FIRESIGN THEATRE has taken on a life of its own today that defies the protestations and scheduled plans of its participants to continue on the conversation, now redefined with the experience of the combined decades of professionalism and technological breakthroughs and breakdowns, hoisted on a petard of monetary indifference. The diverging lives and careers of the members makes it extremely inconvenient to form what is the best part of their working and thinking minds, FIRESIGN THEATRE; the psychic comradery of a product of the highest unexpected order, true audio surrealism of the finest craftsmanship.

Work makes the group work now, but that wasn't always the case. The crew had its humble beginnings in the small fledgling LA Pacifica radio network affiliate station KPFK during the 11/17/66 broadcast of Peter, "The Wiz", Bergman's five-nights-a-week underground hit program Radio Free OZ. Under the pretense of The OZ Film Festival, the four improvised a series of imaginary movies projected and narrated by pseudo film makers. There was an instant unique chemistry formulated that continues to attract and combine their diverse elements to this day. All either worked at the station or had appeared on the show from time to time but this was the first opportunity to present them together, but not as a formal group. Over the following few months various combinations coagulated to continue the conversation. By word of mouth and airwave flights of fancy, the show built up quite a following in the LA area. It was exciting and hip to listen to Radio Free OZ as one never knew what was going to happen next, or when the un-named group would materialize and neither did they. It was a comedy colloquium that involved the listeners as much as the performers in a shared experience. Not the normal kind of programming one expects from radio, but being on a public station gave Bergman greater latitude to let his unabashed unhairbrained free thinking explore uncharted territory and have on provocative guests and experimental situations. Also broadcasting late at night when the studio bosses were sleeping could have given the show a free-form exhilarating open hand slap over the months.

Radio Free OZ eventually started plugging "Love-In" kits for sale and urging the 'kids' to come out for a free concert on Easter Sunday 3/27/67. And come out they did. 40,000 seekers of a more joyous life showed up and stunned the perpetrators into the realization that maybe they could meld into a permanent group and produce great comedy for a living, but not quite just yet. The money wasn't there. No one really remembers when a formal group was formed but we do know that Bergman felt that Radio Free OZ had outgrown KPFK, so it then graduated to the powerful commercial airwaves but the guys always kept a foot in the open door of public radio, continuing to produce programs.

The show's rise in local popularity, the success of the Love-In and the magnetism of the youth movement market caused Columbia Records' Gary Usher to sniff out his friend Phil Austin and host Peter Bergman to get the group formed with an off-handed, uncensored, recording contract to book unlimited studio time, with the only stipulation that they make a profit.