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  5. The Firesign Theatre's Wax Poetics: Overdub, Dissonance, and Narrative in the Age of Nixon

The Firesign Theatre's Wax Poetics: Overdub, Dissonance, and Narrative in the Age of Nixon

File(s)
The Firesign Theatre’s Wax Poetics: Overdub, Dissonance, and Narrative in the Age of Nixon | Sounding Out!.pdf (1.78 MB)
Permanent Link(s)
https://hdl.handle.net/1813/55003
Collections
English Papers, Research and Videos
Author
Braddock, Jeremy
Abstract

A short article on how the Firesign Theater, during the period of their contract with Columbia Records (1967-75), pioneered a new form of sound-based literary writing using the emerging technologies of multitrack recording, from within the heart of the entertainment industry in Los Angeles. Argues that, compared to the terms Neil Verma coins to describe radio work of the 1940s — e.g. Norman Corwin's kaleidosonic style — the Firesign Theatre used the multitrack system to devise non-Euclidian "analytic space" within their narratives. This new technique was devised in order to represent the new saturation of media, and its intimate relation to the Vietnam War.

Date Issued
2017-11-27
Publisher
Sounding Out!
Keywords
sound studies, comedy, literature
Related DOI
https://soundstudiesblog.com/2017/11/27/the-firesign-theatres-wax-poetics-how-a-narrative-takes-shape-in-auditory-dissonance-and-experimentation/
ISSN
2333-0309
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Rights URI
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Type
article

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