Search - In the Next World... :: In the Next Worldyou're on Your Own

Next World Amusement Park & Burial Ground

Royce E. Buehler | Cambridge, MA USA | 02/06/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"One of the mysteries of life is why "Bozos" was the last Firesign album of which the larger public was aware. A still deeper mystery is why even most of those fans who in the decades since have come to understand the achievement of "Everything You Know Is Wrong" continue to ignore this masterful followup. Perhaps it's because the dark streak never far from the surface in Firesign's humor is given its fullest expression here. ITNWYOYO is the culmination of the artistic journey begun with Don't Crush That Dwarf. It's got plenty of great funny lines; but it is the most serious, most intricate piece the foursome ever produced.



Their Everyman this time isn't a young guy anymore. He's a cop named Random Koolzip, on the downside of middle age ("He looked like a 57 year old potato in a trick suit", in one of the perfect Chandlerisms sprinkled through the album). His son is estranged and going native, his daughter is dead and in Hell, and his beloved baseball team, the Crows, are on the verge of losing a marathon Darwinian series to the creepers and slitherers which man the field, or creature the field, for the Locusts.



In pitch-perfect sendups of Academy Award shows, sportscasting, mom and pop stores, the Soaps, the "hungry ghosts" of Buddhist cosmology, and cop shows, the album paints a devastating portrait of an America whose mean streets and shabby entertainments are hard to distinguish from the realm past Hellmouth, the high desert underworld that everybody trekked down to so optimistically at the end of "Everything You Know Is Wrong".



Not Firesign's funniest album, but their most mindblowing. It ties together all the themes developed in their previous four albums in one definitive epic. And, incidentally, thanks to the great William Stout, it's also got the finest cover art. Don't miss it."

One of the best Firesign albums!

Royce E. Buehler | 07/24/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

""Next World" is the Firesign Theatre's final release for Columbia Records in 1975. Though written by only two of the four members (Phil Austin & David Ossman), it stands as one of the best titles in their canon. A crazed satire of Cop Shows, the Academy Awards, Soap Operas, Sports Events, and Game Shows, it cannot be described plot-wise, simply experienced... like all their best work. Really, it's right up there with "Don't Crush That Dwarf..." in terms of brilliance. For those of you unfamiliar with the Firesign Theatre, let's just say they took full advantage of studio technology (multi-tracking, etc.) to drag the comedy album into the '60s and beyond. If you combined Monty Python, lofty literary references, old-time classic radio, bad puns, and drug humor, you'd be in the ballpark of what this great, unsung comedy group has to offer. Grab it now if you like to laugh!"