of-consciousness, but the craft at work is beyond meticulous. It's something that, truly, has to be heard and heard again to be understood.
[Broadway Center Theatre on the Square, Firesign Theatre, Sunday, Jan. 24, 3 and 7 p.m., $29-$39, 901 Broadway, Tacoma, 253.591.5894]
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