The pop culture universe became significantly less demented on Friday when Barret Hansen, aka Dr. Demento, announced his retirement after 55 years of playing novelty songs on the airwaves. “It’s been a blast,” he wrote in a message to fans, “but I have come to the decision that I need to hang up my top hat soon.”
Throughout the course of his long career, Demento introduced several fantastically silly songs into the public consciousness, including “Fish Heads” by the comedy duo Barnes and Barns, and “Shaving Cream” by Benny Bell.
But his greatest achievement took place in 1976 when he dug out a cassette mailed into him by a 16-year-old high school student named Alfred Yankovic, and played his homemade song “Belvedere Cruisin’” on the national airwaves. “When I first got this tape, it had nothing written on it,” Dr. Demento said in Weird Al’s Behind The Music. “It was a song that Al wrote about driving around the streets of Lynwood in his parent’s Plymouth Belvedere.”
Hearing his song on the radio was one of the most stunning moments in Yankovic’s life. “I just went nuts,” he said. “I ran around the house screaming. I couldn’t believe it.” Yankovic kept submitting songs, and was a mainstay on the program by the time he became a student at California Polytechnic State University. Early classics like “My Bologna” and “Another One Rides The Bus” were first heard on the Dr. Demento show, and Yankovic has often credited the DJ with not only launching his entire career, but inspiring him to record parody songs in the first place. In the 2022 mock biopic Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, Dr. Demento was played by Rainn Wilson.
Before he first put on a top hat and called himself Dr. Demento, Hansen was a regular contributor to Rolling Stone. In August 1968, he reviewed the Sly and the Family Stone album Life. “Sly and the Family Stone are opening the door to a whole new era in soul music,” he wrote. “With their emphasis on flash, on never-let-up entertainment of the senses rather than on the orderly telling of a story, they might well be the first McLuhanian soul group.”
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In a 2017 interview with Mark Dago, explained how he picks the songs he plays on his show. “Over forty-plus years I’ve developed a feeling for what my listeners will probably like,” he said. “It’s very subjective. No hard and fast rules. It helps if the lyrics are funny, of course, and it’s best if they establish themselves as being funny rather quickly. It helps if the music is listenable, especially if the performer has feeling and what one might call charisma. Of course, now and then there’s something that’s so bad that it’s funny on account of that. Some people cherish music like that, but I find a little of it goes a long way.”
The final Dr. Demento broadcasts will consist of archival material from the course of his long career.
