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Though some recording was done in the late 1800’s, the 20th Century was really the first to have popular musicians and speakers record their performances and have them regularly available to most anyone. In previous times artists were limited by the power of their own lungs; now almost anyone (some not even that talented!) can pick up a guitar and make a record that will win them thousands of adoring fans and make them suddenly rich. Recordings can take their voices from Armenia to Antarctica. Recordings can play their voices over and over anytime the listener wants it. The culture has been changed dramatically by recording and its sister medium, broadcasting. There is no parallel for it anywhere in history. Few people know these facts better than Barry Hansen, also known as Doctor Demento.
Hansen of course is responsible for the venerable Doctor Demento Radio Show, syndicated weekly to over 100 stations all across the country. The show is often the only outlet for wonderfully funny music from artists like Spike Jones, Tom Lehrer, Stan Freberg, Monty Python, and Frank Zappa. Moreover, Doctor Demento is also a prime source for funny songs sent in by talented amateurs, which is how Weird Al Yankovic got his start.
But Hansen is much more than a radio personality with a reputation for playing the strangest records on any planet. He has been an avid music collector from the age of 12. After studying classical music in college, he wrote his master’s thesis for UCLA in the early 60’s on the roots of rhythm and blues and rock music. He is a serious musical historian and backs it up with one of the largest collections of sound recordings anywhere, public or private.
As we roll and tumble into the new century, we decided this was the best
time to contact the good Doctor to help us look back on the first century of
recorded sounds. He immediately agreed to speak to us. When we began the
conversation, rather than projecting the animated goofiness of his air
persona, Hansen talked with a matter-of-fact surety that speaks of long
study, but transmitting an occasional twinkling eye, even over the
telephone. He plucked obscure facts from memory, giving us a feel for what
the very earliest popular recordings were like, his favorites songs and
artists and, of course, letting us catch up on the latest regarding the Doctor
Demento Show itself.
Cosmik: We're coming to the end of the first century of recording here and
lots of people are familiar with the last thirty or forty years of music,
but the early history of the century is not known at all by most music
lovers. What can you tell us about how records came to be?
Dr. Demento: That's more or less true (that we've had recordings only for the last century). Edison invented the phonograph in 1877 and nothing much really happened with it for the next ten years. The first stabs at making records commercially were in 1888. 1892 was the first year that you could call the phonograph a mass medium.
Cosmik: Do you know when player piano rolls first came in? That was the only other way of recording in that era that I'm aware of.
Dr. Demento: Oh, I'd have to do some research to find out that. There were also music boxes. Which worked on a somewhat similar principle as the player pianos. They had a disk that was mechanically made, I think you could record those disks with a keyboard too, by punching holes in the metal disk. Some of those music boxes were really elaborate. They weren't just tinkly things, they were big! I've seen some of those but I don't have dates right at the top of my head.
Cosmik: I'm curious about the really early stuff that you have in your collection. I'm told you have a huge collection of 78 RPM recordings. Do you also have wax cylinders and things like that?
Dr. Demento: It's not a specialty of mine but I do have some. I get more interested in records when electric recording comes in, in 1925.
Cosmik: When were the first 78's made?
Dr. Demento: The first flat disks were made in 18... I could look this up again, but the Berliner Company, which was the first company which made regularly available flat disk records in a fairly wide variety of (musical) things, they started up in 1894. That was the predecessor to Victor. So they made their seven-inch records, the oldest one I have is 1895.
Cosmik: What's on it?
Dr. Demento: The one I have is a brass band doing a number called (pauses) I think it's "You're Not The Only Pebble On The Beach.” This was just a brass band instrumental. Then I've got an assortment of them from the late 1890's. In 1902 the Victor Talking Machine Company started. That was a really well run, commercial, well-financed enterprise that started putting flat disk record players in people's homes all across America. It's beginning at that point that you can really talk about hit records.
Cosmik: I imagine what comprised a hit in those days would be only one or two thousand records...
Dr. Demento: In the very early days, yes. But you start getting hundreds of thousands and then before long, millions, when it really gets going. The first million seller was 1905, I believe.
Cosmik: What was that song?
Dr. Demento: That was "The Preacher and The Bear," by Arthur Collins. I'd get a lot of complaints if I played (it) today. It's a little bit racist, but it's the sort of humor that many Americans liked in 1905. It wasn't really racist in a hostile way. The black character in the story comes off in a patronizing manner. The N-word was common on American popular records until 1915, around the time of World War I, that's when it starts to fade. (You hear) songs about black people after that but you don't get the N-word anymore.
Cosmik: It's interesting that the first million seller has a comedic twist to it.
Dr. Demento: Oh, yes it did! A lot of the early big sellers were comedy records
because they were cheap to record for one thing, especially spoken comedy.
And easy to record. It was a challenge to record an orchestra in the early
days.. There were certain instruments that just didn't record at all, like a
bass. You wouldn't even try because the frequency range started at like 150
hertz. Anything below that just wouldn't record before electric recording
came in.
Cosmik: Can you tell us how many recordings you have? Last I heard it was way over 100,000.
Dr. Demento: Oh it's probably close to 300,000. I haven't counted them in a long time.
Cosmik: Do you have a full time person minding them?
Dr. Demento: No, I don't.
Cosmik: I once interviewed Michael Ochs and toured his archives, but yours dwarfs his as far as the recordings. That brings to mind his brother Phil who was mostly a political folk singer, but he also had some very funny songs.
Dr. Demento: Oh sure, he used humor, like Bob Dylan and all those people who wrote political stuff at that time. One of the best ways to make a point is with sarcasm.
Cosmik: Like Tom Lehrer, of course. One of the more recent groups that I really like for that kind of work, but they never seemed to go anywhere was The Foremen. Are you familiar with them?
Dr. Demento: Oh yes!
Cosmik: I love those guys. Do you know whatever happened to them?
Dr. Demento: Roy Zimmerman, who wrote all the songs, decided that he wanted to be a solo artist. He didn't want to be limited by The Foremen's shtick. He's made one CD on his own which is very good. The Foremen, last I heard, were still together, but they haven't found any writers to replace Roy. (Roy) uses the same post office box that you'll find on the early Foremen releases, before they signed on Reprise.
Cosmik: I was always into political comedy in my early radio days. I'm sure you played a lot of things relating to Watergate and Jimmy Carter and things like that. What's your favorite political song?
Dr. Demento: Good question. I suppose I might name something like Trouble Comin Every Day by Frank Zappa, which really isn't funny. That was the first one that popped to mind. The others are so ephemeral.
Cosmik: Do you have a favorite Monica Lewinski song from last year?
Dr. Demento: Oh, we got a ton of them! I don't know of any that are really going to stand the test of time. I don't think anybody is going to care about those in five or ten years except for (switches to announcing mode) A Nostalgic Look Back At The Lewinsky Affair. Every five years I do a nostalgic look back at Watergate and my younger listeners are saying, "What?" They may have heard about it in school, I guess.
Cosmik: I wanted to ask you some questions about your show too, since it's been on some 30 years now and certainly has its place in the Century of Sound. I understand it started in 1970?
Dr. Demento: That's the year. At least that's the year I got the name Doctor Demento.
Cosmik: You were playing comedy recordings before that?
Dr. Demento: Oh, on and off. Actually at the beginning the Doctor Demento show was
not so much a comedy show per se, as a program of rare and unusual oldies
from the early days of rock and roll. I always included comedy stuff, but
the comedy stuff took over, oh, kind of during the first year. I found once
I got a regular time slot, the funny stuff got more requests than anything.
There seemed to be a market for that so it just took over the show, but that
wasn't the original intention.
Cosmik: In my own experience I tended to be into the spoken word comedy. I was heavily into Firesign Theatre, Cheech and Chong and I didn't play as much of the novelty music like you did.
Dr. Demento: I started with the unusual oldies including the novelty stuff. Spoken word wasn't really a part of it until I realized hey if I'm playing musical novelty records I might as well get in some Cheech and Chong and Bill Cosby and whatnot too.
Cosmik: We try to turn people on to comedy here at Cosmik Debris so we write about people like Stan Freberg, Mojo Nixon, Bill Hicks and Firesign Theatre of course.
Dr. Demento: It's nice to see Firesign rolling along again.
Cosmik: Yeah, isn't it great! What do you think of the new one, Boom Dot Bust?
Dr. Demento: Oh (pauses) I don't know if I'm that excited by the overall concept of it, but the word play is just so fantastic. Just to listen to the riffs they do off each other, the way in which phrases are twisted and turned. And now with digital recording you're right there, none of that nasty tape hiss. Think of the days when Firesign originally endeared a generation that listened on headphones to all those pops and ticks and surface noise along with it!
Cosmik: They certainly got through to me, in spite of all that! They affected my radio style and when I started in writing it was with record reviews of their work. They are still way up there in my estimation.
Dr. Demento: I have found that people under 30 or 35 don’t seem to get Firesign.
Cosmik: I don’t think they are willing to listen long enough.
Dr. Demento: Right, people like more immediate satisfaction. The things that are popular on my show today are things that deliver pretty quickly.
Cosmik: I disk jockey at a coffee house down in San Pedro. Last year I tried to play Firesign’s entire Give Me Immortality or Give Me Death album and practically got booed off the stage because it was too much spoken word, but if I play just the Polar Pro commercial from it, it always gets laughs.
Dr. Demento: I’m happy their last couple of CD’s have been divided into bands and at least some of them stand up on their own. When Give Me Immortality came out I played most of it, but I serialized it, 2 or 3 bands a week.
Cosmik: Back to your own work, one of the earliest things I ever saw that you had a hand in was an album of doo-wop hits.
Dr. Demento: An album just called Doo-Wop, that had a silly cartoon of a guy with yellow hair on the cover?
Cosmik: Yeah, I think that's the one! The song I remember most on it was called "Drunk."
Dr. Demento: I do take the blame for that one. That slightly predated the Doctor Demento show. The idea was to make an album of real rock and roll oldies that would appeal to Frank Zappa. That was the whole concept.
Cosmik: How did you ever meet him?
Dr. Demento: I met him actually before I was Doctor Demento or anything like that. It
was 1965 and he was beginning the Los Angeles phase of his career. A fellow
UCLA graduate student of mine had gone to see him, I think at the Whiskey (A
Go Go) and said, “Hey you oughta go see this guy.” She I guess had gotten to
meet him backstage and she took me up to his house and introduced me to him.
He wasn't as busy in those days as he became later on, but I was really
impressed because at his house he demonstrated his great variety of musical
tastes, which went all the way from doo-wop music from the early 50's to
Varese and Stravinsky and other avant garde classical people. And that was
exactly the sort of mix of tastes that appealed to me. So I thought, “I'm
really going to follow this guy's career.” I certainly did from that point
on. I was a real regular at the earlier Mothers of Invention shows, when
they were still playing smaller clubs.
Cosmik: This was before Freak Out came out?
Dr. Demento: 1965, it could have actually been 1964. I didn't keep a diary. It was definitely before the Freak Out album came out.
Cosmik: Have you got a personal Funny Five?
Dr. Demento: Well, that changes all the time. I always get excited about new things that come in. I always enjoy putting something that's new and funny on the air and seeing if the audience likes it too. That's what keeps me going the most these days. My personal Funny Five would change all the time as far as the kind of stuff that I play on the show. The all time most requested song is Fish Heads by Barnes and Barnes. It's something that I'm fond of, it still gets played a few times a year. (But when I) finish a show and can relax for the evening I don't immediately put Fish Heads in the player. It's the audience's all time favorite and I respect that. I love it like the way Mick Jagger probably still has a warm spot for Satisfaction, though he might not... sing that for his own pleasure when he's not working. Number two would be Dead Puppies, by Ogden Edsel. Those two are way out in front of all the others. Both of those interestingly came out in the late 70's.
Cosmik: I'm sure they came to note exclusively through your show too. I don't know of anybody else that would play them.
Dr. Demento: Those two were certainly mostly through my show. Fish Heads, after they made the video, it got a little bit of exposure on TV. My all time most requested artist of course is Weird Al Yankovic.
Cosmik: He's had a lot of new success this year.
Dr. Demento: Oh yes! The Saga Begins is a big hit this year. I'm sure I'm best known to the public as the guy who discovered Weird Al.
Cosmik: That was 1979 wasn't it?
Dr. Demento: It was in 1976 that I first played something of his on the show. He was 16 years old, still in high school and still just recording on one of those little cassette machines with a built in mike. But that first song he sent me was amusing, not as good as what he does now of course, but it was amusing enough for me to put it on the air. And he just kept getting better and better from that point on.
Cosmik: My Bologna was certainly a breakthrough.
Dr. Demento: That was the first one that really got a widespread response, and that was '79.
Cosmik: Any nominations for Personal Artist of the Millennium?
Dr. Demento: Well, for my show it would have to be Weird Al Yankovic. Looking at it with a more historical perspective for somebody that combined comedy with far reaching musical genius, it would be Zappa. A very different musician that you could say the same thing about would be Spike Jones.
Cosmik: Oh yeah, Spike!
Dr. Demento: There are so many odd similarities between them. They were both chain smokers, Spike died at 53 of emphysema. Frank lasted only a little longer but I don’t know if his (prostate cancer) was directly smoking related. They were both known as real slave drivers with their musicians, to the point where they would burn out people. They were great perfectionists. They would rehearse and rehearse until something was absolutely letter perfect. In Spike’s case especially, most listeners perceived it as absolute chaos, but it was very well organized chaos, and you could say that about Frank’s music too. I’m sure a lot of people would see Frank in concert and say ,“Look at those stoned hippies onstage! They are freakin’ out!”
Cosmik: That’s interesting because when I first heard Frank in 1967 that’s exactly the impression I got. It was only years later I found out that he didn’t do drugs at all.
Dr. Demento: Right.
Cosmik: He catered to it in a way, or at least to that audience.
Dr. Demento: That’s where his bread was buttered. I think that some of the more
lowbrow humor that he did, oh especially in the mid 70’s, I think he was
realizing that that’s what people paid the money for and bought the records
for. He might have preferred to play something more serious, as did Spike
Jones. After Spike had made funny stuff for awhile he got the urge to make
serious music again, not serious classical music like Frank did, but rather
orthodox orchestral music. He made several records and did a tour with what
he called his “Other Orchestra” and nobody cared. The audiences hated it. It
was not what they came to see Spike Jones for. That was a bitter lesson for
him. Frank was able to juggle his two sides for years and years until the
classical side finally won out at the end. Mainly because it became
economically unfeasible for him to take the band he wanted on the road.
Cosmik: Right, the 1988 tour, which gave us The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life.
Dr. Demento: Right.
Cosmik: Unlike Spike Jones, who was pretty tame lyrically, with Zappa, there are so many records with explicit sexual lyrics that you could never broadcast. I’m sure there’s lots of other songs like that too. What’s your favorite record that you can’t play on the air?
Dr. Demento: Oh gosh! (pauses) Maybe Penis Envy by Uncle Bonsai. That record doesn’t have any dirty words in it, but the FCC fined a bunch of stations for playing it, so it’s on my Do Not Play List, unfortunately, because of that.
Cosmik: I know that record! Wasn’t there a time when you did play it?
Dr. Demento: Yes. Fortunately no stations got fined on account of me playing it on my show, but as soon as I heard about that I had to yank that one. My syndicator said, “We can’t afford to have stations getting fined for having your show on.”
Cosmik: When I talked to Stan Freberg earlier this year I was amazed to find out how many problems he had with censorship, and he really isn’t that controversial or anything. How many times have you had run-ins like that?
Dr. Demento: Not too many direct run-ins because I try to keep a finger on what people’s tastes are and what radio stations can get away with. Howard Stern and people like that and also South Park have kind of raised the bar a little bit. I’ve been able to get away with a little bit more since those two things have become part of the scene.
Cosmik: Actually back in the 70’s in Honolulu, I used to play Richard Pryor uncensored late at night on my Insanity Palace show. I never got any complaints.
Dr. Demento: Late at night on one station is different from a syndicated show. With a syndicated radio show, it’s actually the same as local radio if you’re dealing with a major radio station that has a lot of money behind it. You’re going to get complaints not from the listeners but from station management that’s afraid of offending, oh, listeners partly, but advertisers mostly. Of course many advertisers today realize a lot of people listen to Howard Stern, so they don’t care. And others do care.
Cosmik: I’ve struggled for years to find a taste for Howard Stern and I still haven’t been able to do it.
Dr. Demento: Well, I don’t listen regularly myself, but I’m just saying since he came
along and has been widely accepted and has been getting fantastic ratings
and generally not that many complaints considering what he does. It has
raised the bar; you can talk about sex more frankly than you could before.
You can play songs that have to do with masturbation for instance, that you
couldn’t before. Firing The Surgeon General by The Foremen, I probably would
not have played in the days before Howard Stern. And South Park made farts
legitimate; since that came along I can play ones about farts. With their
last album South Park has gotten into excrement, so they’ve changed over to
the solid stuff. Mr. Hanky The Christmas Poo and all that. This album has a
picture of a turd on the cover! I played the song on my show last Sunday and
so far no shit has hit the fan! (snickers) So far, anyway. (On) that
particular song I think they were reaching for something that could get
played by your more adventurous people on the radio, so they avoided the
obviously proscribed four-letter word on that song, but that isn’t true on
the rest of the album.
Cosmik: By the way, you probably can’t play it, but my personal request for your End Of Millennium show is something I’ve never found a copy of, “Stairway To Gillian’s Island.”
Dr. Demento: Oh, we can play that!
Cosmik: I remember you playing it many, many years ago and it made me fall out of my chair laughing, but I thought there was a copyright suit brought against it.
Dr. Demento: Yeah, my previous syndicator was worried about getting sued, but the 2 Live Crew Supreme Court decision kind of made parodies (okay again). Nobody has really sued to stop somebody from playing a parody on the radio since then ‘cause they realize it’s probably not worth expensive lawyers’ time.
Cosmik: Who does that song anyway?
Dr. Demento: Little Roger and the Goosebumps. They’re from Berkeley. Roger Clark is his name; he’s quite active on the Berkeley music scene still to this day. The original record is hard to find; it’s been bootlegged. It was a 45 on the Splash label. Copies probably show up on Ebay once in awhile.
Cosmik: So are you ready for the Millennium? I know you must have an official Doctor Demento website where fans can go to get CDs and join the Demento Society. What’s the address?
Dr. Demento: www.drdemento.com.
Cosmik: Are you preserving any shows there or doing any streaming at all?
Dr. Demento: We’re kind of in the experimental stage doing that. You can hear parts of one show right now; we’re just getting it up and going as we speak. Hopefully very soon in the new year we’ll have a show that will change every week that people can hear. It won’t be the current show but it’ll will be a recent show. We can’t scoop the radio stations; that’s why it won’t be the current show.
Cosmik: What else is on the horizon for the show?
Dr. Demento: Well, Rhino is assembling a 30th Anniversary album for me now. It'll be
out in February. The title is Dementia 2000, Doctor Demento's 30th
Anniversary Collection.
Cosmik: Is it a reprise of some of the Greatest Novelty Records of All Time?
Dr. Demento: There will be some things that were on the box set, but we really started a new series with the 20th Anniversary CD. The new one will be more of Doctor Demento's Greatest Hits, but we're not duplicating the 20th or the 25th Anniversary albums.
Cosmik: We’ll be sure to look for it!
© 2000 - Rusty Pipes