The Logan Whitehurst Memorial Award for Excellence in Comedy Music

2014 Jurors

Fan Jurors

“Wacky” Ben Pulliam

“Wacky” Ben Pul­liam is the host of Ben’s Wacky Radio. After becom­ing a Dr. Demen­to fan at age 15 he had hopes that he could fol­low in the good doctor’s foot­steps and host his very own com­e­dy music show; in Jan­u­ary 2004, he got his chance at sta­tion WQNA 88.3 The Edge in Spring­field, IL where he has been bring­ing out the wack­i­ness to the lis­ten­ers for 10 years. The wack­i­ness of Ben’s Wacky Radio can still be heard every Tues­day on madmusic.com and Wednes­day evenings on dementiaradio.org. And when you tune into the show, Wacky Ben always reminds his lis­ten­ers to NOT break their fun­ny bones!

Ken “Madman on the Loose” Sherlock

2014 marks the 10th year the “mad­man on the loose” has been broad­cast­ing on Demen­tia Radio. His first expo­sure to demen­tia was lis­ten­ing to Spike Jones records at his uncle’s house in the 1970s before as a high school stu­dent dis­cov­er­ing the Dr. Demen­to Show in the ear­ly 1980s.

Once he joined the Demen­tia Radio group in 2000, he helped fel­low fans and artists get to con­ven­tions and once there assist­ed with every­thing from mer­chan­dise sales to haul­ing equip­ment to occa­sion­al­ly appear­ing on stage. Over the past decade, Ken has made cameos in many songs and videos includ­ing “The Mall San­ta”, which he co-wrote as well as voiced the title character.

Chozo Ninpo

Chozo Nin­po is the cre­ator and project man­ag­er for the Orlan­do Nerd Fest (http://orlandonerdfest.com). He has been help­ing to pro­mote nerd cul­ture in the pub­lic eye for over a decade. He first start­ed out as a rave and par­ty pro­mot­er and even­tu­al­ly became a nerd­core rap­per, and per­formed at Ner­da­palooza 2008. Dur­ing his time he was also exec­u­tive pro­duc­er of sev­er­al of the “Rhymetor­rents” albums, which were com­pi­la­tions to help fur­ther the “nerd­core hiphop” genre.

He even­tu­al­ly put his music career on hold to run Chan­nel Zero (http://thezerolevel.com), a WebTV site based on “the nerdy and nos­tal­gic”. It is there that his cohort Shamus Odd­ish and he review movies, play video games, and cov­er var­i­ous live nerd relat­ed events. He has since brought on board sev­er­al oth­er media pro­duc­ers from all over the world.

Musician Jurors

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 twelve 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). His song par­o­dies, orig­i­nals, stand-up and sketch­es about pop cul­ture phe­nom­e­na have made 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 sev­en­teen years, many of which fea­ture col­lab­o­ra­tions and cameos by his fel­low com­e­dy musi­cians of the Fun­ny Music Project (www.theFuMP.com). Luke is a 3‑time Logan Awards nom­i­nee, and a 2‑time win­ner for Out­stand­ing Par­o­dy Song for “Snoopy The Dogg” in 2012, and “When You Wish Upon A Death Star” in 2013.

Kevin Eldridge

Kevin Eldridge dis­cov­ered The Dr. Demen­to Show in the ear­ly 80s, and became quite obsessed with fun­ny music; his first con­cert was “Weird Al” Yankovic in 1985. In the ear­ly 90s, Kevin formed the com­e­dy band The Sponge Aware­ness Foun­da­tion with key­boardist Ed Lecuy­er, and released the album “Looks Like Rain… Tastes Like Chick­en”. Sev­er­al SAF songs have been heard on The Dr. Demen­to Show; most notably, “An Axl Christ­mas” was a hol­i­day favorite on the show through­out the 90s and beyond. The Sponge Aware­ness Foun­da­tion per­formed at col­leges and cof­fee­hous­es through­out New Eng­land, and appeared at the Demen­tia 2001 con­ven­tion in Michi­gan. Also in 2001, SAF released the Delu­sions of Com­pe­tence album, fea­tur­ing the song “Greg Brady Wants Me Dead.” The band still resur­faces occa­sion­al­ly to per­form their weird orig­i­nal songs, as well as cov­ers such as their School House Rock med­ley. These days Kevin can also be heard on a week­ly com­e­dy pod­cast called The Flop­cast, where he and co-host Korn­flake dis­cuss fun­ny music, old car­toons, nerdy con­ven­tions, 70s and 80s nos­tal­gia, and yes, chickens.

Bill Frenzer

The song “Dead Pup­pies” has been off-and-on the most request­ed song of all time on “The Dr. Demen­to Show”. That song is by a group called “The Ogden Edsl Wahalia Blues Ensem­ble Mon­do Biz­zario Band”, or for short “Ogden Edsl”. The pri­ma­ry man behind “Ogden Edsl” is Bill Fren­z­er. Oth­er clas­sic songs by Ogden Edsl include “Kinko The Clown”, “Dad­dy’s Mon­ey”, and “Idi Amin Meets Eydie Gorme”. More recent Dr. Demen­to Show hits by Bill Fren­z­er include “Les­bians On TV”, “I Want To Ride On Sha­ni­a’s Train”, and “She’s Got A Tongue Like A Kodi­ak Bear”. In 2013, he released a song about Pres­i­dent Oba­ma called “Send In The Drones”. We are hon­ored to have such a leg­endary fig­ure from com­e­dy music his­to­ry as a juror for the 2014 Logan Awards.

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

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 two 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.

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.