"Your Online Source for Comedy Music since 1995"

Crazy About That Funny Music

By Wayne Faust

Okay, so it’s not rocket science. It’s not opera. It’s probably not music that somebody will listen to a thousand years from now. But still, I like it.

I’ve liked funny music since I first started listening to music. During my grade school years in the 60’s there were a bunch of great records. One of my earliest memories is of Alan Sherman’s "Hello Muddah Hello Faddah," which was actually based on Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours" from La Gioconda, so maybe funny music is classy after all.

I also loved "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-dot Bikini" by Brian Hyland, "Alley Oop" by The Hollywood Argyles, featuring Kim Fowler (a respected songwriter who wrote lots of ‘serious’ songs), and whole albums of songs by Ray Stevens, who made a career out of funny music. The 60’s seemed to be a golden age for funny music. The songs were all singable, and after you got the joke, they were still fun to listen to.

Other decades had their novelty tunes as well, from the Itty Bitty Fishy song back in the 30’s, to "Don’t Worry Be Happy" by Bobby McFerrin (a respected Jazz vocalist,) to "The Man Song" by Sean Morey. And lest we forget, there is the infamous "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" by Dr. Elmo, which has had amazing staying power over the last few decades.

When I started writing and performing music, I always gravitated towards funny songs, and found that they worked amazingly well in my shows. You could do a great version of "Freebird" and the audiences would smile politely. If you made up a funny song on the spot about something happening in the news, it seemed that they would flock to the stage and ask where they could get a copy of that ‘song about John Bobbitt.’

So I seem to have made a career out of funny music of my own, which, by the way, you can check out on my website. But that wasn’t enough for me. I thought that since there are so many people out there performing and recording great funny music, they needed a place of their own. And thus, Picklehead Music was born, and has grown into a many-headed, comedy-music monster. Who knows where it will all end? Hopefully continuing to lighten up people’s lives and to have them forget their troubles long enough to listen to a song like "Lots Of Things Rhyme With Duck," complete with quacking.

So go ahead, laugh. And check us out at picklehead.com. We’re carrying on a tradition here. Honest.