Firesign

The Electromagnetic History of Everything as Told on Nine Comedy Albums

AvJeremy Braddock

Inbunden, Engelska, 2024

776 kr

Beställningsvara. Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar. Fri frakt över 249 kr.

Fler format och utgåvor

Häftad

233 kr

Beskrivning

A cultural clearinghouse of the American 1960s and '70s told through the story of the period's most important forgotten comedy group. This expansive book reclaims the Firesign Theatre (hazily remembered as a comedy act for stoners) as critically engaged artists working in the heart of the culture industry at a time of massive social and technological change. At the intersection of popular music, sound and media studies, cultural history, and avant-garde literature, Jeremy Braddock explores how this inventive group made the lowbrow comedy album a medium for registering the contradictions and collapse of the counterculture, and traces their legacies in hip-hop turntablism, computer hacking, and participatory fan culture. He deploys a vast range of material sources, drawing on numerous interviews and writing in tune with the group's obsessive and ludic reflections—on multitrack recording, radio, television, cinema, early artificial intelligence, and more—to focus on Firesign's work in Los Angeles from 1967 to 1975. This ebullient act of media archaeology reveals Firesign Theatre as authors of a comic utopian pessimism that will inspire twenty-first-century recording arts and urge us to engage the massive technological changes of our own era.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2024-10-29
Mått:152 x 229 x 23 mm
Vikt:635 g
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Antal sidor:320
Förlag:University of California Press
ISBN:9780520398511

Utforska kategorier

Kulturvetenskap inom Samhälle och politik
Musikböcker inom Kultur
Elektronisk musik inom Kultur

Mer om författaren

Jeremy Braddock teaches literature, media, and sound studies at Cornell University and is author of Collecting as Modernist Practice, which was awarded the Modernist Studies Association Book Prize.

Recensioner i media

"Braddock’s focus on technology and culture gives him an excellent means of discussing how Firesign’s albums were constructed andreceived. . . . It’s easy to understand the appeal of such a wide-ranging approach."

Innehållsförteckning

ContentsPreface Liner Notes 1. ALBUM / Talking Book WAITING FOR THE ELECTRICIAN OR SOMEONE LIKE HIM (1968)How Did the LP Become a Book? (Archaeology of Contemptible Media)Who Were the Readers of Records?Happenings, December 1966Listening to the ElectricianThere’s a Fog upon LAThe Dialogic Imagination (Slight Return)2. RADIO / Duplicity Is the Double of Duality HOW CAN YOU BE IN TWO PLACES AT ONCE WHEN YOU'RE NOT ANYWHERE AT ALL (1969)Put-Ons and Propaganda (How to Be in Two Places at Once)Label TroublesContradictory SpaceArchaeologyDrill and Distraction in the Yellow Submarine(Slight Return)Goons and BeatlesFive Years on the FM BandOur Rendezvous with Destiny Is to UnconditionallySurrender3. CINEMA / Remediating the Studio System in May 1970 DON'T CRUSH THAT DWARF, HAND ME THE PLIERS (1970)Overdub/Edit (How to Be in One Place Twice)TV or Not TVA Head of His TimeStudio Systems c. 1970Stereo and DolbyStoner NarratologyEast Coast / West Coast, Radical Juxtaposition4. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE / Up Against the Wall of Science I THINK WE'RE ALL BOZOS ON THIS BUS (1971)Publicizing Mobile PrivatizationInto the Seventies, for Real (Slight Return)Man ConformsYou Have Violated Robot’s Rules of Order and WillBe Asked to Leave the Future ImmediatelyArt and TechnologyUnhappy MACNAM5. TELEVISION / What Is Television? THE MARTIAN SPACE PARTY (1972), THE FIRESIGN THEATRE VS. DREAMMONSTERS FROM EL OUTER SPACE (1972), NOT INSANE (1972), TV ORNOT TV (1973), ROLLER MAIDENS FROM OUTER SPACE (1974), IN THE NEXT WORLD, YOU'RE ON YOU'RE OWN (1975)A Transient and Unstable MediumSatelliteCableReruns, DreamsAmbient Television, Nightmarescoda / Run-Out Groove Not TV and Not Rock EitherCampoon ’76The Church of the SubGenius and NegativlandCrate Digging as Archaeology—Firesign in Hip HopForward into the PastAcknowledgments Appendix A: Firesign Theatre Discography Appendix B: Firesign Theatre Samples in Hip Hop andElectronic Music, 1989–2023 Notes Bibliography Index