In the Next World, You're on Your Own
| In the Next World, You're on Your Own | ||||
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cover art by William Stout
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| Studio album by The Firesign Theatre | ||||
| Released | October 1975 | |||
| Genre | Comedy | |||
| Length | 44:00 | |||
| Label | Columbia | |||
| Producer | Phil Austin and David Ossman | |||
| The Firesign Theatre chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| The New Rolling Stone Record Guide |   |
| The Goldmine Comedy Record Price Guide | |
In the Next World, You're on Your Own was the last comedy album recorded by The Firesign Theatre for Columbia Records. It was released in October 1975.
The first side of the album, "Police Street", features a group of sketches interconnected by the kind of police show satire reminiscent of Phil Austin's detective fiction (Austin being best known as the detective character Nick Danger). The highlight sketch is "Give It Back," a mock game show in which losing contestants have to surrender their parents' material possessions to the Native Americans. In surreal fashion, the police satire also plays out a family drama. In this drama the main characters are: the hard-boiled Lieutenant Detective Random Coolzip; his wife, Peggy, who is also his dispatcher; their son, Skip Coolzip, a junior policeman; and their daughter, Kim, a pornographic film actress.
Several side sketches are interwoven with the police drama. In the first, a commercial for Dead Cat Soap segues into a soap opera spoof, starring Peggy. We learn that Random is rarely home, Peggy is having an affair, and Skip's ("Skipper" to his mother) sexual orientation is a scandal. In the second, Kim Coolzip presents a seductive commercial for liquid meat, which segues into her appearance on a charity fund-raising telethon. The third is the game show, in which Skip Coolzip "gives back" to Native Americans his family's car, then his father's squad car ("the black screamer"), and finally, "everything." He is also assigned, with his sister, to take over the Academy Awards celebration "with these stirring words: 'Eat flaming death, fascist media pigs.'"
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