"You know my mom always used to say 'you gotta start young if you're going to stick it out.' Gotta start young if you're gonna stick it out! [laughter] Poor kid...."
My closest circle of friends are diehard FS fans; my best friend and I ended up living 20 miles apart before we had our drivers licenses and we would pretty much recite this entire album over the phone. To this day, Firesign Theatre groups on Facebook provide almost daily opportunities to 'drop this great load of knowledge on" for those fans who can most appreciate it. ("I said live it, or live with it") This album is a fan favorite and a fully realized project that capitalizes on the comedy group's strengths.
The amazing specifics afforded to the quad version playback experience is naturally the 360 sound field placement of dialog and sound effects and panning tricks that this endlessly inventive 1971 album deserves. I've always been impressed with the clear blue clarity of the little details waiting to be discovered. My old Panasonic quad system had the joystick balance that made it easy to check out what's happening in the "other" channels that were not the focus of delivery. Some favorites include "not now Sheldon", a kitchen blender running full blast, missing "dialog" like the singing "honk, honk, honk, honk-honk-honk" followed by the more obvious "hey kid come over here" funway dialog. Even the muzak playing when they first get on the bus is nicely isolated.
A DTS disc of the quad version makes it easy to revisit; an authored DVD-A or BD presentation with graphics would be great to have one day. Consider that a celestial hint to the project minded out there. Hey Phil.....!