June 1, 2026 • 12 mins
First, a legendary radio figure retires, causing a serious case of nostalgia. Next, the impact of the democratization of everything!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You ever heard anybody say I do that job for free.
It's one more thing.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm one more thing.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
I've said that about a lot of things.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Yeah, me too. I like to say, when it turns
out somebody's making you know, fifty million dollars, I'll do that.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
For half that.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
It's my favorite. Ah. Before we get into that, were
you ever a Doctor Demento fan radio personnel?
Speaker 3 (00:28):
I'm familiar with him.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
He would feature wacky songs and song parodies and stuff
like that. He has finally called it quits after fifty
five years.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
I didn't know he was still alive on the radio.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Doctor Demento real name Barry Hanson been doing it fifty
five years, introducing audiences to figures such as Tom Larrr
and cult songs like fish Heads. He also is revered
and condemned for popularized, popularizing, and mentoring weird Al Yankovic.
(01:02):
Here's a big booster of Weird Al's breakout song. Another
One Rides the Bus, a parody of the obvious queen
title portrayed with wit and a plum by the office
is Rain Wilson in the underappreciated twenty twenty two biopic
Weird The Al Yankovic story.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
I've heard it has a good movie. I didn't see it.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
You know, I've heard it is too. I don't watch
many movies at all, but I could see watching that someday.
Move and Judy.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
You know what. My son and I watched last night,
like the first third of and he actually liked it.
He's fourteen odd thing for a kiddylic Annie Hall by
Woody Allen. Really, I was watching it the other night
in the middle of the night. I mentioned it last
week because I couldn't sleep, and I thought, ow, bet
Henry would actually like this. He actually did like it.
He's a pretty.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Cerebral kid, and it's a very cerebral movie. Yeah, the
comedy that well, the humor is all pretty cerebral too,
So yeah, not surprised. So this guy's really named Barry Hanson.
He became doctor Demento after getting a master's in folklore
and ethno musicology from UCLA. I was going to do
that and joining the free form FM radio station KPPC
(02:06):
and PASADEN in nineteen seventy and he's been on the
air since nineteen seventy.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
In radio is so much cooler, way way way back
in the day.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Oh, my god. Yeah, you know, it's funny. I was
thinking about that. Why was I thinking about that?
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Because I think.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
About music a lot. I was thinking about the dawn
of album oriented rock radio AAR as we called it
in the business, where they would actually where it went
from no song can be more than two and a
half minutes long to here's an album side, We'll be
back afterward. And just as a music freak, how incredibly
(02:44):
cool that is?
Speaker 4 (02:45):
Was?
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Yeah? It was because also you couldn't stream every single
song you ever thought of anytime you wanted. You either
owned the album or you.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Didn't, right, and even if you did, you enjoyed it.
And to hear like somebody's whose musical opinions or persona
you respected and liked, say, hey, this is a great
album side and it's one of your favorites, that was cool. Well,
you listened to it kind of for the affirmation too.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
And then prior to the what late seventies, mid seventies,
there was no recording device that you had in your car,
So even if you owned the album, you couldn't listen
to it in your car unless you're Elvis had a
turntable in your car.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Yeah, or like the Rolling Stones. Had I know Keith
Richards had a little turntable in his glove compartment, presumably
you'd have to listen to it through the speakers in
the little turntable mechanism.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
I've seen the one in Elvis's car. Wherever that is
might be the Peterson Auto Museum, but somewhere they've got
Elvis's Cadillac that's got a turntable in it.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
And were the speakers just part of the same like
little console thing, Yeah yeah, yeah, which pretty seemed crazy
cool as at the time, But I mean, how often
would it skip if you're driving always? Yeah? Wow, yeah,
but yeah, I'll bet there are libraries full of like
(04:06):
old timey you know, early days of AAR radio out there,
college stations and hipster stations.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
I grew up in the middle of nowhere and we
had no FM radio, and I could pick up a
couple of AM stations barely from very very far away,
so like lots and lots of music that everybody grew
up on that's, you know, from our age group. I
never heard. I didn't even know it existed. There was
(04:35):
just no way for me to be exposed to that
sort of thing. And I remember going to Denver one
time with some people in college. It's probably like eighteen
nineteen years old. Went to Denver and listened to one
of those kind of ar stations you're talking about, and
I was like, Wow, radio stations that play this, that's crazy.
I had no idea.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Our first boss in talk radio, Ken Cole was He
was one of the like founding generation, founding fathers of
free form FM radio back in the late sixties early
seventies in New York, right Long Island and New York. Yeah, yeah,
And we saw it was funny because you know, he's
news talk guru and really good leader and all. And
(05:16):
to see pictures of him back in the day, it
was hilarious. I mean, he looked like he was walking
on the stage it Woodstock. But oh man, those must
have been heady days, free love, smoking pot in the studio.
Damn it. I was born too late.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
There's an interesting thing that is happening with the democratization
of everything, books, music, movie, acting, whatever, whatever you want
to talk about. It's on one hand, there's so much
more of it, and they got rid of the gate
keepers that kept a lot of great stuff out and
blah blah blah. But there's just so much everywhere all
(05:55):
the time that it's lost a lot of it's something.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Well luster profitability, both of them.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Oh, I've definitely lost its profitability by a lot.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
But just the excitement of discoverings, you know, you finally
get to hear this, or that there's so much everywhere
of everything all the time, right that it's it's I
don't know, it's it's I can't tell if it's just
nostalgia for liking things the way they were when you
were younger, which is a natural tendency, or if things
(06:26):
were actually better.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Right as an economist wait, checking own credentials, not an economist,
as somebody with an interest in economics, it's it's almost well,
you can look at it just as a case study
of two economic systems, one in which there is scarcity.
That's I almost said, artificially created, but it's not. Because
(06:51):
it was very expensive and difficult to get music from
the songwriter's head into my home. You had to manufacture
equipment and records and ship those records, and I had
to go buy them blah blah. That was the only
way was gonna happen, really, as opposed to now, when
everything's streaming all the time. There is zero scarcity and
there is zero gate keeping to get to the point
(07:16):
that I notice you. And it's two very different economic
systems for music, which is what we're talking about. Whether
one's better than the other or not. It's just super
interesting to look at the differences. I mean, because there
are there is just how would you I was gonna say, realms,
it's not rems. It's oceans of shitty music that you
(07:37):
have to sort through or formulaic or created by AI
or whatever to get to stuff that really connects with
your heart. But at the same time, you know, when
led Zeppelin, for instance, was playing their electriflied electrified blues
glories to everybody, there were a hundred unbelievable bands that
(07:58):
you'd never heard playing great heavy rock just because the
record companies only needed a few of them.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Yeah, we don't need another one that sounds like this.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Yeah, which one's better, which one's worse?
Speaker 3 (08:08):
I don't know, well, but it's always changed, and it
just changes with the technology. Because what book I think,
it's a book about Louis Armstrong early days of jazz,
but recorded music right when it got the ability happened
to where you could travel around the country pretty easily
trains and that sort of stuff. Then there would be
big music stars that would travel around and make lots
(08:35):
of money because it was the only way you're ever
going to hear this song is if you.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Saw them live.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
I mean that was the only way. Then radio hit and.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
That really hurt them to where well, now.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
You can hear this song on the radio. I don't
necessarily need to pay to hear it. Then there was
the next step of quickly after that, some way to
record it, and then you could buy it and listen
to it, and then that changed everything. We're all just
happenstance of technology changing. Nobody's like particular idea of what
would be best for music.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
M Yeah, I'm sorry. Where'd you get that?
Speaker 3 (09:09):
It's from a Louis Armstrong biography?
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Oh, because that's such a great companion piece to a
book I've touted several times David Byrne of Talking Heads
book How Music Works, because that talks it's more specifically
about the musical styles how those were affected by changes
in society and technology as well, for instance, the Krooner era.
This is my favorite example because it's super easy to
understand but you're being Crosby's and Frank's Sinatra and all
(09:36):
those guys. They never would have existed because prior to
the advent of the microphone and effective pas, you had
to sing so much louder you couldn't croon. They wouldn't
hear you in the back row. And so that technology
led directly to that style. And then you know, electric
guitar amplifier is becoming much better. Blah blah blah. You
can do some of the rest of the math yourself,
(09:57):
but there are a bunch of different examples like that
in the book Can. I don't know human beings need
to create music. We've always done it. There is some
nostalgia involved with the way it used to be and
how great records sounded on big speakers and blah blah blah.
But yeah, it's about the human urge ultimately, and you
know that'll always exist. To think. Ah, I like AI music, God,
(10:22):
I was gonna say. On the other hand, you get
AI music, which feels like somebody reaching a fist down
my throat and trying to pull out my soul. I
don't appreciate it. Hurt, it sucks, It hurts, Michael, It
hurts bad. Now we've gone on long enough. Why don't
we do the I would do that for free thing
(10:43):
tomorrow on the One More Thing podcast. Any final comments?
M dog Yeah. Music stores.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
I remember buying stuff for my sister for Christmas and
you'd go up to the clerk and say, all right,
what's a good album, what is something that you'd like
or whatever? And they say, oh, well, this is an
awesome album here. Why don't you get this one?
Speaker 1 (11:00):
And I would and she'd love it. You know, I'd
miss that, Yeah, you know I was speaking to me.
Is a friend of mine who really likes it sing
and likes music. Is like sponsoring a karaoke night in
my community at like the Big Bar, but it's scheduled
from six to eight pm. You can't do karaoke when
(11:24):
the sun is shining. It's gotta be night. You gotta
be drunk.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
A woman the other day was talking about how she
is doing karaoke. She doesn't drink and she's doing karaoke
at some workman, and I thought, people that can do
karaoke completely sober, you're a different person.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Or you just desperately want people to hear you sing.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
That's a different sort of person.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Man, I still think fondly of my greatest karaoke moment,
and I wish somebody had taped it. Oh my God,
partly so I could hear back and think, Wow, I
didn't sound nearly as good as I thought I did. Ah,
Karaoke Michael, what's your karaoke tuna choice? Buddy Angel of
the Morning, by choosing, could not have come up with
(12:16):
a funnier answer.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Well, I guess that's it.
You ever heard anybody say I do that job for free.
It's one more thing.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm one more thing.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
I've said that about a lot of things.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Yeah, me too. I like to say, when it turns
out somebody's making you know, fifty million dollars, I'll do that.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
For half that.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
It's my favorite. Ah. Before we get into that, were
you ever a Doctor Demento fan radio personnel?
Speaker 3 (00:28):
I'm familiar with him.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
He would feature wacky songs and song parodies and stuff
like that. He has finally called it quits after fifty
five years.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
I didn't know he was still alive on the radio.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Doctor Demento real name Barry Hanson been doing it fifty
five years, introducing audiences to figures such as Tom Larrr
and cult songs like fish Heads. He also is revered
and condemned for popularized, popularizing, and mentoring weird Al Yankovic.
(01:02):
Here's a big booster of Weird Al's breakout song. Another
One Rides the Bus, a parody of the obvious queen
title portrayed with wit and a plum by the office
is Rain Wilson in the underappreciated twenty twenty two biopic
Weird The Al Yankovic story.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
I've heard it has a good movie. I didn't see it.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
You know, I've heard it is too. I don't watch
many movies at all, but I could see watching that someday.
Move and Judy.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
You know what. My son and I watched last night,
like the first third of and he actually liked it.
He's fourteen odd thing for a kiddylic Annie Hall by
Woody Allen. Really, I was watching it the other night
in the middle of the night. I mentioned it last
week because I couldn't sleep, and I thought, ow, bet
Henry would actually like this. He actually did like it.
He's a pretty.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Cerebral kid, and it's a very cerebral movie. Yeah, the
comedy that well, the humor is all pretty cerebral too,
So yeah, not surprised. So this guy's really named Barry Hanson.
He became doctor Demento after getting a master's in folklore
and ethno musicology from UCLA. I was going to do
that and joining the free form FM radio station KPPC
(02:06):
and PASADEN in nineteen seventy and he's been on the
air since nineteen seventy.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
In radio is so much cooler, way way way back
in the day.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Oh, my god. Yeah, you know, it's funny. I was
thinking about that. Why was I thinking about that?
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Because I think.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
About music a lot. I was thinking about the dawn
of album oriented rock radio AAR as we called it
in the business, where they would actually where it went
from no song can be more than two and a
half minutes long to here's an album side, We'll be
back afterward. And just as a music freak, how incredibly
(02:44):
cool that is?
Speaker 4 (02:45):
Was?
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Yeah? It was because also you couldn't stream every single
song you ever thought of anytime you wanted. You either
owned the album or you.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Didn't, right, and even if you did, you enjoyed it.
And to hear like somebody's whose musical opinions or persona
you respected and liked, say, hey, this is a great
album side and it's one of your favorites, that was cool. Well,
you listened to it kind of for the affirmation too.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
And then prior to the what late seventies, mid seventies,
there was no recording device that you had in your car,
So even if you owned the album, you couldn't listen
to it in your car unless you're Elvis had a
turntable in your car.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Yeah, or like the Rolling Stones. Had I know Keith
Richards had a little turntable in his glove compartment, presumably
you'd have to listen to it through the speakers in
the little turntable mechanism.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
I've seen the one in Elvis's car. Wherever that is
might be the Peterson Auto Museum, but somewhere they've got
Elvis's Cadillac that's got a turntable in it.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
And were the speakers just part of the same like
little console thing, Yeah yeah, yeah, which pretty seemed crazy
cool as at the time, But I mean, how often
would it skip if you're driving always? Yeah? Wow, yeah,
but yeah, I'll bet there are libraries full of like
(04:06):
old timey you know, early days of AAR radio out there,
college stations and hipster stations.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
I grew up in the middle of nowhere and we
had no FM radio, and I could pick up a
couple of AM stations barely from very very far away,
so like lots and lots of music that everybody grew
up on that's, you know, from our age group. I
never heard. I didn't even know it existed. There was
(04:35):
just no way for me to be exposed to that
sort of thing. And I remember going to Denver one
time with some people in college. It's probably like eighteen
nineteen years old. Went to Denver and listened to one
of those kind of ar stations you're talking about, and
I was like, Wow, radio stations that play this, that's crazy.
I had no idea.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Our first boss in talk radio, Ken Cole was He
was one of the like founding generation, founding fathers of
free form FM radio back in the late sixties early
seventies in New York, right Long Island and New York. Yeah, yeah,
And we saw it was funny because you know, he's
news talk guru and really good leader and all. And
(05:16):
to see pictures of him back in the day, it
was hilarious. I mean, he looked like he was walking
on the stage it Woodstock. But oh man, those must
have been heady days, free love, smoking pot in the studio.
Damn it. I was born too late.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
There's an interesting thing that is happening with the democratization
of everything, books, music, movie, acting, whatever, whatever you want
to talk about. It's on one hand, there's so much
more of it, and they got rid of the gate
keepers that kept a lot of great stuff out and
blah blah blah. But there's just so much everywhere all
(05:55):
the time that it's lost a lot of it's something.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Well luster profitability, both of them.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Oh, I've definitely lost its profitability by a lot.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
But just the excitement of discoverings, you know, you finally
get to hear this, or that there's so much everywhere
of everything all the time, right that it's it's I
don't know, it's it's I can't tell if it's just
nostalgia for liking things the way they were when you
were younger, which is a natural tendency, or if things
(06:26):
were actually better.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Right as an economist wait, checking own credentials, not an economist,
as somebody with an interest in economics, it's it's almost well,
you can look at it just as a case study
of two economic systems, one in which there is scarcity.
That's I almost said, artificially created, but it's not. Because
(06:51):
it was very expensive and difficult to get music from
the songwriter's head into my home. You had to manufacture
equipment and records and ship those records, and I had
to go buy them blah blah. That was the only
way was gonna happen, really, as opposed to now, when
everything's streaming all the time. There is zero scarcity and
there is zero gate keeping to get to the point
(07:16):
that I notice you. And it's two very different economic
systems for music, which is what we're talking about. Whether
one's better than the other or not. It's just super
interesting to look at the differences. I mean, because there
are there is just how would you I was gonna say, realms,
it's not rems. It's oceans of shitty music that you
(07:37):
have to sort through or formulaic or created by AI
or whatever to get to stuff that really connects with
your heart. But at the same time, you know, when
led Zeppelin, for instance, was playing their electriflied electrified blues
glories to everybody, there were a hundred unbelievable bands that
(07:58):
you'd never heard playing great heavy rock just because the
record companies only needed a few of them.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Yeah, we don't need another one that sounds like this.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Yeah, which one's better, which one's worse?
Speaker 3 (08:08):
I don't know, well, but it's always changed, and it
just changes with the technology. Because what book I think,
it's a book about Louis Armstrong early days of jazz,
but recorded music right when it got the ability happened
to where you could travel around the country pretty easily
trains and that sort of stuff. Then there would be
big music stars that would travel around and make lots
(08:35):
of money because it was the only way you're ever
going to hear this song is if you.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Saw them live.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
I mean that was the only way. Then radio hit and.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
That really hurt them to where well, now.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
You can hear this song on the radio. I don't
necessarily need to pay to hear it. Then there was
the next step of quickly after that, some way to
record it, and then you could buy it and listen
to it, and then that changed everything. We're all just
happenstance of technology changing. Nobody's like particular idea of what
would be best for music.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
M Yeah, I'm sorry. Where'd you get that?
Speaker 3 (09:09):
It's from a Louis Armstrong biography?
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Oh, because that's such a great companion piece to a
book I've touted several times David Byrne of Talking Heads
book How Music Works, because that talks it's more specifically
about the musical styles how those were affected by changes
in society and technology as well, for instance, the Krooner era.
This is my favorite example because it's super easy to
understand but you're being Crosby's and Frank's Sinatra and all
(09:36):
those guys. They never would have existed because prior to
the advent of the microphone and effective pas, you had
to sing so much louder you couldn't croon. They wouldn't
hear you in the back row. And so that technology
led directly to that style. And then you know, electric
guitar amplifier is becoming much better. Blah blah blah. You
can do some of the rest of the math yourself,
(09:57):
but there are a bunch of different examples like that
in the book Can. I don't know human beings need
to create music. We've always done it. There is some
nostalgia involved with the way it used to be and
how great records sounded on big speakers and blah blah blah.
But yeah, it's about the human urge ultimately, and you
know that'll always exist. To think. Ah, I like AI music, God,
(10:22):
I was gonna say. On the other hand, you get
AI music, which feels like somebody reaching a fist down
my throat and trying to pull out my soul. I
don't appreciate it. Hurt, it sucks, It hurts, Michael, It
hurts bad. Now we've gone on long enough. Why don't
we do the I would do that for free thing
(10:43):
tomorrow on the One More Thing podcast. Any final comments?
M dog Yeah. Music stores.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
I remember buying stuff for my sister for Christmas and
you'd go up to the clerk and say, all right,
what's a good album, what is something that you'd like
or whatever? And they say, oh, well, this is an
awesome album here. Why don't you get this one?
Speaker 1 (11:00):
And I would and she'd love it. You know, I'd
miss that, Yeah, you know I was speaking to me.
Is a friend of mine who really likes it sing
and likes music. Is like sponsoring a karaoke night in
my community at like the Big Bar, but it's scheduled
from six to eight pm. You can't do karaoke when
(11:24):
the sun is shining. It's gotta be night. You gotta
be drunk.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
A woman the other day was talking about how she
is doing karaoke. She doesn't drink and she's doing karaoke
at some workman, and I thought, people that can do
karaoke completely sober, you're a different person.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Or you just desperately want people to hear you sing.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
That's a different sort of person.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Man, I still think fondly of my greatest karaoke moment,
and I wish somebody had taped it. Oh my God,
partly so I could hear back and think, Wow, I
didn't sound nearly as good as I thought I did. Ah,
Karaoke Michael, what's your karaoke tuna choice? Buddy Angel of
the Morning, by choosing, could not have come up with
(12:16):
a funnier answer.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Well, I guess that's it.
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