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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the

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Speaker 2: Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 2: Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time. Now.

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Speaker 2: I frequently do these episodes about monsters from mythology, films

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Speaker 2: and comic books, but I figured I'd tried different medium today. Music.

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Speaker 2: I previously discussed this was probably a couple of years ago,

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Speaker 2: count Drugula from the song by of the same title

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Speaker 2: by the band Electric Wizard. This time we're going to

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Speaker 2: be discussing the Googo Monk. The origin story for this

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Speaker 2: monster goes back to a nineteen sixty two novelty horror

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Speaker 2: rockabilly tune by Ronnie Cook and the Gay Lads. This

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Speaker 2: was we have to remember sixty two as Boris Pickett's

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Speaker 2: Monster Mash, so novelty songs about monsters were all the rage.

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Speaker 2: Cook along with Ed James, are the credited songwriters. Most listeners, however,

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Speaker 2: are going to be familiar with the grittier nineteen eighty

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Speaker 2: one cover by The Cramps, the legendary psychobilly band founded

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Speaker 2: by the late Lux Interior and Poison Ivy. They'd already

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Speaker 2: featured two monster themed songs on their previous album I

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Speaker 2: Was a Teenage Werewolf and Zombie Dance. There would be

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Speaker 2: many more to come, so the cover here fit them

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Speaker 2: like a leather glove. As louder As Scott Rowley discussed

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Speaker 2: in a twenty twenty two article Cannibalism, the Cramps and

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Speaker 2: that Wednesday dance scene, the weird story of Googoo Muck,

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Speaker 2: the Cramps took the track in a slightly darker direction

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Speaker 2: via their Gotha billy style and some subtle lyrical tweaks.

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Speaker 2: While the original version of google Muck is concerned with

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Speaker 2: a teenage transformation into a cannibal monster with implied sexual connotations,

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Speaker 2: the Cramps really leaned into all of this. Their titular

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Speaker 2: googoo Muck is strongly sexual in its pursuit of female

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Speaker 2: human prey. Now I'm not going to walk you through

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Speaker 2: the entire song and its lyrics by all means, go

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Speaker 2: listen to either version wherever you get your music, but

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Speaker 2: I'll do my best to summarize here. The Googoomuk is

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Speaker 2: described as the result of a monstrous were wolf like

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Speaker 2: transformation brought out by lunar activity, strong were wolf vibes.

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Speaker 2: The Googoomuk describes itself as a teenage beast, and this

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Speaker 2: of course references a lot of the old like I

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Speaker 2: was a teenage were wolf, you know, I was a

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Speaker 2: teenage Frankenstein, and so forth, that whole trend that we've

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Speaker 2: discussed on Weird House Cinema. But then the lyrics also

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Speaker 2: reference tigers rather than wolves. This certainly brings to mind

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Speaker 2: the various war tiger and tiger transformation tales for parts

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Speaker 2: of the world where the tiger stands tall or at

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Speaker 2: least once stood tall as the pre eminent man swear.

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Speaker 2: This detail also probably speaks to the Eastern gazing quasi

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Speaker 2: tiki origins of the song. The lyrics, for instance, also

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Speaker 2: reference headhunters. Now, one interesting factor here is that the

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Speaker 2: only description we get of the monster's body is that

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Speaker 2: it boasts quote a way out body underneath that head.

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Speaker 2: Now this is pretty vague, but it makes me imagine

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Speaker 2: a were tiger who still looks perhaps comically like a

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Speaker 2: human from the neck up. But it also brings to

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Speaker 2: mind various traditions of creatures like the sphinx and the

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Speaker 2: manticore involving hybrid beast bodies with a human face or head. However,

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Speaker 2: considering the sexually charged nature of the song, it probably

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Speaker 2: speaks as much to the idea of bodily lust contained

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Speaker 2: beneath the character's streak clothing you know, you know, aching

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Speaker 2: for release. Scott Rawley speaks to all of this is

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Speaker 2: while expressly tying the Cramps Google Monk to lust, hormones

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Speaker 2: and frothing fluids, and by many estimates, this sums up

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Speaker 2: something very key to the Cramps whole vibe, the intersection

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Speaker 2: of horror and horniness, full of double entendres and references

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Speaker 2: to retro weird cinema. Tune in for additional episodes of

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Speaker 2: The Monster Fact the Artifact or Animalist Stupendium each week.

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Speaker 2: As always, you can email us at contact at stuff

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Speaker 2: to Blow your Mind dot com.

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

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Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.