Bill Virgin's Radio Beat July 24, 2008

Includes archive of Bill Virgin's columns fromJ une 2006 - March 2009

Bill Virgin's Radio Beat July 24, 2008

Postby radiofan » Wed Jul 23, 2008 11:45 pm

On Radio: Dr. Demento's show hits the road with Seattle visit
By BILL VIRGIN
P-I REPORTER


Who would go to a nightclub to watch some guy play CDs and videos and talk about them?

Fans of Barry Hansen would, that's who -- and will, at The Triple Door in Seattle on Aug. 1.

Of course, it's not exactly Hansen they're going to see. Instead the draw is Hansen's radio alter ego, Dr. Demento, who for more than three decades has been playing comedy, novelty and just plain odd songs.

The nightclub show is "my radio show come to life on stage," Hansen said in a phone interview. During the show he'll play songs and videos, and have some live performances -- Dana Lyons ("Cows with Guns") and Jef Jaisun ("Friendly Neighborhood Narco Agent"). He'll also "sneak in a few songs I can't sneak in on the radio."

Hansen has been doing the shows "on and off since the early 1970s, as soon as the radio show became popular."

That popularity came as rock and pop music began making the switch from AM to FM radio. In its early days, FM rock radio was famous for its genre-crossing, format-free, no-playlist approach. Hansen got his start on one such free-form/underground/hippie station in Southern California, hosting a rock oldies show.

"I opened the phones for requests, and I got an inordinate number of requests for novelty songs ("Purple People Eater," "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini"). The more I played of that the more calls I got."

From there Hansen branched into playing musical comedy classics by the likes of Spike Jones and Tom Lehrer, as well as material that young people were writing, recording and sending to him. One of those getting his start on Dr. Demento's show was the modern-day master of parody songs, "Weird Al" Yankovic.

In the mid-1970s the show was heard from coast to coast through a syndication deal. The first market outside Los Angeles to hear Dr. Demento, Hansen says, was Seattle, thanks to a staffer from a station there who moved to Seattle and began running the show on KZOK-FM. Its success here was enough to persuade the show's backers to launch national distribution in mid-1974.

Today, though, Dr. Demento's show is heard over the air on only about a dozen stations nationally (and none here). The novelty song is even less heard in the land. Occasionally, an oddball tune like Aqua's "Barbie Girl" might sneak through, but for the most part, Hansen says, "that era is pretty much done."

Ever tighter programming and niche formats were partly to blame; there didn't seem to be room even for a mass-market artist like Ray Stevens, who was able to squeeze into Top 40 FM radio in its early days.

"It was a vicious cycle; radio played them less, so the record companies put out fewer," Hansen says.

About the only place they survived on radio was on morning shows, and those didn't count for record-chart purposes. (One of the last practitioners of parody songs is KZOK's Bob Rivers, whose Twisted Tunes Hansen plays. "He's kind of the king of quickly done parodies," Hansen says.)

Dr. Demento may not have the reach he once did on the airwaves, but he does on the Internet. Through his Web site, he sells streams of his latest, two-hour weekly show as well as past recordings. "That's where we're getting more and more of our listeners," he says.

In other radio notes:


Washington's Department of Financial Institutions wants to revoke the license of home-loan broker Paramount Equity Mortgage, charging it with deceptive lending practices. Paramount is a major radio advertiser in this market (with its spots featuring company president Hayes Barnard). Media Monitors, which tracks radio advertising, says Paramount was the 11th-biggest radio advertiser (by number of spots) in the Seattle market for the first three weeks of July.


KNDD-FM/107.7's afternoon host Lazlo is returning to Kansas City (where the show was still broadcast following his move to Seattle). His last show on The End is Friday. A replacement hasn't been named.


Jim Wilke's "Jazz Northwest" at 1 p.m. Sunday on KPLU-FM/88.5 features a recent performance by Bill Ramsay and Friends.

P-I reporter Bill Virgin can be reached at 206-448-8319 or billvirgin@seattlepi.com.

Bill Virgin's Radio Beat Thursdays in the Seattle P-I
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who couldn't hear the music.
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