HOW CAN YOU BE IN TWO PLACES AT ONCE WHEN YOU'RE NOT ANYWHERE AT ALL

'''How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All''' was the second comedy album recorded by The Firesign Theatre. It was originally released in 1969 by Columbia Records.

Contents

Track listing

Side one

Side two

Detailed Track Information and Commentary

Issues and reissues

Miscellanea

References

External links

Track listing

Side one

#"'How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All'" – 28:27:
##"Drink To Me Only With Thine Fox" (Mr. Catherwood And Ensemble) [CD retitle: "The Ralph Spoilsport Mantrum"] – 4:21
##"The Policemen's Brawl" (Officers Bradshaw And Henderson) [CD retitle: "Zeno's Evil"] – 4:34
##"Yankee Doodle Came To Terms" (All Fecal People's Chorus) [CD retitle: "The Land of the Pharaohs"] – 2:47
##"Über Dubbing Over Alice" ('Arry 'N' Friends) [CD Track retitle: "VACANCY-NO VACANCY"] – 1:34
##"You Ain't Got No Friends On The Left" (Babe And The Unknown Soldiers) [CD retitle: "The Lonesome American Choo-Choo Don' Wan' Stop Here Any Mo'"] – 7:34
##""We're Bringing The War Back Home!" From Babes In Khaki" (Lilly Lamont
★ ) (
★ Miss Lamont Courtesy Of Paranoid Pictures) – 7:31 [split into 2 tracks on the CD, track titles below]:
###"Babes In Khaki" – 3:53
###"TV or not TV" – 3:38
(This side of the vinyl LP was not divided into separate tracks, but the liner notes list the above titles and tracks.)

Side two

#'The Further Adventures Of Nick Danger' – 28:11

Detailed Track Information and Commentary

The album consists of two 28-minute pieces, each taking up one side of the original vinyl release.
On side one, the title track opens with Philip Proctor playing car salesman Ralph Spoilsport, a spoof of southern California Ford dealer Ralph Williams, who was well known to late-night TV viewers. As Ralph is extolling the virtues of a featured new car, the main character, Babe (played by Peter Bergman), drives onto the lot and interrupts Ralph's spiel with an immediate desire to buy the car in question. Ralph responds enthusiastically with, "Well, OK, fine. Let's just take a look inside your beautiful new home!"
The impossibly luxurious car contains what would now be called a "home entertainment center," each component of which Ralph demonstrates one by one, in an increasingly complex stereophonic jumble that is the sonic equivalent of the stateroom scene in ''A Night at the Opera''.
Persuaded, Babe buys the car and drives it onto the freeway, and as he talks to himself, the signs along the freeway also "talk" as he passes them. One set of signs even shows Babe to be caught in one of Zeno's paradoxes, as the signs intone "Antelope Freeway, 1/4 mile... Antelope Freeway, 1/8 mile... Antelope Freeway, 1/16 mile", ad infinitum.
At this point, Babe notices the climate control switches, each with a themed name. He clicks "Tropical Paradise" and is suddenly transported to a tropical rain forest (complete with sounds of exotic birds and rainfall). He is then set upon by wise-cracking explorers who appear to be on a half-hearted expedition. Frustrated by the interlopers, he switches the climate control to "Land of the Pharoahs" and is suddenly transported to Egypt...along with the explorers. Increasingly annoyed, he complains that the sun is setting and it will be night soon, whereupon they stand him on his head and try to convince him that it is morning. He suddenly sees a doorway open on the side of pyramid and runs into it, to discover a hotel lobby inside.
The piece gradually morphs into an ironic celebration of America itself, as presumably exemplified by Babe's new car purchase. A panoply of characters talk and sing, in a manner reminiscent of a Norman Corwin patriotic radio pageant^[1], about America and its history, including sardonic references to slavery and gun ownership.
At the end, Spoilsport returns with an increasingly insane monologue that ends up being a direct quote of the final words of James Joyce's ''Ulysses''.
----
The piece on side two, "The Further Adventures of Nick Danger," is probably the group's most famous recording, its characters having been reused in many subsequent sketches. It imitates a 1940s radio drama, the "episode" title here being "Cut 'Em Off at the Past."
Nick Danger (played by 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. As in all bad mysteries, there has to be a butler, who here is Catherwood (David Ossman).
Compared to other Firesign Theatre material this sketch is rather straightforward and even old-fashioned, though it is loaded with then-contemporary references to The Beatles, the I Ching, and other "hippie" topics. It also features various self-reflective, post-modern jokes, such as when one scene where two characters are ostensibly sitting around a fire, but they refer to it as crinkling cellophane. (The sound of fire was famously simulated by cellophane on old radio dramas.)

Issues and reissues

This album was originally released on both LP and 8 Track and it was later released on cassette.

★ LP - Columbia CS-9884

★ 8 Track - Columbia 18C-09884

★ Cassette - PCT-09884
It has been reissued on CD at least 5 times.

★ In 1988 by Mobile Fidelity - MFCD-762

★ In 1995 by Sony/Legacy - CK-9884

★ In 2001 by Sony/Legacy - CK-85774, purchaseable from Laugh.com - Order #LGH1070

Miscellanea

The front cover of this album features photographs of Groucho Marx and John Lennon next to the pseudo-Communistic slogan "All hail Marx, Lennon!" Because of this, the album is sometimes erroneously referred to as ''All Hail Marx and Lennon!'' The title of the album could also seen to be a paraphrase of Groucho Marx's joke in Duck Soup, where he says "I can be in two places at once" to which Margaret Dumont's character replies "How is that possible when you're not anywhere?". Groucho retorts "Boston and Philadelphia manage to be in two places at the same time!"
The back cover is an overhead shot of the four members looking up at the camera, with Proctor standing on Austin's foot.
Inside the gatefold of the album there are eight posed photos representing various scenes from "The Further Adventures Of Nick Danger."
The album ''Not Insane or Anything You Want To'' is the next to make use of some of the characters introduced on this album.
The phone call that Nick Danger answers immediately after he steps into his office is placed by George Tirebiter on the group's next album, ''Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers''.
In many interviews Phil Austin has said that the script for "Nick Danger" was primarily inspired by the 1950s radio detective show ''Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar''.
In the early 1970s a pizza parlor opened in Madison, Wisconsin named Rocky Rococo's. (The character's name was possibly inspired by the Beatles song ''Rocky Raccoon''.) It has now become a major midwestern chain [1]. There doesn't seem to be any direct relationship to the character in Nick Danger, apart from the name.
There are also quite a few bars around the United States named Nick Danger's. There is clothing line^[2] called "Nick Danger", as well as a garage band, a porno star, a site about board games (now defunct)^[3], and a radio DJ^[4] all using the name.

References

1. CD Liner Notes by David Ossman
2. Clothing Line web site
3. Planet Proctor newsletter
4. Radio DJ Obit

External links

★ Firesign Theatre. ''Firesign Theatre''. 19 Jan. 2006 .

★ Firesign Theatre. ''How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All''. Columbia Records, 1969.

★ "FIREZINE: Linques!." ''Firesign Theatre FAQ''. 20 Jan. 2006 .

★ Marsh, Dave, and Greil Marcus. "The Firesign Theatre." ''The New Rolling Stone Record Guide''. Ed. Dave Marsh and John Swenson. New York: Random House, 1983. 175-176.

★ Smith, Ronald L. ''The Goldmine Comedy Record Price Guide''. Iola: Krause, 1996.