Dr. Demento is shutting down his radio show after this weekend. He’ll still be producing shows for the internet, but the days of hearing his show on radio are gone, unless you’re in the area of Amarillo this summer.
I first ran across Dr. Demento in the 1970s. At the time, I was on a submarine, and we were pretty isolated from the rest of the world when we were on patrol. For official entertainment, we had small library (a box of books) and weekly movies in the crew’s mess and the wardroom. Unofficial entertainment usually involved books and magazines you brought along yourself, or playing cards. Some sailors crocheted or hooked rugs.
One patrol, I found a couple of LPs produced by AFRTS, the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service. One held a recording of a Dr. Demento show. I was enraptured. If I’d had more free time (often in short availability at sea), I’d probably have worn it out. When we got back in port, I tracked down his show on radio and started listening.
When I got out of the Navy and came to Denver, I found his show on KBCO in Boulder. Their format has changed somewhat since then – they used to have yearly broadcasts of The Fourth Tower of Inverness and have a locally-produced thing called “Intervention Day” on April 1st, but at that time, the doctor was in at 7pm on Sunday evenings, IIRC. Later, they moved the show to midnight on Sunday. I couldn’t afford to stay up that late, so, for the most part, I stopped listening. Some time later, I realized that I could swap RCA plugs around to feed the stereo into the VCR, which would allow me to set up a programmed recording at the right time for his show. Since there was no video associated with the radio, I’d end up with Dr. Demento as the soundtrack for whatever show was on TV at the time. This usually meant Baywatch Nights, which added a level of surrealism to listening to the show.
Shortly after that, KBCO dropped Dr. Demento completely. I’ll admit that I kind of stopped looking for him then. I did sign up with this site, but don’t listen often. It’s good to know that the doctor is still in.
Via Slashdot.
