Demento Covered in Punk, a new double album compilation which comes out today, seems like something that should have already happened a few decades ago, but hey, better late than never! Structured like an episode of Demento’s radio show, it features both punk covers of beloved novelty songs and novelty interpretations of punk favorites, along with a couple of totally sideways surprises. Like them, Demento longed for simpler, funnier times, and was digging through the same thrift store stacks where the punks were finding inspiration and when those punks started putting out records, Demento would occasionally sandwich one of their songs in between Spike Jones and the Okeh Laughing Record, and it seemed to make about as much sense as anything else.
In 1974, Demento launched his syndicated, all-novelties radio show on KMET in Los Angeles, right around the same time Jeffrey, John, Douglas, and Thomas were becoming Ramones on the other side of America. It’s well known that punk didn’t have many mainstream champions in its nascent days, but Barry Hansen, a.k.a. The overwhelming bulk of the Cramps catalog is novelty songs, covers and originals alike notorious punk promoter/alleged creep Kim Fowley, who would produce the Runaways and the Modern Lovers in the 70s, spent much of the ’60s producing weird joke songs like “Alley Oop” and “The Trip.”
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Along with back issues of MAD magazine, trashy pulp novels, and Z-grade movies on late night TV, this was the essential food that nourished punk into existence, and frequent tribute was paid to this bygone era of goofery, from the New York Dolls’ take on the Cadets’ “Stranded in the Jungle,” to the Ramones’ update of the Trashmen’s “Surfin’ Bird.” Richard Hell lifted the structure of his signature song “Blank Generation” from the Bob McFadden/Rod McKuen novelty “The Beat Generation” early west coast art-punks Smegma collaborated with Larry “Wild Man” Fischer in their very early days, and sampled the car crash sounds from the Nervous Norvus novelty hit “Transfusion” in their song “Mutant Baby” (although they may have just been sampling the same sound effects phonograph record from whence that earlier track originally lifted the sound). In the context of the time, the connection makes perfect sense, at least economically: by the mid-1970s, when punk was initially gestating as a defined concept, it was a buyer’s market for the hundreds of twisted, juvenile songs that were tossed out on cheap 45s by the barrelful in the 1950s and 60s.
In fact, some modern punks might even be offended by the suggestion that they’re related at all: punk is serious art about serious issues, man! Before the days of po-faced hardcore sourpusses, though, punk basically was novelty music a concerted effort by a ragtag group of rejects, queers, and cough syrup drinkers to undercut any and all of the self-seriousness that had leaked into the rock ‘n’ roll enterprise post-Woodstock. Nowadays, the connection between punk rock and novelty records may seem tenuous at best.
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