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Before They Changed the Water: Live 1969​-​1971

by The Firesign Theatre

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about

“Before They Changed The Water: Live 1969-1971” is a collection of never-before-released live performances by the Firesign Theatre from the period of that heavy last hurrah of the psychedelic Sixties. After their first meeting on Radio Free Oz on KPFK in late 1966, their first live gig as the Bulgarian National Ensemble in Exile at UCLA in April 1967, and a three-month run performing original radio plays every Sunday on KRLA live at the Magic Mushroom club, Firesign started seriously gigging as a Los Angeles live act in 1968, performing at a variety of local venues including Pasadena’s Ice House on a bill with a young Steve Martin. Firesign’s first LP was an underground hit in 1968, but in 1969 with the release of their second album they rated the Billboad and Cash Box top 200 for the first time. After recording their third LP in 1970 the trades had put them in the category “Basic Album Inventory”, there were raves in Rolling Stone, and they were cracking the Top 100 for the first time while selling out live performances on both coasts. It’s from this, the period of their steepest rise, that Firesign digs into the archive to release officially a slew of great live recordings for the first time.

Act 1 (“At Home, In The Office, Or Where You Work”) is a 94-minute package of material from 1969, 1970, and 1971: “The Firesign Theatre Radio Hour”, a combination of old-time radio absurdity plus their new piece “The American Pageant”, performed live at a benefit for the Ash Grove at the Pilgrimage Theatre in Los Angeles in June 1969; “Paul Eichorn’s Paris Report”, an audio diary sent from overseas by Columbia hype man Paul Eichorn (actually Peter Bergman, in a bit the whole group recorded ahead of time to play back during Firesign’s put-on appearance at the Columbia national sales convention in August 1969); their classic “Indian Piece”, recorded live at a series of three sold-out performances on 2/27/1970 at SUNY Stony Brook, New York; “Drug Symposium”, a public affairs show with a surprise ending performed at Yale on 3/1/1970; “The TV Set”, their channel-surfing epic staged at Columbia University in New York on 3/8/1970; and “Vince Tomaine’s, TV Glide and Dr. Astro”, a selection of hilarious short bits from their 2/27/1971 live show at USC in Los Angeles.

Act 2 is a complete 75-minute live show recorded at the Ash Grove in Los Angeles on 11/10/1970, just after the release of their Dwarf album. It includes the Jacobean revenge drama “The Count of Monte Christo”, the Amos-and-Andy-on-acid radio parody “Mutt & Smut”, “High School Madness” (from Dwarf), the TV news satire “The Bob Sideburn News”, and their game show “Dr. Blowjob”, plus various well-loved demented ad parodies (“40 Great Unclaimed Melodies”, “Dribble”, and “Whole Earth Estates”).

The album download includes a 96-page PDF with more than two dozen press clippings, vintage photos, handbills, ads, programs, weird ephemera, and the original Columbia sales convention put-on slide show (featuring 24 of Phil Proctor’s photocollages).

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released March 4, 2022

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The Firesign Theatre Los Angeles, California

The Firesign Theatre emerged from Radio Free Oz, a Los Angeles underground radio program, in 1966. Over five decades they released over two dozen comedy albums and ten books of plays. Their album "Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers" was inducted into the Library of Congress recording registry in 2005. ... more

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