{"id":14156,"date":"2025-10-13T12:56:25","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T19:56:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/?p=14156"},"modified":"2025-10-13T21:41:02","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T04:41:02","slug":"hail-hail-dr-demento","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/?p=14156","title":{"rendered":"Hail Hail, Dr. Demento!!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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An ode to Dead Puppies (who aren’t much fun) and a legacy of Fish Heads. Always felt like Dr. Demento<\/strong> cast his line into the ’70’s and we all bit-hook, line and sinker. Loved the bit about Mad Magazine’s “It’s a Gas”-I remember my brother John sharing it with me-over & over! Sunday nights with Dr. Demento-kind of like Ed Sullivan’s variety hour for the counter culture.-it was like our weekly alien transmission.
\n – Maria Maria<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After 55 years, Sunday was the day that Dr. Demento<\/strong> decided to retire his radio\/webstream show.<\/p>\n

Barret Hansen<\/strong>, aka Dr. Demento for many of us, provided a gateway to some truly fun music that was often considered too silly for normal radio. With his radio program, we celebrated demented music of the past and the present, providing a showcase for contemporary music satires as well as a multitude of timeless classics by Spike Jones, Tom Lehrer, Rusty Warren, Nervous Norvus, Allan Sherman, Barnes and Barnes, Ray Stevens, Stan Freberg, Benny Bell<\/strong> and thousands of other inspired musicians.<\/p>\n

The Dr. Demento radio show debuted in October 1970 on KPPC in Pasadena, California, which later became KROQ-FM. The program initially started as a freeform rock show before he shifted toward the comedy and novelty music that became his trademark.<\/p>\n

Before he became \u201cDr. Demento,\u201d Barret Hansen was a young man from Minnesota who decided to study music at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, where he got involved with college radio station KRRC and served as program director in 1960 and general manager in 1961. After graduating in 1963, he moved to Los Angeles and attended UCLA where he earned a master\u2019s degree in folklore and ethnomusicology.<\/p>\n

After receiving his master\u2019s degree, Barret Hansen became a roommate with members of the rock band Spirit<\/strong>, ocassionaly working as a roadie for them as well as Canned Heat<\/strong>, who he briefly managed. He also wrote for a variety of music magazines, including Down Beat, Hit Parader<\/strong> and Rolling Stone<\/strong>, including the \u201cRhythm and Gospel\u201d chapter in \u201cThe Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll\u201d book.<\/p>\n

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According to my research, Barret Hansen may have been the first person to ever write an article about Pacific Northwest rock \u2018n\u2019 roll for a national music magazine. This article, entitled \u201cThe Northwest Rock Scene\u201d appeared in the July 1965 issue of Hit Parader.<\/p>\n

Dr. Demento had quite a legacy of influencing musicians and music lovers. \u201cWeird Al\u201d Yankovic<\/strong> openly acknowledged that Demento played a major role in launching his career.<\/p>\n

A few years ago, I had the honor to visit and interview the man himself at his home. It was a day that I will never forget. Not only did I get a chance to chat with him on a variety of topics, but I also had an opportunity to see the incredible record collection in his garage.<\/p>\n

With his permission, I’m proud to share his 1965 article on this very website.<\/p>\n

Massive thanks go out to Doctor Demento for the legacy of his highly entertaining shows, which can still be heard on his DrDemento.com<\/a> website.<\/p>\n

– E.P. of LouieLouie.net<\/a><\/p>\n

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Reference Links<\/strong>:
\nDrDemento.com – the official site<\/a>
\nWikipedia – Dr. Demento<\/a>
\nDr. Demento, Madcap Radio DJ Who Launched Weird Al\u2019s Career, Announces Retirement – Rolling Stone<\/a>
\nDr. Demento Announces Retirement After 55-Year Radio Career – South Pittsburgh Reporter<\/a>
\nDr. Demento ends 55-year run as radio’s weirdest DJ – AV Club<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An ode to Dead Puppies (who aren’t much fun) and a legacy of Fish Heads. Always felt like Dr. Demento cast his line into the ’70’s and we all bit-hook, line and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14181,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,21,28,15,16,19,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-garage-rock","category-humor","category-los-angeles-music","category-music-business","category-pop-culture","category-radio","category-record-collecting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14156"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14197,"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14156\/revisions\/14197"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}