Saturday, June 19, 2010

Saturday tunes: Whither the novelty song?

(Updated below.)

Last week, Dr. Demento hung up his studio headphones after about 40 years of putting the "alter" in "alternative radio." For those of us of a certain age, the Doctor's weekly radio program was the sonic counterpart to those well-thumbed copies of MAD Magazine.

As a tribute, my pal Keith, who hosts "Strictly the Sixties" every Thursday on WCCR LP FM counted down his top ten favorite novelty records of the Sixties.

This weighed in at Number 10:




In case you're wondering (and you know you were), at the Number 1 spot on his list was the record that Grandmaster Keith calls "The 'Citizen Kane' of Novelty Records."

Salon.com published a nice tribute to the Doctor last week, also tracing the history of the novelty record, from Spike Mulligan to (for better or worse) SNL Digital Video Shorts.

Update: Here's Keith's comments, together with the full top-10 playlist.

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