But seriously, folks

Barret
Hanson’s music roots run deep. He learned the piano at an early age and found
himself gravitating to the family phonograph. He began collecting 78s at the
age of 12 and by 1957 was DJing for high-school sock hops. Graduating with a
major in classical music from UCLA, he wrote his thesis on the evolution of
r&b in the 1940s and 1950s.

          He has written countless articles and
liner notes, worked as a roadie for Canned Heat, and helped compile upwards of
35 reissue albums for the legendary Specialty Records label. The cat really
digs music.

          When Hanson started spinning oldies
and the occasional novelty platter in 1970 at KPPC in Pasadena, California, fate
came into rotation. The kids tuning in dug the rock ‘n’ roll, but they really,
really dug the loony tunes. Dr. Demento was born.

          “I was playing the song ‘Transfusion’
by Nervous Norvus — a novelty record from 1957,” Demento says from his home
in LA. “And one of the secretaries came into the room and said — her exact
words — ‘you’ve gotta be demented to play shit like that on the radio.'”
Another jock overheard.

          “The next week when I came in he just
decided to introduce me as Dr. Demento — without warning or anything — and
the name stuck. It had more of a ring to it than Barret Hanson.”

          But Demento hadn’t set out to go
strictly oddball. He sites old blues cats like Charlie Patton and Robert
Johnson as favorites.

          “At first I’d play one or two novelty
records on each show,” he says. “But mostly I’d play old blues that, say, The
Rolling Stones had covered. I’d play the original versions. Or early records by
people who had become stars more recently like, say, Sly Stone.

          “But I opened the phone to requests
and I found more and more I was getting requests for things like ‘The Purple
People Eater,’ ‘The Monster Mash,’ ‘They’re Coming To Take Me Away,’ and ‘Beep
Beep,’ the little Nash Rambler song,” he says.

          By 1980 Dr. Demento was heard on over
200 radio stations nationwide. He played wacky tunes and musical parodies from
legends like Spike Jones and Monty Python to fledgling weirdos like Weird Al
Yankovic, who owes it all to the Doctor.

          “When he did his song ‘Another One
Rides The Bus’ live on my show in 1980, that was a big bump in his career,”
Demento says. “But also the song became so popular, the stations started
calling and asking for a copy of it. And then quite a few of them picked up my
show in the process.”

          Slowly but surely Barret Hanson the
musicologist became eclipsed by the Doctor. It doesn’t really bug him.

          “Oh, not a lot,” he says, before
quickly adding, “once in a while.”

          “Another side of me is in a book I
wrote a couple of years ago called Rhino’s
Cruise Through The Blues and that’s under my real name,” he says. “People
might want to look for that to see the other side of me, the somewhat more
scholarly side.”

          And sure, he’s recorded “Shaving
Cream” (twice) and championed tunes like “Fish Heads,” but Demento also
appeared on two non-novelty records “of not too much fame” in the 1960s.
Avant-guitarist John Fahey’s “Requiem For Molly” (1967) and r&b singer Jay
Jay Cameron’s “Short Dresses” (1964) both feature a young Barret Hanson on
piano. The Fahey cut can be found on the album Requia.

          “One night we were both drinking and I
sat down at the piano and attempted to play ‘My Blue Heaven’ à la Fats Domino,”
Demento says. “John heard that. That very night he broke up with his
girlfriend. So he wrote a guitar piece about the breakup and decided to
include, as sound effects, a few bars of my playing ‘My Blue Heaven.’ So he
brought me into the studio where he was recording, gave me some liquor, and
told me to get about as drunk as I was that night and play.”

          Wading through all the submissions by
would-be musical lunatics eats up the Doctor’s leisure listening time.

          “I don’t actually have a whole lot of
time for listening to serious music,” he says. He guesstimates his record
collection has “upwards of a quarter million counting all the trash and
treasures” — vinyl gems he doesn’t have time for.

          “Operating my empire of dementia takes
a lot of time,” he says.

          Dr. Demento receives roughly 20 demos
a week and gives them all a listen, at least.

          “It ranges from total pros like say a
Christine Lavin to total amateurs, some 12-year-old who just got a new CD
burner,” he says.

          The
Dr. Demento Show can be heard on about 50 stations and satellite radio
across the US. If you join his fan club of several thousand Dementites, you
might find a Demento classic reverberating in your skull.

          The Doctor’s got a cure.

          “I try to end the evening with music
that’s pleasant but not especially hooky,” he says, “something that doesn’t
have a whole lot of melody to it. Terry Riley’s A Rainbow In Curved Air is something I sometimes play for that
reason.”

          This from a guy who promises to finish
his Rochester appearance with a “Shaving Cream” sing-a-long.

Dr. Demento performs with guest The Worm Quartet Friday, August 13, at The Montage Grille, 50 Chestnut Street, at 8 p.m. Tix:
$12-$15. 232-8380

This article appears in Aug 11-17, 2004.