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Thanks, again, Tim!
Okay, I admit it, I'm a sucker for this stuff, and I play it all the time on Shockwave. If anything, Dr. D doesn't go far enough. That's why I'm on the air...
Dr. Demento is the Mad Magazine of the radio, corrupting young and old since 1970. In the music biz, odd, funny, unusual songs are called "novelty" numbers; the concept goes waaaay back and slopped over into recorded music Over the years, Dr. Demento has collected some of his favorites (and the ones he could get the rights to) in CDs. While you can get some of them at other various online shops, probably quicker, the most complete collection is from the Dr. Demento web site catalog.
He's released 20th Anniversary and 25th Anniversary and 30th Anniversary 2-CD sets. While I appreciate the effort, there's a lot of redundancy between the 20th and 25th and I think the 20th Anniversary collection is better. It has, and the 25th doesn't: Dead Puppies, Cocktails for Two, Existential Blues, Star Trekkin' and Witch Doctor. The 25th repeats many of my least favorite cuts but does have Highly Illogical and Tip-Toe Through the Tulips With Me. The 30th has less redundancy, and does have Bulbous Bouffand, Dead Skunk, I'm The Urban Spaceman, and Lumberjack Song among others. Frankly, I think he should just give up and put out a 5-CD set of everything, and add on as necessary. In the meantime, get the 20th and 30th, and maybe one or two of the individual ones (below).
Dr. Demento's Country Corn is a good collection, and his Christmas collection has both A Christmas Carol by Tom Lehrer and Green Chri$tma$ by Stan Freeberg, as well as Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer and All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth instantly making it worthy if you don't have these songs individually. This is No. 6 in a series of CDs, no longer listed on his site. You can get cassettes of compilations of songs by decades, which can be fun but I tend not to catalog the songs that way. Being a member of the Demento Society is kind of amusing, but you don't get all that much; maybe it's gotten better since I joined (a looong time ago).
Also available off that catalog is a 3 CD set of Tom Lehrer, including his songs from The Electric Company. Ah, I should generate a Wish List... I have a bunch of Spike Jones, but the 2-CD collection listed here would be a marvelous place to start if you don't have any. The Ray Stevens collection has all my favorites, and Stan Freeberg may be an acquired taste, but if you're going to acquire it, start with The United States of America Vols 1 and 2.
I just picked up The Very Best of Dr. Demento (one of the premiums available during our Pledge Drive! Become a member of KFAI-FM Fresh Air Radio today, and tell 'em you're pledging to Shockwave, and we'll send you an interesting CD as well as a mug and... excuse me, I'm getting carried away...) issued for his 30th Anniversary in 2000 that is an interesting update of The Greatest Novelty CD of All Time from 1988 that doesn't seem to be available anymore. Well, there's a lot of redundancy including Dead Puppies, They're Coming To Take Me Away Ha-Haaa!, Poinoning Pigeons In the Park and so on, but I'm just as happy to have The Homecoming Queen's Got A Gun and Monster Mash and Purple People Eater on the older one as I am to have Bulbous Bouffant and My Dead Dog Rover and Don't Eat the Yellow Snow andMarvin I Love You on the newer one. Both come with nice booklets with descriptions of the songs and artists. Since you can only the newer one, making a recommendation is easy, but see above about issuing a more massive project. Oh well, maybe there are problems with rights.
If you don't recognize most of these songs... what the heck are you waiting for? Especially if you have kids, circa 9-15, these are the songs that will linger long after Britney Spears is consigned to the used toy bin. If you just want to get your feet wet (novelty songs aren't for everyone), then the Very Best is a single CD start. If you get hooked, well, Dr. Demento has a weekly radio show, not heard in many places of the country (including here, darn it) but you can find out if you have a local station here and he has a few of the more recent shows here in Real Audio (I assume this changes from week to week) and if it's possible to listen to the show over the radio after the latest decision about music fees over the net, it'll be listed here.
Dave Romm is a conceptual artist with a radio show and a web site and a very weird CD collection. He reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E here.
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