Today, the comedian Julie Brown is 56. But she started as a regular stand-up comedian working primarily in the gay clubs around Los Angeles. This led to her making short films. By the early 80s, she began working in television and film. And in 1984 she released a five song EP, Goddess in Progress. This is primarily what I know her for, because Dr Demento picked up on some of the songs and played them quite a lot. Yes, I was one of those guys: people who listened to Dr Demento each Sunday. I’m not proud, it’s just the truth.
One of the songs on the EP was, “Earth Girls Are Easy.” It is produced in an annoying New Wave style but with enough charm to overcome it. It’s a story song about a UFO that crash lands in her swimming pool. Love ensues. Brown later leveraged it into the film, Earth Girls Are Easy. I found it very amusing when I in college, but that shouldn’t be taken as a recommendation.
The film included a number of Brown’s songs, including “‘Cause I’m a Blonde.” I could do without the song’s The Romantics production, but it is funny:
In 1992, she finally got around to doing a full-on Madonna parody, Medusa: Dare to Be Truthful. But otherwise, she mostly does small projects. I’ve been very interested in some of her political things. For example, she did “The Ex-Beauty Queen’s Got a Gun” — a reworking of her classic “The Homecoming Queen’s Got a Gun” for Sarah Palin. And she did the very funny “Victoria Jackson Reacts to the Election!” — a reaction to Jackson’s Twitter meltdown on election night 2012. Here’s another one, “Victoria Jackson Tea Party Spokesmodel.” Vote for Romney: R-O-M-K-N-E-E!
Happy birthday Julie Brown!
No, no, a thousand times no. Never apologize and never explain for listening to Dr. Demento. It was an exercise in wading through huge piles of taconite to find the rare diamond, which is how most cultural diamonds are found. Demento is no fool and neither were his listeners. Yes, they were nerds. No, this was not a crime. There are far worse things to be.
Well, I wasn’t serious. You couldn’t really find that kind of stuff anywhere else. And I learned a lot about music listening to that show. Now with the internet, Dr Demento isn’t really necessary. Here is one of my all time favorites from the show: [Link missing.].
I got ape loads of attacks from cool rich kids when I was very young and listened to Demento. Because they listened to cool music. I can’t even imagine what cool music was in the late 1980s (honest to God, the cool rich kids weren’t even listening to REM. I had one friend who liked REM and old Stones records, and we hid this from the cool kids. It was a dark secret.) I thought the stuff on Demento was funny, shared it, and got nuked. Nerd!
What was the cool stuff in 1988? I couldn’t possibly say. But Wikipedia can! Wiki says it was the “Dirty Dancing” soundtrack. Tiffany. George Michael (alright, George Michael actually had some good tunes.) Van Halen. Def Leppard. Guns ‘N’ Roses (also actually had some good tunes.) Wow, that is largely a cavalcade of pure shit. Every second I spent listening to bad records played on Demento was less wasted than one fragmentary fraction of a second listening to Def Leppard. (I know they worked hard, all musicians do!)
That Doodles Weaver bit is great. It made me think of another Demento staple, Tom Lehrer, whom I didn’t get until I was much older: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgASBVMyVFI
The 1980s was an especially bad decade for music. The production was crap because of the synthesizers. Even good songs are almost unlistenable. Of course there was great music; there always is. But most of what was popular was crap. I hate the pop-heavy-metal of Van Halen and Def Leppard.
I like the variety of music on Demento. I didn’t necessarily like the old stuff at the time, but it introduced me to lot of great stuff. I definitely have him to thank for introducing me to Tom Lehrer and therefore to Gilbert and Sullivan.