Jeremy Braddock Lit-Vis Working Group

The Working Group in Literary and Visual Culture at Stanford University invites you to our upcoming event:

"Remediating the Studio System in May 1970: The Firesign Theatre's Don't Crush That Dwarf Hand Me the Pliers"
Presented by Jeremy Braddock, Associate Professor, Dept. of Literatures in English, Cornell University
November 5 at noon PST, via Zoom

In nine albums recorded for Columbia Records between 1967 and 1975, the Firesign Theatre exploited the multitrack recording studio as a medium for literary writing in a way that has never been equaled, before or since. A hallmark of these recordings is the way their aural representation of numerous forms of media (often simultaneously). Though they are ostensibly comedy records, they contain a surprisingly trenchant and informe d critique of the increasing mediatization of society during the Nixon years, creating highly mobile narratives set in a quasi-authoritarian world of curfews, restrictions, and mandatory consumption.

Drawing from his book-length study of the Firesign Theatre, Jeremy Braddock will examine the group's third album, Don't Crush That Dwarf Hand Me the Pliers (1970), paying particular attention to the narrative effects made possible with the new technologies of Dolby Noise Reduction and the 8-channel mixing desk. Recorded at the time of the Kent State killings and the historic MGM auction, the album can be understood as an attempt to propose the long-playing record as a new home for long-form narrative, in the wake of classical Hollywood's collapse.