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Just Folks... A Firesign Chat
Just Folks... A Firesign Chat is a 1977 comedy album by the Firesign Theatre. The material is based on previously unreleased material from their 1970–1972 radio shows Dear Friends and Let's Eat!. It was the only record the group made under a new contract with Butterfly Records, after the cancellation of their ten-year Columbia Records contract.
The Firesign Theatre (Peter Bergman, Philip Proctor, Phil Austin, and David Ossman) lost their prestigious recording contract with Columbia Records, under which they had produced fourteen albums (including one on the subsidiary Epic Records label), after their thirteenth album In the Next World, You're on Your Own sold poorly in 1975. As Bergman describes it, "We didn't fight. The group had really split apart; we had just burned out. I mean it was five years non-stop work. We would stop one album and start writing the next. Frankly, we didn't have five more albums in us at that point." Their last Columbia record was the 1976 "greatest hits" compilation Forward Into the Past, consisting of selections from their previous records.
For their next album, they decided to take material from their 1970 Dear Friends and 1971–72 Let's Eat radio shows which aired on station KPFK FM in Los Angeles, and work it into some newly recorded material, overdubbing some of the existing material for continuity. The radio material had never been officially released on record as of 1976. The sketches are placed within the context of a TV news program airing in the fictional town of "Ducktown." There is an ad included for "Confidence in the System" and also a trip to "Jimmy Carterland".
The Firesigns contracted with A.J. Cervantes to produce this album on the newly formed disco label, Butterfly Records.[3]
The album cover is a parody of René Magritte's surrealist painting The Mysteries of the Horizon (Le Chef D’Oeuvre). The original painting shows three images of what seems to be the same man in a black suit and bowler hat, each facing in a different direction, but each with the waxing crescent Moon directly above his head. The parody depicts the four members of the Firesign Theatre similarly dressed in suits and hats like the original, but each wears a different tie. Phil Austin's hat is on fire; Philip Proctor is the only one with the crescent Moon above his head, and he is smoking a pipe. David Ossman's hat appears to be floating above his head. Peter Bergman smiles at the viewer; there is nothing unusual about his hat.
The inner sleeve of the original vinyl LP contained an ad for an official Firesign Theatre belt buckle and T-shirt, reading "Yes, dear bozos, you two [sic] can have a remarkable T-shirt and/or cast iron belt buckle for a mere pittance". [3a]
The "Ben Bland" segments are among the few items of new material written for the album. These segments parody the old hosted afternoon ("Dialing for Dollars") movies. Host "Blend---Ben Bland" comes off as utterly high, stoned, or perhaps senile, desperately trying to act straight, and unable to resist free association. He earnestly corrects errors in his public service announcements with even more errors: "Just send ... to ... Barn C, Crabapple, Maryland; that's Born Free ... Marineland ..." And in an eerily prescient ad, Ben Bland informs aliens that "marrying an animal can mean citizenship for you; just listen to these success stories from your U.S. Animal Husbandry Service." In David Ossman's memoir Fighting Clowns of Hollywood, he writes the following concerning the Ben Bland segments:
I loved playing Ben Bland. He was based on a real LA movie host, on films broken every couple of minutes for horrible commercials, on the ubiquity of old movies all-day-every-day on the local TV channels. Basically the same world that Ralph Spoilsport came from. Ben appeared first in a record album I was trying to save — “Just Folks” — which had been half built of old radio routines and needed some new, live material. Ben came along with a commercial about The 10 Danger Signals of Depression, which were, of course, the real thing.[5]
Just Folks... A Firesign Chat
Just Folks... A Firesign Chat is a 1977 comedy album by the Firesign Theatre. The material is based on previously unreleased material from their 1970–1972 radio shows Dear Friends and Let's Eat!. It was the only record the group made under a new contract with Butterfly Records, after the cancellation of their ten-year Columbia Records contract.
The Firesign Theatre (Peter Bergman, Philip Proctor, Phil Austin, and David Ossman) lost their prestigious recording contract with Columbia Records, under which they had produced fourteen albums (including one on the subsidiary Epic Records label), after their thirteenth album In the Next World, You're on Your Own sold poorly in 1975. As Bergman describes it, "We didn't fight. The group had really split apart; we had just burned out. I mean it was five years non-stop work. We would stop one album and start writing the next. Frankly, we didn't have five more albums in us at that point." Their last Columbia record was the 1976 "greatest hits" compilation Forward Into the Past, consisting of selections from their previous records.
For their next album, they decided to take material from their 1970 Dear Friends and 1971–72 Let's Eat radio shows which aired on station KPFK FM in Los Angeles, and work it into some newly recorded material, overdubbing some of the existing material for continuity. The radio material had never been officially released on record as of 1976. The sketches are placed within the context of a TV news program airing in the fictional town of "Ducktown." There is an ad included for "Confidence in the System" and also a trip to "Jimmy Carterland".
The Firesigns contracted with A.J. Cervantes to produce this album on the newly formed disco label, Butterfly Records.[3]
The album cover is a parody of René Magritte's surrealist painting The Mysteries of the Horizon (Le Chef D’Oeuvre). The original painting shows three images of what seems to be the same man in a black suit and bowler hat, each facing in a different direction, but each with the waxing crescent Moon directly above his head. The parody depicts the four members of the Firesign Theatre similarly dressed in suits and hats like the original, but each wears a different tie. Phil Austin's hat is on fire; Philip Proctor is the only one with the crescent Moon above his head, and he is smoking a pipe. David Ossman's hat appears to be floating above his head. Peter Bergman smiles at the viewer; there is nothing unusual about his hat.
The inner sleeve of the original vinyl LP contained an ad for an official Firesign Theatre belt buckle and T-shirt, reading "Yes, dear bozos, you two [sic] can have a remarkable T-shirt and/or cast iron belt buckle for a mere pittance". [3a]
The "Ben Bland" segments are among the few items of new material written for the album. These segments parody the old hosted afternoon ("Dialing for Dollars") movies. Host "Blend---Ben Bland" comes off as utterly high, stoned, or perhaps senile, desperately trying to act straight, and unable to resist free association. He earnestly corrects errors in his public service announcements with even more errors: "Just send ... to ... Barn C, Crabapple, Maryland; that's Born Free ... Marineland ..." And in an eerily prescient ad, Ben Bland informs aliens that "marrying an animal can mean citizenship for you; just listen to these success stories from your U.S. Animal Husbandry Service." In David Ossman's memoir Fighting Clowns of Hollywood, he writes the following concerning the Ben Bland segments:
I loved playing Ben Bland. He was based on a real LA movie host, on films broken every couple of minutes for horrible commercials, on the ubiquity of old movies all-day-every-day on the local TV channels. Basically the same world that Ralph Spoilsport came from. Ben appeared first in a record album I was trying to save — “Just Folks” — which had been half built of old radio routines and needed some new, live material. Ben came along with a commercial about The 10 Danger Signals of Depression, which were, of course, the real thing.[5]