A Prescription for Laughter

An interview with Dr. Demento from the TV show “Real People,” whose executive producer, George Schlatter, got a Tedium interview a couple of years ago.

Into the heart of dementia: My Dr. Demento Story

My experience withThe Dr. Demento Show began around 1992 with an old friend’s cassette collection. My old friend Mike (the same one I talked about in my 2022 Zelda piece) had Weird Al’s In 3-D, Allan Sherman’s Greatest Hits, and Dr. Demento’s 20th Anniversary Collection on tape. We listened to them constantly.

He dubbed a copy of the 20th Anniversary Collection for me, and I’m proud to say I wore it out within a few months. I was hooked on the mad music and crazy comedy, particularly enjoying Zappa’s “Dancin’ Fool,” Kip Adotta’s “Wet Dream,” and “The Time Warp.” Then there was “Fish Heads,” which became an instant favorite.

Mike also had the Dr. Demento 20th Anniversary VHS Collection, so at first I thought Dr. D hosted a TV variety show. I didn’t realize the good doctor was actually a radio host until I had a chance to read the cassette liner notes. Eventually, I bought the CD (which I still own).

A few years later, I began learning guitar and collecting music (the weirder and funnier, the better). Mike and I still hung out, sharing a love of novelty music and video games. Somehow, the idea of finding the actual radio show popped into our heads one day.

When we couldn’t find the show on the radio, we bought the CDs. The 25th Anniversary Collection, Spooky Tunes & Scary Melodies, Dementia 2000, and Country Corn all saw quite a few spins.

Just getting access to the show was a pain in the neck. I first started looking for it around 1998 or so. Imagine my delight when a new local station began airing it in 1999.

On and off the radio and the net

The radio station list on DMDB.org turned out to be a godsend in our search for the show. And even though we finally found it on the radio, our success was short-lived. On November 28, 1999, I tuned into the show only to discover it had been replaced by Off the Record.

For the next few years, I couldn’t find a station in my state that carried the show. Fortunately, there was a robust online community dedicated to listening to radio stations online. Around 2002, I discovered Josh Lehan’s Dr. Demento streaming page. By this point, Mike had moved on from being a fan of the show, but I was still doing my best to access and share it. At the same time, I was learning how to play guitar with the ultimate goal of getting a song on the show.

I told everyone I knew about the show. I had a Geocities site dedicated to it. I wrote essays and covered songs from the show in live performances and open mics. I reached out to every program director I could find to see if they’d start running the show. No one was biting. I listened to the show through Internet radio for several years … but it was spotty at best. Occasionally, I missed entire segments. Even so, I still compiled a CD of songs/instrumentals and sent it in. I believe Dr. D still has it in his archive, despite never playing anything from it.

I was still very much inspired by the show to play music live. Every band I was in during my early college days let me play a few novelty tunes in between sets. They were real crowd pleasers, especially “Shaving Cream” and “Jolly Green Giant.” Yes, I have the recordings. No, I will not be sharing them …

Later, I got a degree in electronic media and journalism, partly so I could personally recommend the show at any radio station I happened to work at (it didn’t work). I joined The Demento Society in 2004. In 2008 or so, I finally found a way to consistently listen to the show: through the Demento Online Club (DOC) on Dr. D’s official website. By 2010, the show went online only and has continued in that format ever since. My music “career” stalled, and it became more of a hobby instead.

In 2018, we saw the release of the amazing Dr. Demento Covered in Punk and during that time, I also got a chance to talk to John Cafiero and Dr. D for my piece on “Fish Heads.” It was the highlight of my career when Robert Haimer reached out to me to tell me how much he liked the story. Or when Bill Mumy praised my Wildman Fischer piece on the official Barnes & Barnes group. I’ve made a lot of friends and acquaintances through Dr. Demento that I never would have had if I’d never heard the show.

The show means a great deal to me. Without it, I probably never would have become a musician, I never would’ve gotten into radio and, later, journalism, and I certainly wouldn’t have the sense of humor I have today.

Every time I’ve interacted with Dr. Demento, it’s been extremely positive and inspiring. In 2016, I had an idea for a funny song. I wrote and recorded a quick demo one afternoon (listen here if you like), enlisted the help of Brad Stanfield (an amazing musician who made one of the first homemade tapes played on the show), and released the tune.

That song, “Pineapple Pizza,” was played a few times on the show about five years later (the music video is still up). I’ll always be grateful to Dr. Demento for not only playing my funny song, but also for helping me get through some tough times in my life. I can’t thank him enough for expanding my musical horizons and inspiring me in my life and career.

Thanks, Doc!

Dr. Demento on David Letterman, circa 1983. Pee-Wee Herman was also apparently on this episode, which is a great reminder of how great late night used to be.

Dr. Demento started careers and changed lives with this weird radio show he started

The Dr. Demento Show always offered musicians and comedians an opportunity to get their homemade tapes on the show. Weird Paul Petroskey, who we covered back in 2019, sent a cassette to Dr. D in 1986. He told us via email:

I was surprised on March 15th to find that I had received a letter back from Dr. Demento regarding the album. In the letter, he told me that there was nothing on the tape that he found playable for his radio show. He also told me that sending 32 songs on one tape was a mistake in the music business and that I needed to send somewhere between 1 and 3 songs and make each one “as perfect as you possibly can.” He also showed some concern that perhaps this was my only copy of the tape and offered to mail it back to me, regardless of the fact that he normally would not do that. Paul never expected the album to get played, but has kept the letter for all these years, saying it’s “now one of my prized possessions.”

(By the way, it’s worth noting that, since we wrote about Weird Paul, he has become freaking huge on TikTok, and was even featured in The New York Times with his wife Niffer. You probably already follow him.)

Even working on the show brings people together. Mysterious Mose, the webmaster of Dr. Demento.com, says that working on the website has been a joy. He got started roughly 15 years ago and has been working on it ever since, he’s very helpful when there are subscription/streaming issues). He first heard the show on KMET in its early years and listened to it quite a bit. When asked about the enduring legacy of the show, he said, “I guess the most enduring legacy of the show is discovering Weird Al, but there’s so much more to the show besides that, and I hope people remember all the wonderful music the Doc introduced or kept alive.” He’s working on ways to promote the show and guide new listeners, and the DOC will still be available after the Doc retires in October.

And for Robert Young, the show’s former associate producer, the show helped guide his career. In 1981, he was working as a broadcast news and features journalist when he was hired to work on radio programs for The Westwood One companies in late 1981. He worked several shows, but Dr. Demento was his favorite (he’d continue to work on the program for nine years) and he wanted it to be successful:

I loved working on the Dr. Demento Show. I was very protective of it and just wanted it to be HUGE. I organized his fans to call radio stations to get them to air it in markets where it was not heard, or to have it put back on when they were thinking of canceling it.

He even got to spend some time with the musicians and performers, including Spinal Tap, with whom he spent several hours (with them in character the entire time) back in 1984.

Comedy Artists from around the ‘net celebrate Dr. D’s legacy

While the Dr. Demento show provided a lifeline to comedy nerds around the world for decades, it was only a matter of time before a bunch of like-minded individuals got together to create a funny music community. In 2007, it finally happened when a group of musicians got together to create a repository of original comedy songs and skits. They called it The Funny Music Project, or FuMP.

One of the founders, Ian Bonds (Insane Ian), saw quite a bit of airplay on the show (including favorites like “Benedict Cumberbatch” and “Dig Dug”) with a #1 song on the Funny 25 countdown in 2015 (and again as part of a group in 2019. He’s also the chairperson of the Logan Whitehurst Memorial Awards for Excellence (which we wrote about a few years ago; they’ll be awarding their first Dr. Demento lifetime achievement award soon). Like me, he started listening to the show around ‘92 or ‘93. He recorded a cassette full of songs that didn’t get played on the show, but eventually found airplay with his song “Guitar Hero” on May 11, 2008. He’s been a major player in the community ever since, starting the Funny Music Project (FuMP) with a coalition of other comedy musicians and helping run the official Dr. Demento group.

His life has been positively impacted by the show, including the creation of a number of friendships and relationships. Dr. Demento once referred to him as a “comedy rock god” and he even got to wear his top hat once. And he encourages anyone who can to tune in. “No matter your taste for something funny,” he said, “you’re bound to find something you’ll like on the show, brought to you by one of the most unique and knowledgeable hosts ever.”

In June, Devo Spice, another hilarious musician and FuMP co-founder, wrote on his blog “Pretty much everything I’ve done creatively over the past 40 years has been funny music related, and that’s all because of him. Most of my best friends are people I’ve met through comedy music. Many of my favorite memories are things that happened as a direct result of him or his show, several of which were with him.” The entire post is worth a read.

Grant Bociocco, the Podcasting Puppet Master (and leader of Throwing Toasters), told us:

It’s clear to me my sense of humor would not be what it is today if it had not been for Dr. Demento. If it weren’t for him, I’d probably never have discovered Tom Lehrer, The Smothers Brothers, Stan Freberg and more. These acts formed the foundation of my style of comedy, and for that I’m eternally grateful to Dr. Demento. I still remember the absolute thrill hearing one of my songs on Dr. Demento for the first time. And I got that same thrill each and every time he played one of my songs in the years after. It was a huge honor to be a small part of his legendary show.

The Great Luke Ski and Tim Crist (ShoEboX from Worm Quartet) are two of the most requested artists of the 21st century on the show. Both of them took some time to speak with me for this piece.

Worm Quartet’s “Great Idea for a Song,” a highly requested song on Demento’s show in the early 2000s.

Crist was also introduced to Dr. D through Weird Al, and also didn’t have a chance to actually hear the show until much later (in this case, when he went to Syracuse for college). In 1999, he released a full-length CD as Work Quartet and sent it to the show. Pretty soon, Dr. Demento played his song “I Bit William Shatner.” He had the most requested song of the year in both 2004 and “Great Idea For A Song,” and “Inner Voice,” w/ Sudden Death). He became friends with Dr. D and a big part of the show and Funny Music Project.

“He has always been incredibly supportive, and it’s meant the world to me,” Crist told us about his experience with Dr. Demento, “I’ve met several other comedy musicians through his show, many of whom I count among my best friends. I wish Barry all the best in his retirement.”

For Luke, who’s received quite a bit of airplay for hilarious pop culture inspired songs like “Stealing Like a Hobbit” and many other fantastically funny tunes (check him out on Bandcamp), the show had a major impact on him. He has been writing/performing/recording comedy music since 1993, but (like many of us) wasn’t able to hear the show in Wisconsin, where he grew up. When he went to college, he was finally able to hear the show and became a devoted fan, making mix tapes of his favorite songs and submitting his own to Dr. D. Luke said Dr. Demento “sent me back wonderfully supportive rejection letters and suggested I go into a studio to record my songs.”

The Great Luke Ski’s “What’s Up Spock,” his first of his many songs that have appeared on Dr. Demento. Ski says that his show offered budding musicians a venue for self-expression.

Luke took that advice and ended up getting airplay in October 1996 with a parody called “What’s Up Spock.” He was thrilled (also, the song rocks). He echoed a sentiment shared by most of us: how much Dr. Demento positively impacted his life, telling us: “Dr. Demento is basically responsible for every important relationship in my life that isn’t one of my blood relatives.” All of those relationships led to communication, collaboration, performances at fan conventions, and more.

Luke told us that Dr. D gave voice to people who were just trying to express themselves and find their own sense of family, whether they were listeners or aspiring artists.

“I just think of the thousands of people around the country and the world who’s songs he’s played. Even if it was just one time for one song, how much that meant to them to have their song on his show, and how much happiness he’s given to so many people.”

He added he’d recommend checking out the recent retrospective shows and the entire archive, and he is glad to be a part of the show’s legacy:

“Just because his show is wrapping up doesn’t mean that comedy music itself is. It will always be there, it will always go on. And as me and Tony Goldmark once said: Demented forever; demented for life!”