Firesign Theatre's Phil Proctor & Archivist Taylor Jessen on LARZ!

Doug Harvey's Less Art Radio Zine is honored to host one of the last of the great radio artists, Phil Proctor of Firesign Theatre along with workaholic FT Archivist Taylor Jessen this Sunday July 20th at 12 Noon on www.kchungradio.org. The Firesign Theatre -- in the tradition of Stan Freberg, Max Ferguson, The Goons, Bob & Ray, and Henry Jacobs -- approached radio as an open playing field and a quintessential but (happily/criminally) unsupervised Modernist artform.

Simultaneously avant-garde and populist, collective and idiosyncratic, intricately crafted and improvisational -- The Firesign Theatre's work as radio innovators was overshadowed by their enormous success as Columbia Records' "Beatles of Comedy." Their 1971 LP I Think We’re All Bozos On This Bus is the masterpiece of this period, and the subject of my newly-published chapbook from Insert Blanc Press, What’s Happening in The Firesign Theatre’s I Think We’re All Bozos On This Bus as Best as I Can Make Out.

With the recent release of Duke of Madness Motors -- Jessen's labor of love and a copiously illustrated account of the FT's radio career, including an 80-hour DVD of recently rediscovered audio transcriptions -- the FT's reputation as pioneers of postmodern radio art has been irrefutably solidified. All Hail Proctor and Jessen!