Biography

Doctor Demento (Barry Hansen) was one of man most responsible for launching friend "Weird Al" Yankovic's music career. When Al was in college, Demento heard his music and asked Al to come on Demento's music show. With help from Demento, Al launched his highly successful music career.
- IMDb mini biography by: Eli Boorstein <eli@hotmail.com>

Barry Hansen is a graduate of Reed College in Portland, Oregon. His thesis was on post-Wagnerian opera - "Wozzeck" and "Afternoon of a Faun." He was a classmate of Ry Cooder, noted musician. After graduating, Barry went on to be the road manager for Canned Heat for several years. In the late 1960s and throughout much of the 1970s, Barry was doing work for Warner Brothers, on their acclaimed "Loss Leaders" series starting with "Schlagers" and including such classic compilations as "The Big Ball" and "The Days of Wine & Vinyl".

Thanks to the efforts of Karen Eastburn, a Reed student, Barry returned to the Reed campus several times for public appearances and fascinating presentations, including his classic "X-Rated Dementia," which featured a history of "party records" and ended with the classic 15-minute cut, "The Crepitation Contest".

Barry tends to visit second-hand stores and thrift shops whenever he can to check out used records for things he might not have. In 1975, at his first appearance at Reed, he said that he had some 50,000 records at his house -in *every* room - but he'd made a deal with himself that he wouldn't have any records in his bedroom. At his next appearance at Reed a year later, he said that the number of records had grown and that he'd finally been forced to put a 'small' record rack in his bedroom. One can only hope that he's purchased a bigger house since then!
- IMDb mini biography by: John Hedtke <john@hedtke.com>