During the Iranian Hostage Crisis, Dahl, along with his backing band Teenage Radiation, recorded and released a parody of The Knack's song "My Sharona", called "Ayatollah". Released as a single, it reached No. 12 on the weekly Musicradio survey of Chicago superstation WLS-AM on February 9, 1980. He also made on-the-air prank phone calls to the "Islamic Fried Chicken" (a play on Kentucky Fried Chicken), ordering buckets of chicken for the hostages in the US embassy, for which the State Department later reprimanded him. Dahl also parodied the John Wayne Gacy murders with his song "Another Kid in the Crawl" (to the tune of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall"). The playing of the song was stopped after parents of the murdered children called to complain.