Robert Haimer and Bill Mumy were childhood friends who occasionally performed together on their musical instruments. After the cancellation of Mumy's TV series
Lost in Space in 1968, they shot short films with a
Super 8 motion picture camera, dubbed "Art Films". The two began calling each other "Art" in joking reference to these films. They formed the band Barnes & Barnes in 1970. They started when they were about 16 with a two track recorder. Their surname
Barnes was taken from a
Bill Cosby comedy routine called "
Revenge", in which a character called Junior Barnes throws a slushball at Cosby as a child. Originally, both Haimer and Mumy were named "Art Barnes", but Haimer's alter ego was publicly renamed "Artie" in 1979 to differentiate between them. They first received airplay on
The Dr. Demento Show in 1978. Haimer was a fan of the show and convinced Mumy to "pick a couple of songs and do them right" to send in, the results being their songs "Boogie Woogie Amputee" and "
Fish Heads" which they re-did on a
Teac four track machine. The latter recording was released as a single on their own Lumania Records in 1979 and remains their best-known song, as well as the most requested song in the history of
The Dr. Demento Show.