The Monstrefact: The Goo Goo Muck

be discussing the Googo Monk. The origin story for this monster goes back to a nineteen sixty two novelty horror rockabilly tune by Ronnie Cook and the Gay Lads. This was we have to remember sixty two as Boris Pickett's Monster Mash, so novelty songs about monsters were all the rage. Cook along with Ed James, are the credited songwriters. Most listeners, however, are going to be familiar with the grittier nineteen eighty one cover by The Cramps, the legendary psychobilly band founded

by the late Lux Interior and Poison Ivy. They'd already featured two monster themed songs on their previous album I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Zombie Dance. There would be many more to come, so the cover here fit them

like a leather glove. As louder As Scott Rowley discussed in a twenty twenty two article Cannibalism, the Cramps and that Wednesday dance scene, the weird story of Googoo Muck, the Cramps took the track in a slightly darker direction via their Gotha billy style and some subtle lyrical tweaks. While the original version of google Muck is concerned with a teenage transformation into a cannibal monster with implied sexual connotations,

the Cramps really leaned into all of this. Their titular googoo Muck is strongly sexual in its pursuit of female human prey. Now I'm not going to walk you through the entire song and its lyrics by all means, go listen to either version wherever you get your music, but I'll do my best to summarize here. The Googoomuk is described as the result of a monstrous were wolf like transformation brought out by lunar activity, strong were wolf vibes.

The Googoomuk describes itself as a teenage beast, and this of course references a lot of the old like I was a teenage were wolf, you know, I was a teenage Frankenstein, and so forth, that whole trend that we've discussed on Weird House Cinema. But then the lyrics also reference tigers rather than wolves. This certainly brings to mind the various war tiger and tiger transformation tales for parts of the world where the tiger stands tall or at least once stood tall as the pre eminent man swear.

This detail also probably speaks to the Eastern gazing quasi tiki origins of the song. The lyrics, for instance, also reference headhunters. Now, one interesting factor here is that the only description we get of the monster's body is that it boasts quote a way out body underneath that head. Now this is pretty vague, but it makes me imagine a were tiger who still looks perhaps comically like a

human from the neck up. But it also brings to mind various traditions of creatures like the sphinx and the manticore involving hybrid beast bodies with a human face or head. However, considering the sexually charged nature of the song, it probably speaks as much to the idea of bodily lust contained beneath the character's streak clothing you know, you know, aching

for release. Scott Rawley speaks to all of this is while expressly tying the Cramps Google Monk to lust, hormones and frothing fluids, and by many estimates, this sums up something very key to the Cramps whole vibe, the intersection of horror and horniness, full of double entendres and references to retro weird cinema. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact the Artifact or Animalist Stupendium each week. As always, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.