Press

The Dr. Demento Show

On 16 September 1990 We Shot The New Kids On The Block was Pick Of The Week. Show 90‑37, special topic “the shortest demented songs ever made,” which we like to think we earned on merit. Second track of the night, after Tom Lehrer and before Spike Jones.

He played it again on 30 September and 14 October, and then it made the Funny Five twice: #5 on 21 October and #3 on 4 November. Five plays in seven weeks. We did not make it to number one, and the song that did was Dead Puppies, so we were fine with that.

He never really stopped playing us. Twenty-one airings between 1990 and 2025, across four songs.

Bieber Loves Wiener went out on 23 May 2015, in the same episode as We Shot The New Kids On The Block. So for one hour in 2015 we were a band with two songs on the radio.

Love Stinks in February 2016, and again in February 2018. Krampus Is Coming To Town turns up most Decembers: 2015, 2017, 2018, 2023.

The most recent play of We Shot The New Kids On The Block was 4 January 2025. Thirty-five years after the first one. All of it is listed here.

Steve Dahl

Before any of that, the song got played on The Loop, because we handed Steve Dahl a cassette in a nightclub and he played it the next day. The whole story is on the Notes & Fun Facts page and it is not as flattering as it sounds.

Two flyers from that autumn carry the line “as heard on the Steve and Gary show.” By the end of October the flyers said “as heard on the Dr. Demento show” instead, which is the closest thing we have to a career trajectory.

1990, in clubs

2 August, The Avalon. Our first ever club show. The bill was Nightsoil Coolies, Fake Fish, and then us, added to the ticket in pen.

18, 25, 28 September and 2 October, The Roxy. Four nights sharing a bill with Quantum Theater, a long-form improvisation show directed by Jock Schloss. Two shows in one. All ages, two dollars off with a flyer or a college ID.

20 September, The Big Nasty. A New Kids On The Block Annihilation Party. Bring New Kids stuff to be sacrificed. This was the release show for the tape.

15 October, The Avalon again.

28 October, Club Stodola. All-ages Halloween show, costume contest, and Nightsoil Coolies as our special guests. Eleven weeks earlier we had been third on their bill. We are still pleased about this.

All four promoted by Albatross Productions, which was our manager Tim Miller, who also turns up on this site as Ruben Kinkade.

Before the clubs

From 1988 we were part of the live performing floor show for The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the 400 Theatre in Rogers Park, opening or closing the announcements with a few songs. No projection behind us there. Nobody could afford a projector that would fill a screen that size. It was raw and it was loud and the crowd took it, and the ones old enough to get into clubs turned up at the clubs.

Roughly twenty dates across 1988 and 1989, which is more than every other venue combined. They are all on the Tour Dates page.

The tape

MRC-001, We Shot The New Kids On The Block!, on Mr. Whadaphukinhel Records. Copyright 1989, published 1990. Four dollars by mail to a P.O. box in Chicago.

It was remixed and mastered by Paul Chabala at Schwa Productions on North Lincoln Avenue. Eighteen months earlier, in the same room, Chabala had engineered the first Smashing Pumpkins release. We would like to report that we noticed at the time. We did not.

The room

The Avalon took the whole second floor at Belmont and Sheffield. Before it was the Avalon it was Tuts, and before that it was the Quiet Knight. Black Flag played up there. So did The Cramps, Bauhaus, The Replacements, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Marley, Miles Davis and the Velvet Underground. The Smashing Pumpkins played their first gig there.

It is a beauty school now.