Dr. Demento

Barret Eugene Hansen (born April 2, 1941), known professionally as Dr. Demento, is an American radio broadcaster and record collector specializing in novelty songs, comedy, and strange or unusual recordings dating from the early days of phonograph records to the present.

He attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, where he was promoted to Program Director of KRRC in 1960 and General Manager in 1961.

He wrote his senior thesis on Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck and Claude Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande.

Using his real name of Barry Hansen, he also contributed many articles on rock music to magazines including Rolling Stone, Down Beat, and Hit Parader, liner notes on various late 1960s and early 1970s albums, and in 1976 contributed the chapter on "Rhythm and Gospel" in The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll.

He graduated in 1963, and later studied at UCLA, from which he earned a master's degree in folklore and ethnomusicology.

After earning his master's degree, he lived for two years "in a big house on a hill" in Topanga Canyon with members of the rock band Spirit.

He also served briefly as a roadie for Spirit, and for Canned Heat, before being hired as an A&R man, or talent scout, for Specialty Records.

The Doctor began his weekly radio show while working for Specialty, and he later worked for Warner Bros. Records.

Hansen created the Demento persona in 1970 while working at Pasadena, California station KPPC-FM.

He played "Transfusion" by Nervous Norvus on the radio, and DJ "The Obscene" Steven Clean said that Hansen had to be "demented" to play it, and the name stuck.

He was responsible for preparing many of the "Warner/Reprise Loss Leaders" mail-order compilation albums of rock music issued in the 1970s, which featured new artists and new material from established Warner and Reprise Records artists.

These were advertised on the inner sleeves of WB's current releases—and were only available by ordering direct from WB using a coupon printed on the record sleeve—and were priced at $1 per LP.

Most of these releases were two-LP sets, so they were priced at $2 at a time when a "double LP" typically carried a $9.98 list price.

Hansen created the persona of Dr. Demento in 1970 while working at KPCC (FM) in Pasadena, California.

The positive listener response to the offbeat novelties that Hansen included in his rock oldies show led to his eventually turning it into an all-novelty show.

Between the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s, Hansen continued to do live broadcasts on KMET and other Los Angeles area stations, in addition to his weekly taped syndicated show.

At the end of 1971, he moved to KMET in Los Angeles.

From 1972 to 1983, he performed a four-hour live show on KMET.

His weekly show went into syndication in 1974 and was syndicated by the Westwood One Radio Network from 1978 to 1992.

From about 1974 on, the local Los Angeles market was the full 4 hours and the nationally syndicated show was cut to 2 hours.

His weekly show went into national syndication in a two-hour all-novelty format in 1974, produced by his manager Larry Gordon of Gordon/Casady and during 1978–92 was syndicated by the Westwood One Radio Network.

The Westwood One period marked the height of the show's national popularity; it was carried in most major radio markets, airing mainly on FM rock stations, usually late on Sunday evenings.

The producer Westwood One assigned to work with Hansen from 1978 to 1982 was Lynnsey Guererro, a former track star from UCLA and Senior Producer at the company.

In 1982, he handed off the show to a new producer from San Diego, professional journalist Robert Young.

It was under Young's guidance that the show gained in popularity, mainly due to his willingness to foster relationships with national media and with nationally known and up-and-coming artists, including John Mammoser, Judy Tenuta, Emo Philips, Pinkard and Bowden, Wally Wingert, and Mark Davis (Richard Cheese).

Young accompanied Dr. Demento to Portland, Ore.; Dallas, Texas; New York City; San Diego; Montreal; Phoenix; and other cities to do live performances and PR Events, taking photos, setting up interviews and even 'running the board' at some of the live shows.

He also made occasional television appearances, on such shows as The Gong Show (on the 1988–89 revival), Bobby's World, The Simpsons, and on the Barnes and Barnes music video for "Fish Heads".

The syndicated radio show normally started with an hour of randomly chosen records and listener requests.

The second hour was normally mostly devoted to a specific theme (cars, sports, pets, romance, movies, etc.) with a final segment taken up by a "The Funny Five" countdown of the most requested songs.

There were also shows devoted to holidays and seasonal events, with the most important being the Halloween and Christmas shows (Hansen produced multiple Christmas shows during the holiday season consisting solely of novelty Christmas music), because of the large number of novelty records those holidays have inspired.

He left the radio network in 1990 during a business downturn.

From 1992 to 2000, the show was syndicated by On the Radio Broadcasting.

The show became a two-hour live show on KLSX and, after that station converted to a talk-only format in 1995, moved again to KSCA, where it remained until that station changed to a Spanish-language format, in February 1997.

Hansen, under the name "Talonian Productions," handled syndication himself from 2000 until discontinuing syndication in 2010 (Hansen revealed that he was the owner of Talonian when responding to significant criticism of the company in 2007; Talonian had no involvement in any other show than Dr. Demento).

Broadcast syndication of the show ended on June 6, 2010, but the show continues to be produced weekly in an online version.

Hansen holds a master's degree in ethnomusicology and has written magazine articles and liner notes on recording artists outside of the novelty genre.

He is credited with introducing new generations of listeners to artists of the early and middle 20th century whom they might not have otherwise discovered, such as Harry McClintock, Spike Jones, Jimmy Durante, Benny Bell, Rusty Warren, Yogi Yorgesson, Nervous Norvus, Allan Sherman, Ray Stevens, Candy Candido, Stan Freberg, and Tom Lehrer, as well as helping to bring "Weird Al" Yankovic to national attention.

Hansen was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of an amateur pianist.

He claims to have started his vast record collection as early as age 12, when he found "that a local thrift store had thousands of old 78 RPM records for sale at 5 cents each".

In January 2014 Young released an e-book titled "Producing Demento," about his memories of working on the show.