Waiting for the Electrician, or Someone Like Him

The Firesign Theatre was an American comedy troupe consisting of Phil Austin, Peter Bergman, David Ossman, and Philip Proctor. Their brand of surrealistic humor is best known through their record albums, which acquired an enthusiastic following in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The troupe began as live radio performers in Los Angeles on radio stations KPPC-FM and KPFK during the mid-1960s. The group's name stems in part from astrology, because the membership encompasses all three "fire signs": Aries (Austin), Leo (Proctor), and Sagittarius (Bergman and Ossman).

Poet, comedian, voice artist, producer, anthologist, teacher, David Ossman has worn a dizzying number of hats in his nearly forty years of work in the audio medium. He has produced major series and programs for National Public Radio, American Public Media, WETA in Washington D.C, WGBH in Boston, and Pacifica. On top of this impressive list of credentials, he has produced, directed and voiced innumerable programs, advertisements and other audio ephemera for various commercial and non-commercial radio outlets all over the globe. His voice credits go back to the early sixties and stretch right up through Pixar's A Bug's Life, released in 1998. He has voiced many characters on the animated series The TICK, and his "straight" narrator's voice has graced the likes of PBS's NOVA, NPR's The Sunday Show and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's I Want To Take You Higher, a nationally-broadcast multi-program tribute to the psychedelic era. As one-quarter of the Firesign Theatre since 1966, he has co-created over 20 albums. He also wrote the liner notes for The Best of Bill Cosby while he worked for Warner Brothers Records in the 1960s, and he was a guest on Chad and Jeremy's critically-acclaimed album Of Cabbages and Kings. Recent releases as a writer/director include Raymond Chandler's Goldfish (a radio noir production featuring Harry Anderson and Harris Yulin), and Empire of the Air (a dramatic account of radio's history, based on the bestselling book by Tom Lewis), starring David Ogden Stiers, Bonnie Bedelia and Steve Allen. Ossman also directed Norman Corwin's We Hold These Truths (a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Bill of Rights), and updated the legendary radio broadcast War of the Worlds on its 50th anniversary. Ossman's poetry, translations, scripts and miscellaneous non-fiction have been published in limited editions, magazines and periodicals and in several anthologies. The Sullen Art (Corinth Books), his collection of radio interviews from the early '60s, is considered a classic in the history of Beat-era Poets. He has appeared on stage with Michael Learned in A R Gurney's Love Letters, as the lead in Love is a Place, e. e. cummings cabaret, and as Mark Twain in solo performances across the country. Ossman lives with his wife, Judith Walcutt, on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound (North of Seattle, Washington).