I used to have this AM headphone radio that I’d listen to from Oregon. Late at night these remote California stations would start to come in and I’d pick up things that my coastal small town living did not imagine existed. Like the good Doctor.

Well that and listening to my brother’s Firesign Theater albums.

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Ah. Archer twin speaker AM radio headphones. Impulse buy off eBay just now.

> Dr. Demento debuted in October 1970 on KPPC Pasadena, California

I was thirteen years old then and living in Pasadena. I remember hearing the regular rock music shows he deejayed on KPPC, and I must have started listening to the Dr. Demento shows from the very beginning. A song he played called “Shaving Cream” [1] was a big hit among the kids at Woodrow Wilson Junior High School.

It’s great that he has stayed active for so long.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaving_Cream_(song)

When I was a kid my parents divorced (as did many). I moved away and lived with my mother. Every two weeks I'd stay with my dad, and he'd give me cassette tapes of Dr. Demento that he'd record because where my mom lived, we couldn't get the show on the radio. My dad has since passed, and just thinking about those tapes right now almost makes me cry.

Dr Demento was a huge part of my childhood in a way I'm sure he never intended. I really can't express how great his show was for a sad kid grappling with the world growing up.

I'm extremely thankful for all the laughs and joy he brought me.

A childhood favorite and warm, nostalgic memory as an adult. A good friend of mine and I taped a spoof of Copacabana by Barry Manilow and got a really lovely letter back from the good doctor saying he'd done his best but couldn't play our tape. My friend had gotten a tape splicing kit from Radio Shack and insisted we cut the tape down to just our demo. Somehow we botched it and sent Dr. Demento a blank tape. He said he repaired our splice job and even tried flipping the tape in case we'd done the same by accident. Which was a really kind and probably time consuming gesture for a random tape sent in by two fifth graders. The man is a gem.

The only lyrics I remember from our spoof are how it starts: Her name was Lola, she was a show bot, but that was many years ago, when her neon used to glow. Oh well. Time to download an MP3 or two and subject my wife to Fish heads and I'm looking over my dead dog Rover.

We listened to his show in the CMU dorms around 1979, I think his show was where Weird Al Yankovik was introduced to the world.

It always makes me happy to see that people have been following the same passion for literal decades. Though it’s a bit sad I always find out only when they stop.

I can only hope that I find something I can be so enthusiastic about.

I still have the Dr. Demento t-shirt that I received for having my request played on the air. I got the shirt but missed that show so I never heard it broadcast. I actually had people congratulating me at school the next day. Ah, fame!

35 years later with the assistance of someone in his organization we were able to pin down the show and I now have it as an MP3.

his website is entirely on brand: https://drdemento.com/online.html

I've got some old off-the-air recordings of his show on KMET in the early 70's. (My dad recorded them on his Sony 360 reel-to-reel tape recorder.)

I had no idea that he was still active and on the air, and also I had no idea there was an online archive of all the shows dating back to 1974.

I wonder what he'll do with his priceless collection of rare vinyl...

Dr. D's show was played by a local rock station at 10pm. That was past our bedtime when I was 10, so we'd tape it. I still remember hitting the monitor button and pressing record/play before bed. Next day we'd listen to the whole show. I think we witnessed the first playing of Weird Al 'Another One Rides the Bus' and were introduced of course to the great Tom Lehrer and so many more. What a great career this man had, bringing joy to so many.

There was something special about hearing music this weird over the air. Pretty sure I heard the Goofy Gold record by K-Tel before Dr. Demento, but once I did I stayed up and taped it religiously. Still somewhat amazed I heard Camper Van Beethoven ("Take the Skinheads Bowling") first on his show and not on MTV. When I moved to L.A. in the '90s one of the first things I did was pull out my Thomas Guide to figure out what the deal was with the intersection of Pico and Sepulveda.

Dr. Demento introduced me to artists, that my kids listen to now. The Residents and Negativland top a list. Son #3 is inexplicably on a Rutles binge this month.

    ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativland
    ref: https://www.residents.com/
    ref: https://rutles.fandom.com/wiki/The_Rutles_discography

You're stranded on a desert island and can only bring one cassette tape you recorded off the radio:

Fish Heads or Star Trekkin'?

I used to record his show from the radio when I lived on Okinawa, it was my soundtrack for the week! Dr. Demento's show definitely shaped my humor and personality, he is a true gem.

Early 80's, it was on late Sunday night, so I taped the episodes (because of school). WLUP in Chicago. I wish I held on to those old cassettes...

A core memory of mine was listening to the Doc. The show was on late Sunday night so I rarely got to hear the Five Five. One week, it was the Memorial Day weekend. My two closest friends and I were all able to hear the whole show. We met the next day to ride the bus downtown to the big mall. We talked and laughed all day about the songs we heard. Good times :D

It's crazy how treasurable & enjoyable a good program is.

Little Stevie's Underground Garage comes to mind. I miss the heck out of Chromewaves radio & dozens of others on shoutcast. Spektremodule being gone has obstructed some of the most wild human energies from finding their sink.

Was at an event he was at CSUN ~1978. We were in the parking lot coming in and he was just coming out. He stopped and talked to us for a while. Super nice guy. My impression is he is exactly the same as he is on the air all the time.

I listened to Dr Demento on WMHD for so many formative years. A titan!

Wow. In the 1970s, one of the Denver or Boulder radio stations used to carry his show, I think on Sunday afternoons. Fifty-five years is a long run.

that is insane that anything by a single person can run for so long. is there anything else comparable to that?

I drool and smile and swivel that dial

To the Doctor Demento Show!

I've stayed tuned in for 20 years

But now it's plain as plain

Oh, come on, Mum, and let me out!

Compared to him, I'm sane!