San Diego Hits the 3,000 Mark (March 10, 2005)

What's missing from the airwaves, aside of the aforementioned electronica dance genre is intelligent music covering the subgenres of filk, parody, comedy, folk, blues, humor, sketches, and classic novelty that emcompasses the legitimate genre of dementia as the umbrella title of the music genre.

It's been 3,000 days since December 22, 1996 when a now-defunct radio station carried the Dr. Demento radio show (and over six since KLSX carried the show in Los Angeles on February 20, 1999) and lost so many listeners that the programmer sold it to Jacor (and swallowed by Clear Channel a year after that).

Thanks to the lack of music teaching skills from the unionized San Diego Teachers Association, today's students are far more uneducated as far as the existance of genres other than pop or urban music is concerned. MTV and corporate radio are miseducating the students about music today. They're not exposing students to music that says something other than "I love you" again and again. How about songs about filk such as Harry Potter and Star Trek? Songs about driving a car? Songs about dogs? Parodies of pop songs that make a political statement? Songs featurng sped-up voices that are actually funny? Classic 50s to 70s novelty songs that made the Billboard pop charts? Let's face it. The local teachers need to get a music cirriculm going for their students when they reach junior high or this kind of musical category will remain obscure and lost to them.

I feel sorry for today's students in public schools. The teachers are doing nothing about this, and are still asking for higher salaries based on senority, yet the students are learning nothing about music to round out their cultural knowledge needs. Here's to hoping Governor Schwartznegger's education reform gets enough signatures and passes with the voters in November. Let's see some good teachers teach about novelty and funny music instead of just classical and jazz. Teach the kids something that makes them think instead of puts them to sleep for chrissake! Let's see the teachers that contribute towards educating the students with lessons on intelligently-written comedy music get a higher salary for helping to save music from corporate radio music mentality.

Like gospel, dementia is a thematic genre comprised a collection of musical genres, be it country, techno, soft jazz, blues, pop, even Austrian new wave, and nowhere on the local airwaves is such a collection of music led by the current crop of musicians and comedians such as the Steve Goodie, Tony Goldmark, Worm Quartet, The Frantics, and others can be found on the radio dials of San Diego, as well as Los Angeles, Riverside, Coachella, or many other cities in the USA, thanks in part to corporate radio's chokehold on musical creativity that goes unheard for the masses to learn and absorb.

Fortunately for Americans living on the island of Southern California, the Internet is where you can get your pirated downloads of over 95 percent of the mp3s of The Dr. Demento Show including all since December 22, 1996, when it last aired in America's Behindest City.

The Doctor Demento Show Dot Com website http://www.thedoctordementoshow.com/ has over 1,275 Dr. Demento shows in high 128 or 192 kbit versions for broadband users, and slower 32 and 64 kbit versions for the now-deprecated dial-up 56K Internet connection. As of March 10, there are 41,785 files online using 230GB of space, over 75 percent of a 300GB hard drive.

Two words of caution about this website. First off, server bandwidth is limited so only from 12 to 36 simultaneous connections (i.e. downloaders) can be accompanied at a time. Second, since these are basically a collection of copyrighted music files, the lawyers of the RIAA may find this site illegal and try to get this site shut down, and if so, this site may reappear under a different name. Wayne, the webmaster of the website, reports that over 1,000 signed up since the website started last month, signaling a dire need for dementia on the radio.

If you download some songs and find some of them likeable, then go out and purchase the comedy albums from several sites including Comedy Album Store at http://www.davesfunstuff.com/0401.htm or at the Novelty Song Almanacs at http://songs.davesfunstuff.com/, and radio station DFSXRadio.com http://www.dfsxradio.com/ has an album section comprised of songs that they feature that you can purcase novelty music from. The people who make the songs have to have a reason to make more, and buying a CD or two lets the labels and stores know that people are interested in this kind of music in the form of hard-earned cash transferring from the consumer to the store, then to the company, label, and musician.

Folks? I've been listening to the Dr. Demento Show on the Internet for eight years since March 8, 1997 when streaming Internet radio was still relatively new and streaming bandwith was basically from a AM sounding 8kbps to 20kbps to accomodate modem speeds from 28kbps to 56kbps. Broadband was still being deployed at Cox San Diego and would not become a reality until October 1997, and mp3 files of music haven't been invented yet (they were in about 1999) so people could download missed Dr. Demento Show mp3 files for catching up on. I can easily tell you that Clear Channel, Jefferson Pilot, Midwest Television, Infinity Radio, and Disney are losing their listeners who are bored with the predictable safe sounds of pop music, discovering genres radio isn't covering and listening to them on satellite, Internet, downloads, or iPods.

My collection of albums on the http://www.dfsxradio.com/ website shows eight years worth of musical education that I acquired from radio stations on the Internet such as The Loop in Chicago (1998-2004), WMVP 1000 Chicago (1997), KOZT 95.3 Ft. Bragg (1997-today), KY 102 Kansas City (1997-98), KACV FM 90, Amarillo, and WKIT 100.3 Bangor (?-2004), and numerous others.

You know those commercial spots where "you first heard it on the radio?" So true, especially on radio stations in America's Finest Cities outside of the island of Southern California that carries funny music shows such as Dr. Demento and local radio productions that broke out the funny artists first from their airwaves.

Radio needs to get some quality fun and funny music on the airwaves. The crop of unfunny jocks such as those on KGB and Rock just don't do the intellectuals justice. Even Bob and Tom isn't giving most of the listeners the kind of funny music they want to hear either.

DFSXRadio.com Features Non-Stop Dementia (March 10, 2005)