The Flop House - FH Mini 17 - The Monster Mash

Episode Date: October 31, 2020

2020 may be miserable, but it's STILL HALLOWEEN DAMN IT. So we assembled a crack team of the Flop House gang, plus comedy writers Mike Reiss and Ken Keeler (who, between them, are responsible for much of the greatness of The Simpsons, The Critic, and Futurama) to discuss the most important and timely issue possible -- the 1962 novelty hit, The Monster Mash.Also, if you're reading this on the day of release, 10/31, you still have until midnight to donate to charity and be entered in our raffle to win exclusive Flop House merch! Full instructions beyond the link!

Hey everyone, welcome to the Flop House Mini. We've got a treat for you today. First we'll all introduce our regular selves and then I'll introduce our guests. I'm Dan McCoy. Hey, I'm Stuart Wellington. I'm Elliot Kaelin, but I'm not my regular self-dann because I was bitten by a radioactive spider earlier in the day, And I think my bones are weak as a result. So I'm less than regular. Okay. And with us, we have two great comedy legend, comedy writer guests.

We've got Mike Reese of The Simpsons, four time Emmy winner and Ken Keeler of The Simpsons, also Futurama Mike asked Ken how many Emmys he had he turns out he has one more than Mike so for those KB score right now it is Mike for Ken 5. The night is young. I still like it. You never know. Like, Ali has a few lying around. He might just motor over, give you one mic. Yes, I mean, even the score. It's possible.

I mean, you'd have to scratch out my name, but I think that might be worth it just to make this game competitive again. Yeah, exactly. There's the terrible joke I made. I gave one of my Emmys to my mom, because I didn't have a birthday present for her. And I plan the moment she dies.

I want to go to her house and grab the Emmy back. It will be like winning the Emmy for Best Orphan. Oh God. Well, you know, I don't know. You can get lucky. Yeah, you're right, Dan. Good. That's the right way to take that one. Just give Mike some hope about that. I need to say I needed cause for the first time for my mom. We tweeted at each other briefly, but this is the first time I'm seeing Mike face to face and within minutes. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan usually waits until at least the second appearance to wish death upon the mother of a guest. I'm sitting thinking how many amysets he gets on. Well, it's a very... Well, one more than Mike. So it's a very special thing that brings us all together today. This episode will be released on Halloween itself, and of course there's one Halloween song that towers above the rest. Thriller.

Well, that is the only one that comes close, but we're talking, of course, of the Monster Mash. And I tweeted about the Monster Mash recently as I want to do every year around the time, and sometimes not at this time of the year. And Mike somehow saw this and talked about how much he can love the Monster Mash. Yeah, it was probably one of those content aggregator sites that was putting together the world's worst tweets. Yeah. Yeah.

He might have had a Google Alert set for writers who are supposed to be working right now. Well, anyway, this long story short, we're here to talk about the monster match. Of course, by Bobby Borris Pickett, who I wanted to say, I was looking into this. You might be surprised. It is hard to find a complete discography of all of Bobby Borris Pickett's songs online. But he did chase after this particular rainbow many other times in his career. He also wrote Monsters Holiday, Monster Motion,

Transylvania Twist, Bloodbank Blues, Me and My Mummy, The Monster Swim, and The Monster Wrap. And I think that there are more that I was not able to track down. So he will talk to know because as everyone knows, he first came to the public attention when Alan Lomax was walking through the buys of Louisiana with his tape recorder and found Bobby Boris Pickett singing what he assumed at first was an old spiritual about the creation of a brought back to life corpse

and it rocketed him to superstardom. So who knows what he recorded on wax cylinders or things like that before that in the small recording studios in the South? Hard to say. And do you have the album, you have the Bobby Forest picket album? Do I?

No. Absolutely not. No, okay. I'm not the monster man. I have to give, I want to jump in and just give some history on this, which was in 1981, I think Ken Killer was working on a newsweek parody. The Harvard Lampoon was doing, and he broke this article reporting the sort of the lyrics of the monster match as if it was a breaking news story.

And it was, I mean, everybody loved this article and it still reads great, but I think what was so special about it was the idea that the sudden realization everybody knows this song. Every single, for not only note, it's heard it, but it's pretty familiar with all the lyrics and the terms it takes. So I thought that was the great observation, and that's why I insist it can be here. I have scratched my head trying to remember what prompted it.

I mean, it was the middle of summer. I've been hearing it on the radio. But I mean, it was one of those things where whatever it was, it came to me in a flash, as they say, the way things catch on. And it just, it rode itself as I always say, it took about five minutes and I suppose you could make it better, but it wouldn't really change the essence of it. It's just that's the monster mash

It's true like the monster mash has entered kind of like Folklore status the same way that like I have a six and a half year old son and the other day goes daddy Daddy, you heard this song about jingle bells batman smells smells and I was like, yeah, I've heard it. How did you hear it? Like, it was the monster match is like that. Like, it's just, it's just lore now. It just, it just reflotes around and everybody knows it. I don't know.

There's always been a mash. Yes. Has your son been hanging out on like, like, hold a railroad tracks and with hobos and such? Yeah. Was him and Alan Lomax just wandering the bias, looking for, a traditional American phone. Come on, come on, come on.

Come on, come on, this podcast a lot. No, I've been looking for an opportunity for years, for years. I mean, I was a kid who You know enjoyed it because it was a song about monsters that would play Halloween and then I grew older and I'm like Oh, like the song the song is a novelty tune like it's just like this nonsense song that was like a cash in and Then as I've drawn But as I've been older like I don't know whether it's Stockholm syndrome or what,

but what is cheap and about the monster mash is what has come to love it. Like the more nakedly it is this attempt to just do a novelty hit. The more I love it, you know, and I mean, although it did come about kind of organically, like he, like, is my understanding that he just started to do a Boris Karloff impression with his band on stage one night and people loved it. So he's like, I guess this is what I tune now. But there's, what your time at Dan is the arc, I go through every time I listen to the song. It first starts and I'm like, oh, here it comes. The monster match, this is going to be fun. And then about two verses in, I'm like, what the fuck is this? So like, it's such a dumb song. And it's so totally not keeping with

the spirit of the universal monsters. And then by the end of it, I'm like, I got to admire it. He wrote a whole song about this. A monster is doing a dance like. And it is long. It's a long song. It's a long song. It's a long song. It's a long song. It's a long song. It's a long song. It's a long song. It's a long song. It's a long song.

It's a long song. It's a long song. It's a long song. It's a long song. It's a long song. It's a long song. It's a long song. It's a long song.

It's a long song. It's a long song. It's a long song. It's a long song. It's a long song. It's a long song. It's a long song. It's a long song. It's a long song. It's a long song. It's a long song. It's a long song. murder everyone right now. So we were I was just playing guitar. We were singing songs and I was like, I got to sing the monster mash and I get to like I get done with verse three and I'm like,

surely this song is over and there's a lot more to this. I have to take exception to this. I do and I never thought it was stupid. I mean, I never thought it was brilliant. But I thought when they when Bobby Boris ticket wrote it, he sort of knew what it was that was appealing about it. I don't feel like people, for example, like your tweets. I don't, to me, those don't read as making fun of it. It's, yeah, that, if you, if you showed them Bobby Boris, he'd say, yeah, that's about right. I'm going to go to the hyper, which is because I've been, because I have nothing else to do, I've been thinking about the monster match for about a month.

Nothing we'd be doing a 15 minute podcast. And I'm not being facetious when I say I think it may be the great song in the history of songs. And part of it is like I'm old, we had the single when it came out. I was three, but we had it playing in the house, and I've never gotten tired of it. And we have every Halloween we break out this dancing Frankenstein that plays the monster man. And I still enjoy the song every single time.

And I can't listen to the Beatles anymore. 200 songs, I'm sick of every one of them. Monster Mash still does it for me. I love, well, when I say it's stupid, I say it with great affection because some of my favorite things are very, very stupid. But I love that, I mean, it tells a whole story. But I don't know, this may be controversial,

but I don't think the story holds together. I will say it's more coherent than the later universal monster movies where they're just throwing all the monsters into a house together to see what happens. Like at least it tells a better story than that. But here's the main issue I have with it and this is gonna sound

Possibly pedantic is that he's doing a Boris Carl off impression for Dr. Frankenstein essentially Boris Carl loved him played Dr. Frankenstein. He should be doing a Colin Clive impression. Well, there you have it Boris Fickett. I threw down the gauntlet. What do you say to that? You got him. I got him. Boom. Consider this myth busted. One thing I noticed too about the story of the song is,

and this is why I think it's so rich is, you don't expect it. It's actually Dracula story. He has the change of heart in it. Yeah, he's the one who learned something. It's sort of like the last version of the star is born. He had his trampoline at this, so planted by the monster mash. He's bitter, but it has a happy ending now. He's playing with the band.

That is the arc of the song. Well, I like the narrator reassures you too. Like in case you were worried the Dracula bears a grudge, he says, now everything's cool, drags a part of the band. Okay, the minor conflict that arose. That pin points something I love about Halloween and the way these monsters have become such an accepted part of like culture and kid culture is these literally talking about there's a specific bedroom where vampires eat people and there's all these ghouls But the problem of it is Dracula's not happy about this song. Don't worry. They made up like the fact that they're all gonna leave and murder people is not an issue

It's totally okay Well also I mean like mean, do these monsters, I guess the Universal Horror movie is a proven that these monsters do just hang out together. I mean, I don't know if they hang out together. They run into each other sometimes. They're in the same business. Yeah, they meet each other as the title's safe. But the monster match is this clarion call.

As soon as the monster match starts happening, which immediately they know to call it a mash for some reason. I don't know what that is, but they come swooping in. They're like, oh, a party's happening. A monster party specifically, even though for you, the living this mash is meant to. I love that. It's a mash like a style of dancing. Yes. Remember the mashed potato? No, you wouldn't remember the mashed potato. There were a series of mashed potato Dances and the monster mash was another mash in that style in the same way that the Swiss family Robinson

They're not named Robinson. It's because another it's another novel in the style of Robinson Crusoe The mash is a genre As as we can tell by how many other matches there have been There's the show mash. There's the show, there's the movie match. I'll part of the same lineage, I guess. After a match, you know, that makes, that makes the monster swim. Oh, make a lot more sense to me. Because something like, oh, yeah, the swim is a type of dance,

whereas having never heard the monster swim, I'm just like imagining, you know, you go to a public pool and they're like, okay, kids out of the pool, it's monster swim time, you know, like that was what. Yeah, and then the girl man gets in. Sure. And then all the kids, way around the age of the pool, no, mad that they can't swim. They're mad that the bride is swimming super slowly, just really rubbing it in that she gets the pool alter herself. I do, Dan, you mentioned, uh, that they mentioned how this song is for you, the living as well. I like that because it's like

a little touch of Abraham Williams to the song. Yes. And yes, I had just noticed that as I've been thinking about over the past couple of weeks. It's, I, and you've been, they made me look at all the lyrics. It's pretty elegantly written. I mean that dialogue is it's the right thing is perfect There's no force or fake rhymes in the whole thing Well, I will object only the only to highlight what is actually my favorite part of the song because I believe it to be the most awkward part of the song Which is I guess I guess it's the bridge because it is different from everything else in the song you would you would you would call the bridge where it's the zombies

were having fun the party had just begun the guests included Wolfman Dracula and his son and I love it because like it does feel like in the middle of his song he like gave up for a little bit before he got a second win. Like right in the middle of the song he's just gonna be like, uh okay well who was on the guest list? I'll explain that and then now back to the back to the rocking part of this. There's a lot of monsters. You can't have lyrics for all of them, you know, you just got a it's upwind just list names, you know. Some had a loon of mutin was there. Also, probably King Kong. Maybe the characters from the Black Cat were they monsters?

Let's just continue with the song. See, there's a run for you to do. They're great. Someone observed when we met in part of why I love this song, you can just keep unpacking it. And someone mentioned that Dracula wakes up from his coffin in the middle of the party, and which makes you think she said,

so he came to the party with his coffin. And it makes you think, oh, fuck, Dracula's gonna stay all night long. The detail that I've been thinking about a lot is that the coffin bangers or bangers, I'm not quite sure which, probably coffin baggers, were about to arrive with their vocal group, the Crypt Kicker 5. Now the song is credited to Bobby Gorsviket and the Crypt Kickers. What happened with the coffin baggers?

How did they lose their credit? I mean, they're apparently the musicians more over because the crypticers are vocalists. I don't know. Somebody got screwed out of some royalties. Oh my God. Yeah, yeah. And it's a crypt kicker. They're looking glass. The crypt kicker's upon on shit kickers. That just suddenly hit me. Because what is that otherwise? I can only assume, yeah, I mean. It's got to be. that just suddenly hit me. Because what is that otherwise? I can only assume, yeah, I mean.

It's gotta be. It's one of those jokes like when they did the poster for the Smurfs movie and they're like, Smurfs have been... Don't even bring it up. Don't even bring it up. Yeah, it only makes sense because you know it means shit. Not a fan of this.

Not a fan of the kids movie tag lines that we need to know swear words to understand. Yeah, there's a, I guess it's interesting. You rarely hear a song that documents the credits that the songwriters then try to hide. There's not a lot of it. It's just like a band strategy. Yeah, it's like, hey, look, guess what you're listening to with it. To see if it could keep... to see good keep. It's probably why he just had one head. And this is something else I'd have right to can about it because he's an mathematician, which was the monster mash is a dance, but it's also a song.

They say the band was playing the monster mash, but the song, the monster mash is about the song, the Monster Mash. But the song, the Monster Mash, is about the song, the Monster Mash. It tells you the creation of the song and goes to the end to saying it's the hit of the land. So somehow the song knows that the song will be a hit. And I thought it's, I found it more confusing than shennet. I just...

I mean, I can only assume that, yeah, I think this has been observed before, but the Monster Mash song is not about... We do not hear the song the Monster Mash within the Monster Mash. The Monster Mash is, we know it in this universe, it's a song about another song called the Monster Mash. Unless it is this song and they added on another song called the monster unless it is this song and they added on a lyric at the add-on a new verse like a celebratory verse to kind of to do or a boastful verse. I don't know, but you're right is it does raise the question of whether there is another monster mash out there and whether it may even now still be

lyric in that castle forcing people to rock out to this dance that as far as I know, nobody knows how to do. Like a lot of those dance songs would explain how to do the dances, right? Like later on, like the Time War song and Rock Air Picture like explains how you do the Time War. But I don't know how to, I mean, the Monster Mashes some kind of mashed potato dance,

but I don't know what you do that makes it monster-y, you know? It is my understanding that it is like the mashed potato, but you hold your arms out in a sort of a Frankenstein's monster traditional stereotypical motion. Dan, you're really missing your calling is like a bar mitzvah, like MC character, like hype man. It gets everybody out of the hands for an advance. Dan explained the day it's speaking.

I mean, the monster match is not a huge bar mitzvah song. Really? I mean, maybe it is at Transylvania, Bar mitzvah, I don't know. I mean, I don't know if you want to reveal this, Elliot, but I mean, we're talking about big life party events. And there's a very important connection that you personal connection you have to the monster mash. Well, yeah, sure.

Well, I dance to the monster mash in my wedding yeah that goes yeah sure that's that's scientific fact yeah twist ending to this podcast it was not it was not the first dance song no what was that the record yeah it's it's lost for it yeah it was a it was a car through smart yeah, yeah, we danced to my Garther Park the It was but I mean the originally our first dance was I only advised for you not the Shabbop Shabbop version of it The poster of the version from the movie James but then the I believe it was a former coworker of mine James Jimmy Don who requested that the monster mash be played by the DJ, and I was delighted

at that choice until two verses in where I was like, I'm still dancing to a song about monsters. And then by the end of it, I was like, you know what? I liked that I danced to a monster song at my wedding. So again, I went through that whole personal emotional roller coaster that comes with the Monster Mash. Dan, do you think we'll ever see a resurgence in Monster novelty pop songs again? I hope so. You know, like I feel like the last, the closest we got was when unexpectedly, like two bars of werewolf Bar Mitzvah

took the country by storm and they're like, we gotta put out a longer version of this. And so there's a fuller version of Werewolf Bar Mitzvah you can find. But do you think if Stewart Universal's dark universe had gotten to make more movies, if they would have played like a soft slow acoustic version of the Monster Mash over one of the trailers.

Oh, it would be like Trent Rezner's version of the monster mash over like just like you know, ambiguous shots of monsters. Well, there's the song, if I, if I'm remembering correctly, came out around the time that there was a resurgence in monster stuff because the universal movies were being re-released to theaters and also packaged for television broadcast. So it was like suddenly monsters were big again. And so I wonder if maybe, just maybe, there's some beautiful day in the future when we can stop worrying about the world around us

and start worrying again that someone's gonna bring a dead body back to life and it's gonna throw a girl in a lake or like a Dracula's gonna walk around and have both a daughter and a son. The daughter, as I mentioned, in the song, but he has a movie where she has one. I don't know, maybe that's too beautiful a world to hope for, but it's what I'm working towards with my new political activity, PAC group. It's called-

Wait, they're referring to Dracula's son. I thought they were referring to the Wolfman son and Dracula was there too. Dracula and his son. But he is not a wise wolfman. That's just insane. Well, for the whole thing, that's just saying, Stuart, we got to deal with this.

We got to deal with this. Stuart, this, that's what's possible. What's the lyric again? The guest included Wolfmanman Dracula and his son. I think it's modified. They went back to the front of the sentence. Here's another suggestion about how that might work. It's at some point Dracula turned into a werewolf and it's the list included Wolfman,

parentheses Dracula and his son. It's possible. It's possible. Prove me wrong, Stuart. I mean, I can't well know the lyrics sheet in front of me. Much like we release a damaged soul by driving a steak through their heart. I feel like we need to release our guests from this horrible monster purgatory we've put them into. Because I promise them that's been too much time talking about this stuff You knew why make promises you can't keep damn

Still not as long as the song itself I'm gonna continue to talk about the I mean we can do it. I just about the monster match after this is over. I mean, we can do it. I just... It's my cheat sheet. I got so much more to talk about. Oh, do you have more?

I've got more. I just mentioned it more. This might be a good wrap up, but it's sort of a happy ending, which is a friend of mine writes the comic strip Zits. And I don't mean to brag, but he rusted. And he made enough money off of Zitz that he was able to buy a Malibu beach house on the beach. And the house on his left was owned by Paul Fusco, the man who operated and created the Alps puppet.

And the guy on his right was Bobby Borders Pickett. So that has got to be the funnest block in Malibu. That's like what my idea as a child of what it would be like to be like a famous Hollywood entertainer would be. It's like I'm gonna live next door to Alf, I'm gonna live next door to Bobby Borers' picket. This is gonna be amazing. Did he say, did he say, was he a good neighbor? Did he tell you anything about him or? He said they would party all night.

The, wow. A bunch of monsters would come to the house. Yeah. Yeah, it was on of my graphical stuff. To get it on of my credit. To get a jolt from his electros. You get up to get up at the doorbell rings at night and you get up and there's a mummy at the door

and you're like next door. Not this afternoon. He's really like Lou Reed. He just writes about the people he knows. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's, oh, no, I want to see, no, I want to see the movie about Bobby Borers' picket

where he's like, no one's writing songs about us man He's sitting in a bar with like Frank is signing a drink Okay, well, I'm out. Thank you so much for being with us Mike and Kim. I don't know if you if you have anything to plug for whatever Worth we have as a as a as a mouthpiece for that, please do it. We might be finally able to help them get the word out about the Simpsons. Yeah.

Wolfman Dracula and his son. No, I won't. I'll leave this for the plug. Nothing to look. The son by the song comes off like Eric Trump where he's just sort of He's got nothing to do he comes to party with his dad There's no other mention of him. He doesn't do any just I guess like I couldn't find the babysitter this late.

Now, Dan, were you doing a Wolfman impression or a Dracula impression? That was the Wolfman. Okay, well, on that note, to all of our listeners and to everyone in the world, Happy Halloween! Everyone's rolling their eyes and cut.