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.