As most of you know, I'm a DJ. It's what I've wanted to do since I was kid. There were many DJs that I would say influenced me to follow this dream - which is a topic by itself - but I would dare say that Dr. Demento is towards the top of that list.



I loved to listen to the Dr. Demento Show. Every Sunday night at 10:00 - one hour after I was supposed to be asleep - I would grab my portable radio with headphones and tune in to Rock 103.

The DJ who was going off the air would read the following advisory:

"Dr. Demento is a nationally syndicated show. The management and advertisers of Rock 103 do not necessarily sanction or promote the material contained in the Dr. Demento Show."

At that point, the Doctor himself would say, "Good evening..." and I would hunker down under the covers and prepare for two hours of hilarious songs and comedians.

I was not the only kid at school doing this. Every Monday morning at school, you could tell which kids stayed up until Midnight to hear the "Funny Five".

People like Spike Jones, Tom Lehrer and Alan Sherman all became part of my regular listening.

And then there was Weird Al Yankovic.



For many, Weird Al is synonymous with parody. There is no one in the business that does a better parody - most of the time with the original artist's blessing - than Weird Al.

When Al was thinking about doing a parody of Nirvana's "Smell Like Team Spirit", he asked Kurt Cobain if he could do it.

"Is it about food?" asked Cobain.
"No, it's about how your lyrics are hard to understand," replied Al.
"Cool," said Cobain

When I asked you to send in your influences, Weird Al made the list more than groups like The Beatles or Led Zeppelin.

Thom (AKA Stabbim), bass player from the band Sons of Nothing, wrote the following:

The first album I ever bought with my own money was Al's In 3-D. He hit at just the right time and in just the right way to completely hook me, and to this day still has my undying fan loyalty.

He's also, as I was not to find out until over a decade after first becoming a fan of his music, one of the best Rock & Roll frontmen I have ever seen. Seriously. That someone so fantastically talented deliberately makes a living by creating such silly, whimsical art instead of taking themselves or life all that seriously puts what I do to shame, and always will.

Trav the Movie Man - a sort of "Rain Man" when it comes to movies - had this to say about Weird Al:

Dare to Be Stupid is the only Weird Al tape I ever had to replace from wearing it out. This became the tape I would play billions of times in my walkman at night while on long overnight roadtrips while my dad drove across Indian reservations, Kansas, and the like.

Mike, a mime/stand-up comedian, had this to say:

The first time I saw the "Eat It" video, I knew that I wanted to do something like that for the rest of my life. Unfortunately, I can't sing, but I'll be damned if I didn't try a number of times.

But it's not just Weird Al that has fans' undying love. I did an All-Request show on the radio and I would say about 75% of the requests were for songs like "The Streak" by Ray Stevens, "Spiders & Snakes" by Jim Stafford, "Leader of the Laundromat" by the Detergents and of course, "My Ding-A-Ling" by Chuck Berry. (FACT: The only Number One hit by Chuck Berry was...you guessed it..."My Ding-A-Ling" in 1972.)

Yep, novelty songs have a place in music history. They can have an influence on people just as much as anything else.

And not just for 12-year-old boys sitting under their covers listening to Dr. Demento.