2013 Jurors
Fan Jurors
“Blasted Bill” Putt
Bill Putt founded the 24-hour streaming comedy music internet station “Dementia Radio” in 1999. Since then, it has become an online community of like-minded enthusiastic comedy music fans, many of whom have become internet audio DJs themselves, hosting weekly shows that happen every night on Dementia Radio. A life-long fan of “The Dr. Demento Show” and comedy music, Bill also organized a convention called “Dementia 2001” in the Detroit area, a 3‑day festival with many comedy music performers, and the site of the first ever Rocky-Horror-style shadowcast performance of “Weird Al” Yankovic’s 1989 cult classic film, “UHF” (which Al mentioned on the UHF DVD commentary). Over the past 2 decades, Bill has been active in many assorted fandoms relating to comedy music. He was a regular cast member of the Detroit area’s “Rocky Horror Picture Show” monthly shadowcast performance; he was the Con Chair of PenguiCon, a fandom & programming convention which features many fannish comedy music acts; and has hosted a handful of streaming shows and podcasts, including the “Toad Elevating Moment” on Dementia Radio and the “Pod Of Destiny” with co-host Moonbeam Nance. Currently, “Blasted Bill” (a nickname derived from the infamous Garbage Pail Kids collector cards) is heading up a fundraiser to have Devo Spice give DementiaRadio.org an overhaul to bring it up to date with current home & mobile web browsing technology.
Kristen Kerouac, a.k.a. “Kornflake”
Kristen Kerouac hosted the Lowell, Massachusetts comedy music radio program “Coffee And Cartoons With Kornflake” on WUML 91.5 FM for several years. Kornflake fondly recalls Joe Dolce’s novelty hit “Shaddap You Face” (an Australian song released in 1980) as her introduction to the comedy music world, making her realize there was something beyond the realm of mainstream in music. She eagerly sought out comedy tunes and skits when local radio stations would play them between Top 40’s offerings on specialty shows like “Funny Fridays” or “Loony Tunes Tuesdays”. Early favorites included The Fools and Heywood Banks; recess times at school were spent attempting to recite songs like “Psycho Chicken” and “18 Wheels on a Big Rig”. At the convention “Dementia 2001”, aided by her good friend, comedy musician Dan Hart, she performed an original comedy song “Toenails”. The live performance of that song ended up on the CD “Laughter Is A Powerful Weapon (Funny Musicians For A Serious Cause)”, an album to benefit the Twin Towers Orphan Fund. Currently, Kornflake co-hosts “the Flopcast”, a silly chat podcast with her good friend, comedy musician Kevin Eldridge of the band “Sponge Awareness Foundation”. It can be heard at Flopcast.net.
John “Hex” Carter
John “Hex” Carter is the founder and Executive Director for Nerdapalooza, an annual nerd music and arts festival, the first of its kind to invite all genres of the nerd music movement under one roof, including nerd rock, nerdcore hip hop, chiptunes, video game music, and yes, some nerdy-topic-themed comedy music acts. Since 2007, there have been eight Nerdapalooza music festivals, the past few years based in the Orlando, Florida area, which has grown to become the largest nerd music festival in the world. They have had such esteemed performing acts as mc chris, MC Lars, MC Frontalot, Schäffer the Darklord, as well as some acts from the FuMP dot com, like Devo Spice, Insane Ian, Luke Ski, Worm Quartet, Positude, and the Consortium of Genius. He also is the Music Director of the Nerdy Show podcast collective, which can be found at nerdyshow.com, where he also runs a music based show called The Hex Grid.
Musician Jurors
DJ Particle
Emi Briet, a.k.a. DJ Particle has been turning heads at Karaōke rooms for almost 15 years with her parody lyrics. In 2006, she took those songs and released her first album, “Shiny Round Thing Inside”. She has since put out 2 more albums, with songs on such topics as Doctor Who, World of Warcraft, and anthems against the oppression of the RIAA. Emi has become a staple persona at the MarsCon Dementia Track in Bloomington, MN as the host of the Dementia Fan Showcase, where she encourages the general con-going public to get up and try their hand at performing their own comedy music. 5 years ago, she took over as the host of the weekly countdown show “Mad Music Dementia Top 20” (now called “Mad Music Top 20 Revenge”) for MadMusic.com. Every week, she passionately scours the internet in search of new comedy music from every corner of the comedy world, to make “Revenge” the type of show that doesn’t just cater to any one insular internet comedy music scene. She has her finger on the pulse of all current comedy music, and she encourages everyone to join in the fun and become a comedy musician too.
Jeff Smith
Jeff Smith is one half of the comedy rock duo “Raymond & Scum”, the other half being Matthew Dunn. Raymond & Scum has been performing comedy music in the L.A. area since the late 90’s. Their song “(Nobody Loves The) Comedy Band” quite ironically is very much loved by comedy music enthusiasts. They have released 2 albums, “Touch It” and “Suck”, and in 2007 they were asked to be one of the core founding acts of the website “The Funny Music Project”, a.k.a. The FuMP dot com, where R&S still occasionally release new songs. The ‘occasionally’ stems from the fact that Jeff is a film director as well, having released the 2006 full-length comedy-horror film “Stupid Teenagers Must Die!” (available on DVD via Amazon and Netflix). He’s got some other film projects in the works, including an untitled documentary about comedy musicians (for which some footage has already been filmed at MarsCon in Bloomington, MN) and is the co-founder of the Everybody Dies Horror Film Festival (Orange County, California’s only horror film festival.)
Tony Goldmark
Tony Goldmark was born with a silver spatula in his mouth. His parents, a chain music store co-owner and an independent record label owner, gave him a record deal at age 12 faster than you can say ‘nepotism’! Tony’s first forays into submitting songs to “The Dr. Demento Show” displayed his comedy music talents for the world. In 2000, his song “Kill The Backstreet Boys” hit #9 on Dr. D’s Funny 25 Countdown. His song “Teeth Clenched”, a brilliant satire of the band Creed and the Christian Rock movement, was the #3 song of 2003. An early adopter of Harry Potter fandom, Tony did many songs on the topic, and his parody song “Sirius Black” became the #2 song of 2004. More recently, Tony has made a name for himself in the world of snarky internet review shows, with his “Some Jerk With A Camera” series on his Blip.TV channel. In them, he skewers the theme park industry, primarily focusing on the Disney theme parks, because the more you are an obsessive nerd on a topic, the easier it is to scathingly tear it down in a comedic way on the internet. Tony is currently working on his latest comedy music album, “Goldmark After Dark”, from which the song “The Guy On TV Is Not Happy” was nominated for a Logan Award for Outstanding Original Comedy Song in 2011.
Permanent Juror
Dr. Demento
Dr. Demento is the on-air name of Barret Hansen, the longtime host of The Dr. Demento Show, a syndicated radio show in the U.S. that features novelty and comedy records. Hansen studied music at Reed College in Portland, Oregon and at the University of California at Los Angeles. He first used the Dr. Demento moniker in 1970, in his early days as a Los Angeles disc jockey. By 1974 he was nationally syndicated, playing rare novelty songs from the past and present, from Spike Jones and Tom Lehrer to Frank Zappa and Weird Al Yankovic. Hansen is also an avid record collector and expert on the history of recording who has produced several compilations, mostly for Rhino Records. He was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2009. (from Infoplease.com)
The Dr. Demento Show is radio’s weekly two-hour festival of “mad music and crazy comedy” available for streaming on the internet. It is a free-wheeling, unpredictable mix of music and comedy. Along with legends like Spike Jones, Tom Lehrer, Stan Freberg, Monty Python, and Frank Zappa, the Doctor plays new funny songs sent in by amateur and professional singers and comedians. (from Dr. Demento.com)
Chairperson
the great Luke Ski
At Dragon*Con 2004, Dr. Demento declared “the great Luke Ski” to be his radio program’s “Most Requested Artist of the 21st Century”. Since then, Luke held onto that title by having songs on “The Dr. Demento Show’s” annual year-end “Funny 25″ countdown of his most requested songs of the year for eleven years in a row, including three of them at #1 (“Peter Parker” 2002, “Stealing Like A Hobbit” 2003, “Snoopy The Dogg” 2011), and two of them at #2 (“You Don’t Know Jack” 2006, “Too Much Stuff” 2009). He also won the 2012 Logan Award for ‘Outstanding Parody Song’ for “Snoopy The Dogg”.
His song parodies, originals, stand-up and sketches about pop culture phenomena (doot doo, do-do-do!) have make him a favorite performer at science-fiction and fandom conventions all across the midwest and beyond. He’s released ten albums and a DVD over the past fifteen years, many of which feature collaborations and cameos by his fellow comedy musicians of the FuMP, most significantly Carrie Dahlby, who often sings lead vocals on Luke’s parodies of female musicians. His past hits amongst his fans include songs about Spider-Man, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Star Trek, Pirates of the Caribbean, Battlestar Galactica, Batman, Firefly, Doctor Who, Babylon 5, and Family Guy, with more recent hits about Disney buying Marvel, Twitter, Animé, Bruce Campbell, The Big Bang Theory, Monty Python, and Snoopy. He is the musical jester of sci-fi, the emissary of rap dementia, the pimp of the geek nation, and a prominent bacon enthusiast.
Founder
Rob Balder
Rob Balder is a professional cartoonist, singer/songwriter, game designer and web entrepreneur. Most of his time is consumed writing and producing Erfworld, an epic fantasy/comedy comic about an obsessive strategy gamer who is summoned to fight a real war. Erfworld was co-created in 2006 with illustrator Jamie Noguchi, and continues now with the talents of illustrator Xin Ye. Time magazine named Erfworld one of its top ten graphic novels of 2007, and Wired.com called it “Geekiest Comic Ever.” The first physical book of the series, “Erfworld: the Battle for Gobwin Knob,” was published in February of 2011.
Rob also writes and sings comedy songs, and has recorded two solo CDs. The title track from his first CD, “Rich Fantasy Lives” was co-written with Filk Hall of Famer Tom Smith. It won the Pegasus award for Best Filk Song of 2007. In 2009 he collaborated with -=ShoEboX=- of Worm Quartet on a CD called “Baldbox: the Dumb Album.” Rob’s songs have often been heard on the Doctor Demento Show. In January 2007, he and six other comedy music performers founded The Funny Music Project, where they present new songs every single day, released under a Creative Commons license. The FuMP won the 2009 Parsec Award for Best Speculative Fiction Music Podcast.
