Dr. Demento, the DJ who brought America Weird Al, Tom Lehrer, and ‘Cows With Guns’
When Barret Hansen, better known as Dr. Demento, recently ended his weekly show, he had spent 55 years spinning weird, silly, or otherwise strange songs on the radio or online. No mere fringe figure, he was an influential figure in American comedy and one of the most important cultural libertarians of his era.
That might seem far-fetched to people who grew up in a post-SNL, post-Seinfeld world. But in the early 1970s, all that lay in the future. Television shows still had to pass strict censorial review to be aired, and the same code policed much of what could be heard on mainstream radio. Hansen's program pushed against those strictures.
Listeners never knew what Hansen might play. One moment might bring a sweet, old novelty song like the Playmates' "Beep Beep" about a "little Nash Rambler" that turned out to be more powerful than the Cadillac it was racing. The next moment you might hear a risqué song about sex, like Ruth Wallis' "Davy's Dinghy" (it's not about his boat) or the Lemon Sisters' lascivious "In My Country" ("The swamp is thick, but don't be a wussie/Come steer your canoe right through my pussy…willows"). There was drug humor, from the relatively tame "Friendly Neighborhood Narco Agent" to a mid-'90s parody of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" called "The Devil Went Down to Jamaica" ("Johnny roll a ball of hash, and make sure it's the bomb/'Cause the devil's got the kind of stuff they smoked in Vietnam"). "Cows With Guns," about bovines revolting against slaughter under the leadership of Cow Tse-tung, would compete with classic comic songs from Spike Jones and Tom Lehrer.
And sometimes the show could just get plain weird. Consider the program's two biggest hits, Barnes & Barnes' "Fish Heads" and Ogden Edsl's "Dead Puppies." The former informs us that fish heads "are never seen drinking cappuccino in Italian restaurants with Oriental women"; the latter laments, "Dead puppies aren't much fun/They don't come when you call/They don't chase squirrels at all." Other tunes in rotation found dark humor in everything from a school shooting (Julie Brown's "The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun") to a pedophile (Ogden Edsl's "Kinko the Clown"). There were the college philosophy meanderings of Tom "T-Bone" Stankus' "Existential Blues," crude advice like Frank Zappa's "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow," and a song whose lyrics are mostly just the names of different Los Angeles streets, Felix Figueroa's "Pico and Sepulveda."
The program was periodically punctuated with cowbells and sound effects. The host was joined by funny friends with alliterative names, such as Captain Chaos and Laughing Linda. And each show ended with the "Funny Five," the most requested songs of the week—a tradition that put the listeners at the center of the experience: On this show, you could help shape the dementia.
How Barret Hansen Became Dr. Demento
Hansen grew up in Minneapolis, where he was a loner who listened to records and played them at his high school dances. He went on to get two degrees in music: a Bachelor of Arts from Reed College and a Master of Arts from UCLA. After graduating, he wrote liner notes for record companies, collected records by the bushel, and DJed at KPPC, a free-form FM radio station.
That's where he became Dr. Demento. One day he played Nervous Norvus' 1956 novelty hit "Transfusion," a song about a reckless driver who constantly crashes his car only to be revived by blood transfusions. Someone at the station said he had to be demented to play that record, and his persona was born.
The Dr. Demento Show started in 1971 as a rock show with some novelty hits thrown in, but Hansen quickly discovered that almost all the audience requests were for the funny stuff. By late 1971 he had hopped to KMET, where his four-hour showcase for what he called "loony laughing records" was the No. 1 Sunday night show in the Los Angeles market. He went into national syndication in early 1974 with a taped two-hour version of the show; it rapidly became a success. He was profiled in Newsweek and went on national TV. Some of the songs he played, such as "Junk Food Junkie" and "Shaving Cream," crossed over and became Top 40 hits. "I was very happy when something that I kind of started hit the charts," he said.
He had a short break from national syndication in 1977–1978, when his syndicator went bankrupt, but he kept broadcasting until his retirement—the third-longest run in American radio history for a single-hosted musical show. Listeners started sending him their own creations, giving Hansen a new role: Just as Johnny Carson or Lorne Michaels could make a comedian's career by giving new talent a showcase, Dr. Demento became America's arbiter of musical comedy.
He wasn't wedded to any particular type of humor or any single musical genre. If someone sent him a decent record or tape, he'd play it. Let the audience decide was his mantra.
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