Everything You Know Is Wrong

Untitled

This is also the name of a "Weird Al" Yankovic song on the Bad Hair Day album. It is also the name of three different books, by Paul Kirchner (1995), Lloyd Pye (1997), and Russ Kick/Disinfo (2002). It is also a message on the Silly level of Marble Madness

Everything You Know Is Wrong is a comedy album by the Firesign Theatre released in October of 1974 on Columbia Records.

Track listing

Side one

1. "Side 1" – 20:45

Side two

1. "Side 2" – 21:15

Detailed track information and commentary

Like the group's other albums, Everything You Know Is Wrong is made up of a series of surreal skits that make satiric comments on contemporary topics. On this album the skits are connected to, or occurring in, "Nude Age Enterprises", the recording studio inside the trailer home of "Happy" Harry Cox. Cox (played by Phil Austin) records seminars and assorted reports, which he calls his "mind-breaking records", to promote the "New Age" and other counterculture beliefs ("Dogs flew spaceships! The Aztecs invented the vacation! Our forefathers took drugs! Your brain is not the boss! Yes! That's right! Everything you know is wrong!").

Other notable characters include:

• Nino Savatte, the psychic mind-bender (Philip Proctor) — a parody of Uri Geller, the psychic spoon-bender.
• Daredemon Reebus Caneebus (Austin), pronounced "ca-NEE-bus" — a parody of daredevil Evel Knievel.
• Don Brouhaha, a Native American shaman with a knowledge of natural psychoactive drugs — a parody of Carlos Castaneda's fictional shaman Don Juan Matus.
• Gary the Seeker, a well-meaning if annoying member of a group of New Age experimentalists who travel on what Gary describes as "The Heavenly Bus".
• Doctor Firesign, in a cameo appearance, selling something potent (Inca Hell-oil tonic! in his medicine show. Cox plays a wire recording containing part of an adventure in which Dr. Firesign encounters Don Brouhaha.
• Art Holeflaffer; caretaker and groundskeeper at the trailer park where Harry Cox lives.
• Buzz and Bunny Crumbhunger; A married couple who recorded their abduction, murder and resurrection by extraterrestrials on their home movie camera (They narrate the footage on a seemingly normal travelogue TV show).
• Pat Hat, a parody of sportscaster Howard Cossell
• Harold Hiphugger and Ray Hamburger: The "Where It's Happy" television news team of Channel Six, "The Hot One for the High Desert". Their style of reporting news largely by talking between themselves, rather than directly to the audience, parodies the Happy talk television news format which came into fashion about this time.

Issues and reissues

This album was originally released simultaneously on LP, 8 Track, Quadrophonic LP, and quadrophonic 8 track cartridge.

• LP - KC-33141
• 8 Track - CA-33141
• Quadrophonic LP - CQ-33141
• Quadrophonic 8 track cartridge -

It has been re-released on CD at least once

• 2001 - Laugh.com LGH1077

Miscellanea

After it was recorded, a movie version was made, with the group lip-syncing to the album. The cinematographer for this was Allen Daviau, who later filmed E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The film was released on a VHS format videotape in 1993 by The Firesign Theatre. (UPC barcode 735885 100131. Currently available from the Lodestone Catalog / SKU# MSUG001.)

Two of the characters introduced on this album, Ray Hamburger (pronounced Ham-ber-jer') and Harold Hiphugger, reappear on the group's later album Give Me Immortality or Give Me Death.

Noteworthy quotes

• "Yes, I'm Dr. Happy Harry Cox, and call me happy because I am!" "Now don't be afraid, here in the 'Nude Age,' because there is a seeker born every minute."

This is a paraphrase of the well-known aphorism, usually attributed to P.T. Barnum, that '"there's a sucker born every minute."

• "I was right about the comet!"

This is a reference to Comet Kohoutek, which many people in 1973 had falsely predicted would be spectacular.

• Transcript of the "Official stolen government training film of the secret plan to deal with an ailen uprising". The "film" is a parody of, among other things: General Curtis LeMay's statement that the Communists of North Vietnam should be "bombed back to the stone age". LeMay is also noteworthy for having furiously informed Barry Goldwater that he was not permitted to access rumored secret UFO information supposedly being kept at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, leading UFO-philes to suspect that LeMay knew of the existence of alien spacecraft and was hiding information related to First Contact.

Narrator (Ossman) in a classroom film on the Founding Fathers:

• "Benjamin Franklin: The only President of the United States, who was never President of the United States."

References

• Firesign Theatre. Everything You Know Is Wrong. Columbia Records, 1974.
• Firesign Theatre. Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers. Laugh.com, 1987.
• Firesign Theatre. Firesign Theatre. 19 Jan. 2006 <http://www.firesigntheatre.com/>.
• "FIREZINE: Linques!." Firesign Theatre FAQ. 20 Jan. 2006 <http://firezine.net/faq/>.
• 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.