A ‘Weirdly Cool’ Tribute in the Wrong Medium

If Stan Freberg’s “The United States of America Vol. 1” was the “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” of comedy albums, the Firesign Theatre’s landmark late-’60s/early-’70s releases might be the comedy counterparts of Bob Dylan’s “Bringing It All Back Home”/”Highway 61 Revisited”/”Blonde on Blonde” detonation.

Dense and cerebral, bristling with spontaneous wit and stream-of-consciousness style, the albums--with mouth-filling titles such as “How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You’re Not Anywhere at All” and “Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers”--combined old-time radio-theater methods with mind-expanding psychedelia. Kafkaesque narratives blended with a distinctively American innocence to form epic, surreal commentaries on a turbulent society.

In “Weirdly Cool,” an hourlong observance of the L.A. troupe’s 35th anniversary airing tonight on KCET, Robin Williams refers to its work as “the audio equivalent of a Hieronymus Bosch painting,” which sums it up pretty well.

The key word there is “audio.” As brilliant as they are in radio studios and recording booths, Peter Bergman, Phil Austin, Phil Proctor and David Ossman are kind of clunky in front of a live audience. Unfortunately, “Weirdly Cool” is dominated by concert performances of some of their best-known bits. The playfully amateurish tone of the staging (a bit like the earnest pageant in “Waiting for Guffman”) doesn’t enhance their essential medium, which is language.

“Weirdly Cool,” which also includes observations by John Goodman, Chevy Chase and George Carlin, offers only a cursory look at the colorful history of a group that incubated in L.A.’s radio bunkers and went on to become the jesters laureate of the counterculture.

That would be a great show to see. This one is OK for listening.

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“Weirdly Cool”can be seen at 11 tonight on KCET-TV.