Rocking Out to Those Martian Tunes

Let’s talk about Martian tunes, shall we?

Rocking out to the Martian Tunes

What, you don’t think that Mars is high up on the hit parade? Well, what about Bruno Mars?

Ha! Only kidding.

No, I’m talking those classic tunes about Mars and Martians, songs like The Martian Hop, Martian Boogie or my personal favorite The Martian March.

You've never heard of them? Really? Then sit back and listen, dementites and dementoids, cause you are in for a treat.

The Martian March was a song by a group that got some amount of notoriety back in the mid 1970s. It was called the Roto Rooter Goodtime Christmas Band, best known on the radio for its version of the Laurel and Hardy Theme.

Before you start going crazy wondering exactly who Laurel and Hardy are, which type of format their theme would fall into or exactly what station would play a band called the Roto Rooter Goodtime Christmas Band in the first place, let me give you a hint. Roto Rooter’s version of Felix Figueroa’s Pico and Sepulveda was used as the theme song for the D.J. who played their stuff Sunday nights a long time ago on the now long-defunct but at one time absolute king of L.A. rock and roll radio.

The Roto Rooter Goodtime Christmas Band

I know that a lot of you are scratching your heads. Some of you are wondering, who was that D.J.? Others of you might be thinking, who is Felix Figueroa, and why would a band called Roto Rooter Goodtime Christmas Band want to cover his song? Still others might be thinking, I’ve never been to L.A. so who the fuck cares? And I’m sure one or two you serious Internet geeks have got to be pondering the question of exactly what a radio station is.

To answer most, Pico and Sepulveda was a comedy song that came out in the 1950s that included every street name in L.A. in its lyrics and ended with the verse, “La Brea…tar pits…where nobody’s dreams…come true!” The name Felix Figueroa was a continuation of a the parody since back in those days there was a Chevy dealership on Figueroa Boulevard called Felix Chevrolet with a giant sign featuring a smiling and waving Felix the Cat out front. Felix the Cat was a cartoon character who was popular in the 1950s. The 1950s was a decade in the 20th Century that came after the 1940s and just before the 1960s. A decade is a measurement of time that lasts 10 years. Time is something a TARDIS flies through. God, I hate having to explain everything.

Why Roto Rooter would want to cover Pico and Sepulveda is because it is one of the best examples of west coast DaDa ever recorded. And besides, the D.J. that used to play it all the time is the same one that more or less discovered them, the Laurel and Hardy Theme and The Martian March.

Well, in case nobody has guessed yet, the name of the radio station where this guy started was 94.7 KMET, more commonly known to listeners as the Mighty Met. And the name of the D.J. in question -- just in case no one has figured it out yet -- was none other than the redoubtable, notorious king of dementia, Dr. Demento.

Dr. Demento and friend on Mars

Dr. Demento was the radio persona of a guy named Barry Hanson, a serious musicology student with a degree from Reed college in Oregon who also happened to have a seriously large collection of silly novelty and comedy records as well. The way the story goes, a friend who worked at the Mighty Met kept borrowing records from Hanson to play on his radio show, and they were so popular that Hanson was offered his own show playing nothing but comedy records on Sunday nights. Back then Sunday nights were more or less a dead zone as far as listeners and advertisers went, so Barry drew a four hour slot from 6 to 10 p.m. got himself a nom de plume and a top hat and became the guru of silly tunes and merry melodies from out of the vaults and off the walls. The Dr. Demento Show was an immediate L.A. hit. Dr. D made personal appearances where he would do the entire show live while people in the audience danced to bands like Spike Jones and the City Slickers, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Bobbie “Boris” Pickett and the Crypt Kickers,  or weird tunes like Walter Wort, the Freaky Frog, Sara Cynthia Sylvia Stout Who Would Not Take the Garbage Out and, of course, The Martian March. A lot of local clubs and bars cashed in on the popularity of the show as well with Dr. Demento nights on Sundays featuring odd drinks and, of course, the Dr. Demento Show over the sound system.

The doctor played tunes from his own private collection, of course. But he also played novelty records he

borrowed from friends or got from listeners who sent records and tapes into the station. If he played a song you sent him, he’d always give you credit on the air, stating that the record had come from your collection. I sent him a tape of Thurl Ravenscroft singing Grim Grinning Ghosts from Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion. I was listening the night he played that tune -- which became a standard -- on the radio for the very first time. Sure enough he said, “The deep, deep baritone of Thurl Ravenscroft singing Grim Grinning Ghosts from the collection of David Knoles.”

I was totally stoked.

I also had the good fortune of seeing a Roto Rooter Goodtime Christmas Band concert, too. Once they got popular thanks to continued airplay on the Dr. Demento Show, they started doing a lot of local LA gigs. I saw them at El Camino College, where I was going to school at the time during a lunch break when I was supposed to be doing my astronomy homework. The outdoor concert was a hilarious hour of songs and schtick. They did The Martian March lurching around like zombies with their hands extended in front of them. They of course also did the Laurel and Hardy Theme they were best known for and ended the show with a incredibly funny medley of songs from The Wizard of Oz of all thing. And just to put the icing on the cake, we even had a half dozen streakers -- including a well-endowed girl who got a standing ovation -- run across the lawn where the crowd was seated. Of course it was 1975, so what do you expect?*

*Streaking was this odd custom that was popular in the 1970s, which was the decade right after the 1960s and just before the 1980s that lasted about 10 years. It involved running naked for no apparent reason through a crowd. Most streakers were guys, which is why the girl at the concert got a standing ovation. The most famous streaking of the era was when some guy streaked the Academy Awards show, and actor David Niven, who was at the podium as a presenter, admonished him for “showing his shortcomings on national T.V.”

Roto Rooter wasn’t the only act the good doctor discovered. There was another guy who was the son of an professional accordionist who sent in a garage tape and inadvertently became a major pop star. The tune he recorded and sent to the show was a parody of Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust called Another One Rides the Bus. And the guy’s name was Weird Al Yankovich.

By the end of the decade, the Doctor was flying high. He was now selling albums of the whacky songs he played on Rhino Records. He cut the show down to two hours and syndicated it. And when the Might Met, KMET, the most successful rock radio station in history bit the dust and became the wimpy Wave because of inept programmers, the Dr. Demento Show simply packed up and moved on to another L.A. station. The show was still funny and cool, but it was kind of sad because, being syndicated for a nationwide audience, it had lost that local flavor. There were no more petitions from local high schools voting for the top Demented Ten songs at the end of the show, and no more collections announcements. But, oh well. That’s progress for you.

One of the Dr. Demento collections was called Hits from Outer Space. Along with Star Trek parodies and other spacey goodies was an old fifties novelty record I remember hearing as a kid. It came out about the same time as The Monster Mash, but it was called The Martian Hop, recorded by a group called the Ran-Dells. The opening lyrics state that “…we have just discovered an important note from space…the Martians plan to throw a dance for all the human race…” Then it goes into a 50s be-bop beat from there. Since you can take that message as a sort of Frankie and Annette beach blanket war of the worlds sort of thing, here’s my “The Martian Hop” video. And yes, that’s me as the skater.

For decades I was a huge fan of Dr. Demento. But for the past few years I haven’t been able to find a station on the radio that carries his show. I thought it was just Central Floridian radio. I mean, this ain’t exactly the biggest radio market on the planet. But I was wrong. From what I was reading the other day, the Doctor has sort of fallen on hard times. As tastes and trends changed, his audience began to dry up and less and less stations were picking up and running the Dr. Demento Show. With listeners and sponsors waning, finally, in 2010, with only six -- six -- stations still running the show, Dr. Demento decided to finally call it quits. Today you can still hear the show, but only on the Internet and you have to buy individual episodes from Dr. Demento’s website.

Sad. Very sad. As sad as the demise of KMET itself.

Wind up your radio!

But I’d rather not think of that. I’d rather remember the Doctor in the glory days. In fact, not a Sunday night passes when glancing at the radio doesn’t give me a smile. And I think, wouldn’t it be grand to twist that knob and hear the strains of the Roto Rooter Goodtime Christmas Band playing the intro to Pico and Sepulveda while the slightly nuts voice of Barry Hansen tells me to “Winnnnnd up your raaaaaaadio!!!….” 

P.S....you can find Dr. Demento at drdemento.com. Further, you can see the Roto Rooter Goodtime Christmas Band performing The Martian March on You Tube.




See you next time...

Same Mars time...
Same Mars Channel...

PPS:

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