On their way to an outdoor concert at the bucolic Endicott estate this same merry band picked up a raving anti-drug hitchhiker (one of the characters calls him "a conservative drifter") who greets passersby by leaning out the car window and screaming "Crack couple!" and who warns that the lyrics to "McNamara's Band" - if played backwards - send out a subliminal message to "smoke pot."

Flower-child folksinger Woodrow T. Justice, host of a Iate-night call-in request show, keeps up a snappy line of patter while crooning such old standards as "Ty Cobb's Filthy Athletic Supporter," "Sandy Duncan's Glass Eye," and the ever-popular "Hava Nagilah Blues."

Sound bizarre? Well, it's just a sample of the unusual viewing fare Dedham residents have grown strangely accustomed to when their clickers alight on Channel 5, the public-access cable outlet. The brainchild of program director Mark Gallagher - and his partners in mayhem, Eric Bickernicks and John Horrigan - this brand of gonzo video is beginning to attract national attention their work has recently been featured on Today, and MTV, and in Rolling Stone.

It may also become the catalyst for a popular revolt in Dedham against Continental Cablevision, the company that stirred up the hornet's nest by firing Gallagher on November 25 (Continental should not be confused with Cablevision, the company that serves Boston, Brookline, and 22 other Massachusetts communities.)

Perhaps Dedham her learned it's lesson. The community gained notoriety in recent years for shutting down Video Expo as a porn-peddler and for chasing the movie Henry & June out of town. But now Gallagher and his on-the-edge cable programming have suddenly become First Amendment causes celebres for everyone from the town selectmen to the editorial writers at Dedham's Daily Transcript.

"Arguably, we've produced some of the best avant-garde stuff in the country," says Gallagher, who believes he was canned for being too outrageous. "I was told that 'Hey you're too cavalier and non-conformist. Sorry, buddy. See you.'" A disgusted Horrigan, who is calling it quits after eight yeas of volunteering at the channel, says Gallagher was done in because Continental "wanted to bring the last mustang into the corral." General manager Tony Doar refused to comment on a "internal personnel matter," but the Transcript quoted him as saying the firing was not a "slap on creativity."

That's not exactly how Bickernicks, an award-winning producer who resigned to protest the Gallagher firing sees it. "We were willing to be different and to use the medium to its fullest," he told the Phoenix.

They certainly dared to be different. Channel 5 has featured such programs as Klown Hare, described as a "shock television" collage of sounds, sights, and improvisation (a bit like Soupy Sales on acid). The offbeat Livewire talk-and-issues show became embroiled in controversy when a caller managed to sneak in an uncensored F-word. But the hot show - the one that featured the gay clerk and paranoid hitchhiker - is The Really Relentless, Irrelevant, and Redundant Program Show, which airs on Fridays at 10 p.m.

Relentless is a little hard to describe, but there are some recurring themes. A tone-deaf guitar player (named Phillippe Alu, in tribute to the former major-league outfielder) dies a horrible death each show; the boys then use a little device called a "transporter" to take them to the scene of the next adventure. They generally cavort around the Dedham area, getting into strange situations to which they provide their own running commentary. The show ranges from eerie to just plain silly. It's a little like David Lynch meets America's Funniest Home Videos.

Gallagher asserts that "we never crossed the line of obscenity or profanity." But Relentless is definitely not PC. In one show, Alu's dismembered body is delivered in boxes with the return address of Jeffery Dahmer, in Milwaukee. The Dedham court show included a spate of anti-gay jokes as well as a dig at Teddy Kennedy's drinking habits. The "conservative drifter" program offered up this Horrigan proposal for testing urine for drugs: "You pass it, they have to drink it. You fail it, you have to drink it."

One thing seems undeniable: the programming is catching on. "They're basically cult figures among the young," says Transcript reporter Melissa Lamb. "People stay home on Friday nights to watch the Relentless show."

It might not be surprising that the program appeals to youngsters, but Gallagher had to be encouraged by the show of support he received from a considerably grayer constituency at a November 26 Dedham Board of Selectmen meeting.

"You look at NBC three weeks ago," declared former selectman George Hoell, referring to Gallagher's appearance on Today. "The same individual that's being terminated was lauded to the heavens in terms of creativity...Here we got a Mr. Doar, who apparently takes exception to NBC and figures he's [Gallagher's] not worthy to be program director in the town of Dedham."

Selectmen George Boylan added, "I think the stuff they put on was terrific," and spoke of the obligation "to defend the access to free speech." And his colleague Stephen Rahavy lauded the "enormously creative group of individuals that have been brought together and have provided a different way of looking at the town of Dedham, rather than the mundane way it may have been viewed in the past 200 years." And these tributes were from people who hardly look like Relentless devotees.

In truth, town officials appeared to have seized upon the Gallagher firing to hold Continental's feet to the fire on a number of issues, including the amount of money the company allocates to local programming. Angry selectmen have called for a cable subscriber survey, for the company to reinstate Gallagher while it's performance is reviewed, and for a December 9 meeting to confront the cable licensee with their concerns. Lamb notes that the Gallagher dismissal has surely served to "fuel the fire" of more-generalized town discontent with Continental.

In the meantime, Gallagher seems genuinely touched by the outpouring of support, which he calls a prime example of "grassroots democracy." But given his doubts that Continental can be pressured info bringing him back ("There are no plans whatsoever to reinstate Mr. Gallagher," Doar says), he is beginning to turn his attention elsewhere. Later this month, he will head to New York for meetings with representatives of both the Today and Saturday Night Live shows in an effort to crack the big time.

And as Selectman Marie-Louise Kehoe noted on November 26, Gallagher's probably got a pretty decent shot. "I'm sure it's going to be cable's loss, not Mark's," she said. "Because I believe Mark can go a lot farther than cable in Dedham."