Vinyl Distractions

The Firesign Theatre’s seventh album is a real immersive experience. Atypical for Firesign, this one is narrated directly to the listener by Happy Harry Cox, a somewhat harmless believer in all kinds of fringe...

The Firesign Theatre got back together in 1973 after a not-terribly long breakup, to put together this absolutely brilliant Sherlock Holmes parody, their seventh album, released in January 1974. Less surreal (but no less...

If anyone thought that the Firesigns had completely come apart based on “Not Insane,” this 1973 release should have provided comfort that they did in fact still know how to construct a story and...

Their sixth album could well have been their last. The group was splintering apart. Boy, does this sound like it. This is, and Firesign Theatre acknowledges it, a complete mess. It is a mix...

Dear Friends was Firesign Theatre’s fifth album, and by pure coincidence, it was also the fifth album of theirs that I procured. Instead of the surreal “theatre of the mind” approaches they had taken...

This was the album that was my introduction to The Firesign Theatre. On the emphatic recommendation of my friend Dan, who somehow knew about things other high schoolers did not (perhaps because of a...

This was the third album from the Firesign Theatre, released in 1970, and it was probably the fourth of their records that I bought. I remember buying it when I was already at Syracuse...

I was a weird kid. One of those weirdness was that, although I loved TV and movies, I had a deep nostalgia for a time I had never lived in. In a sense, I...

It had been my intent to go through my records in pretty much the same order I file them, meaning that some things — most soundtracks, classical, and comedy — would come at the...