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Before I accidentally discovered Dr. Demento, I just graduated from high school, taking a TV production class in the 12th grade. Our assignments were to produce parodies of commercial products and TV show productions as an exercise, and for the first time ever, we watched the episode of Saturday Night Live airing of April 22, 1978, to learn about producing parodies of other types such as what The Weekend Update did for their longtime comedy newscasts. In case you didn't know, that was the episode starring Steve Martin as the guest host, and the musical guests were The Blues Brothers featuring Elwood and Jake Blues, played by regulars Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi.
I was also into watching SCTV on KHJ 9, and before that, the first series of Wacky Packages, plus Mad Magazine during the year.
My late father got a ton of disco records and played them on his stereo deck loud during the hours I was trying to study and watch the TV shows on my small 12 inch black and white TV. When I found nothing worth watching, I turned on the radio and listened to rock and roll on KGB 101.5 and KPRI 106.5 (the KPRI call letters now reside on a low power station at 91.3 on an Indian reservation) and got into rock and roll music to deal with dad's love for disco.
One Sunday night, I got bored with reruns of The Jeffersons on Sunday night, and flipped the show off and turned on KGB. Instead of rock and roll, I heard spoken word comedy as The Comedy Hour was airing Sundays at 9pm. Then at 10pm, I was led into my discovery of The Dr. Demento Show, and my perception of music was never the same since then. It's been on and off local radio since then, as well as listening to his live four hour Sunday night show on KMET 94.7 at 6pm, then at 10pm, I flipped to KOLA in San Bernadino for his syndicated version. That's six hours of dementia every week!
Over the years, I followed The Dr. all around the dial in Los Angeles and San Diego, where he spent six months on KCR cable 98.9 run by SDSU. He was on about three stations in San Diego once, one station in San Diego twice, and one station in Tijuana as well.
When The Dr. left the airwaves on KSCA in 1997, I tried to listen to his shows online on a few streaming radio stations that carried his show, but at the time, servers were always as full as the parking spaces on The Miracle Mile; we can call it The Miracle Server, because it's a miracle if you can get a port to listen to his show on the station's server. To confound it, I had to deal with copper wires and a 28.8 kbps modem to limit the bandwidth.
He was on XM Radio for two years in 2003-2005 and that's when I subscribed to XM to hear his shows.
Also over the years I met several comedy artists including those when the late Crazy Jay was hosting his Crazy Jay nights in the late 1990s and his own radio show. I also bought several albums of funny music, and have since donated half of them.
Dr. Demento's influence was big enough to influence me to become a streaming online station streamer on live 365 when it was once free, and I later began producing the flagship show of mine "I Still Get Demented", now just called The ISGD, and many other show ideas along the way. Another longtime show that got its start and still on the air is "The Kahnman's Comedy Corner" hosted by Tyrone Kahn. I also ran Dave's Gone By hosted by Dave Leifkowitz for a few years.
Out of over 1,000 artists I featured on all of the shows I produced, only three were convicted criminals, and one of them I actually met in person. I think I did a good job screening the artists' reputations.
I met countless funny music artists online over the past 25 years, many of which I never met in person, many of which I featured on my shows.
I even recorded a lot of songs and comedy, many of which were fake commercials, fake news, break-in interviews, samples, parodies, and originals.
Here's a complete list of every one of my comedy bits and songs Dr. Demento has ever played out of over 200 I have ever produced.
2006 Mariah Carey's Screamin' Hits (edit), played twice
2015 Boycott Bing
2018 My Haiku Song
My demented news submissions were also featured in countless (I lost count) episodes of the Demented News produced and hosted by Whimsical Will. Thank you, William Simpson.
I was bullied all through the 13 years of public schools. I was sent to the Principal's office for changing the lyrics of Flag of America to Bank of America. My first parody at age 6 and I had no clue what I did when we were singing America anthem songs at 9:05am when we raised the flag and the teacher made us stand up and sing. Needles to say, I can't sing well. I lipsynched while the 30 or so students sang.
Dr. Demento didn't just create The Land of Dementia. He created a large community full of nerds, geeks, misfits, outcasts, mad scientists, math wizards, filkers and many more. Many of us who first started listening to his show are already eligible for Social Security as of this year.
I was the only person in my family brood to get interested in funny music. My late mother didn't get what I was into. One of my sisters listens to religious music. My late father listened to ballads and easy music. I just didn't care for music as I thought it was annoying and boring until Dr. Demento changed all that forever.
I want to say thank you to Dr. Demento for helping us with our miseducation of music in our early years and setting us straight with a better understanding of what's out there. Through his show, we got Spike Jones, Tom Lehrer, Monty Python, and Allan Sherman among others to start off with in the 1970s. The 80s and other decades followed with an endless parade of new artists, some of which were one hit wonders while a few others lasted for decades.
We all love you as an uncle with all the records to spin and gave us all a chance to shine. You're the best any radio listener or music artist ever had.
Thank you Dr. Demento and countless music artists from the bottom of my heart. Let's keep this demented family going for generations to come.
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