Peter Bergman

Deploying oblique, absurd and surreal humor, the four-man comedy troupe Firesign Theater made a series of cult-classic albums in the late 1960s that spoke to the counterculture, especially its stoner division. One of the groups’ founders, Peter Bergman, died March 9 at 72. In 1966 he started an all-night show in Los Angeles, Radio Free Oz, taking calls from people on acid trips and developing a brand of nonlinear comedy that made its way onto dozens of albums over four decades, starting with Waiting for the Electrician or Someone like Him in 1968. “Take heart, dear friends,” Bergman said in his final broadcast, three days before his death. “We are passing through the darkening of the light … I love you. See ya tomorrow.”