Dr. Demento is a certified legend. An award-winning musicologist and historian, the man born Barry Hansen has championed the wild, the weird and the wonderful in alternative music for nearly 55 years. I listened to him on Sunday nights on WPYX in Albany, and later in life I met and interviewed Dr. Demento for various Goldmine magazine articles. Plus … if you can discover and develop “Weird Al” Yankovic into a superstar, that alone should cement your induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Although his show left terrestrial radio 15 years ago, he continued to broadcast his weekly show on streaming platforms and via subscription services. Yes, for only a small sum every week, you could enjoy everything from vintage novelty hits to impressive outsider music. Break-in records, song-poems, everything.
And after 55 years on the air … the Dr. Demento show is heading into the sunset.
Dr. Demento uploaded his last new episode this week, and for the next few months he will broadcast select retrospective shows that chronicle his program’s history, with the final total broadcast occurring later this fall.
Seeing the news this morning hit me like a gut punch. And I’m still trying to process this.
Again … Dr. Demento was a true maverick in broadcast radio. He championed music that wasn’t always aligned with Top 40 radio. You want to hear Styx’s “Renegade” or “Come Sail Away” on Top 40 radio, that’s fine. Tune in to the Dr. Demento show, and you’d get Styx’s track “Plexiglass Toilet.” Yeah, you would.
And you’d get Tom Lehrer. And Allan Sherman. And PDQ Bach. And Napoleon XIV. And you’d get the Capitol Steps and the Firesign Theater and whatever vinyl product Monty Python would come up with. And we all tuned in on Sunday nights and we enjoyed every moment of it. And we listened until the end to hear the “Funny Five,” the top requested songs of the week. Or if we had enough talent to record our own demented track, we’d send it in and hope that the good Doctor would give it a spin and people might like it.
That ends this week. And I’m sorry to say … I’ll miss him. But I’ll miss him with a smile, because he brought joy and entertainment to all of us for over five decades. And no one will ever take that away.
Enjoy your retirement, Dr. Demento. And thanks for having us wind up our radios each week.
Chuck The Writer 
Disturbing but inevitable. Like the selections he played.
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The good Doctor also introduced listeners to Barnes & Barnes (Bill Mumy’s comedy duo from the early 80’s) and “Fish Heads”. Cheers for the Doc as he settles into retirement.
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