Show 7 Part 2 - The Further Adventures of Nick Danger

Shrunken Head Lounge Surf Radio Show Running Time: 29 minutes 37 seconds The Further Adventures of Nick Danger   "The Further Adventures of Nick Danger" is probably the group's most famous recording, its characters having been reused in many subsequent sketches. It is presented as a 1940s radio drama, the "episode" title here being "Cut 'Em Off at the Past." Nick Danger (Phil Austin) is a '40s-style detective character in the Raymond Chandler mold. In live performances and photographs, he wears the stereotypical fedora and trench coat. He has the obligatory nemesis on the police force, Lieutenant Bradshaw (Bergman), who questions his every move. His "mark" is Rocky Rococo (Proctor), a Peter Lorre imitation. True to the clichés of the genre, there is a suspicious butler, Catherwood (David Ossman), and a femme fatale, Nancy (Proctor). Compared to other Firesign Theatre material, this sketch is a rather straightforward, basically plot-driven narrative, though it is loaded with references to The Beatles, the I Ching, and other counterculture topics. It also features various self-reflective post-modern jokes, such as a scene where the fire two characters are ostensibly sitting around is referred to as "the cellophane". (The sound of fire was famously simulated by crinkling cellophane on old radio dramas.) At the end of the sketch, the action is interrupted at a crucial moment by a "late-breaking announcement" from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Ossman), who wearily tells the American people that Pearl Harbor has just been attacked, and that the United States will unconditionally surrender to the Japanese. The record ends with the cast switching to the other side of the LP, "take 600".