Duke of Madness Motors

The Firesign Theatre Released A Package of Their Surreal Radio Ads... and I Get to be Part of It.

Most of you know that I write about cars, mostly automotive history, for Hagerty, the collector car insurance company. A while back I wrote a piece about a series of late night television ads Firesign Theatre produced for a LA VW dealer they knew named Jack Poet. The ads were so surreal that VW pulled Poet's franchise. In my research for the article I was fortunate to be able to interview Phil Proctor, one of the two surviving FT guys. Recently, the official Firesign archivist told me they were releasing on Bandcamp a package of dozens of radio ads FT did over the years, including for the Grateful Dead's AOXOMOXOA, and I was tickled that they wanted to use my essay as part of the liner notes.

A mere $8 gets you 72 minutes of Duke of Madness Motors level ads, only they were real ads, plus a 36 page PDF of liner notes, photos, and other cool stuff, including an essay by FT member David Ossman.

Disclaimer: I don't make anything from the sale of the package but I was given a small honorarium for the use of my article.

"Americans! Ask yourself these question: is your favorite Firesign era the pass-the-lord-and-praise-the-ammunition moment of total glee that is their 1969 single, shooting the Aboriginal Amateur Hour and Captain Equinox into your ears like so many Dada bullets?

Much of that material first assaulted radio listeners in the form of ads for Jack Poet Volkswagen in Highland Park. He was just off the Avenue 60 exit of the Pasadena Freeway! And Jack, a real VW dealer who knew Firesign from The Farm, hired the boys to write and perform a series of radio ads, which led to a series of notorious TV ads, which led to Jack losing his franchise when VW Corporate found out!

And that's just part of the surrealist cornucopia in this collection of spots, 1968-2000, collecting 72 minutes of real Firesign ads from the golden age of WTF radio advertising in the Sixties to the Me-Me-Dollar-Dollar era of the Eighties straight through to the Millennium-oid year 2000.

Hear Firesign daringly bring their "Funny with a Capital Horse-Leech" approach to comedy to ad campaigns for corporations with no sense of humor! Stand amazed as a major record label hooks the public on the aleatoric noise-poem from the Grateful Dead's "AOXOMOXOA" by getting a 16-year-old girl to say it's got a good beat she can dance to! Listen as a fast-food giant from the 1990s uses the cast of "Nick Danger" to sell pizza with the cheese INSIDE THE CRUST!

It's truly beyond belief. Almost completely unheard since they originally aired, the ads in this collection are accompanied by a 36-page PDF with historical essays by Ronnie Schreiber, Andy Zax, and our own David Ossman, plus additional archival eye candy from the vaults AND your very own Captain Equinox decoder wheel for breaking this week's cipher! Part of this nutritious breakfast. (See the nutritious breakfast? You will, baby, you will!)"