Not Your Ordinary Mash Up

The countdown continues to Halloween 2013. In the here and now it happens to be Monster Mash Day. As part of it why not let's sidle on up to "Monster Mash", a classic frightfully fun Hallow hit. Bobby "Boris" Pickett and The Crypt-Kickers handed us this ghoulish gem in 1962 where it became a #1 Billboard smash. So when Bobby says "It was a graveyard smash" you know he means it. All the trappings of a clever novelty item are present. You've got a bubbling potion sound along with a very hyper creature itching to let loose from his chains. The delivery's the thing. Bobby presentation couldn't be any more like song in the key (and mood)of zombie. If you wanted to get technical about it you might say this "song" cops more of a rap vibe. After all he's not exactly making anyone think of a polished artist of yore such as Frank Sinatra or Mel Torme. He sounds as stripped clean of a pulse as you'd want. The piano playing says "groovy" which signifies that it was groovy before it became a common '70s description of anything at the corner of "neat" and "smoking". The drumming snaps to attention during the chorus but politely taps out an ambient pleasing noise much of the rest of the time. Frankly, you don't have to pull the shades down out of revulsion your neighbors would find you throwing yourself into something your parents liked back then. There's nothing wrong with camp value. "Monster Mash" caught on so devilishly that almost 11 years after it first topped Billboard it found its way back to #10. The '70s was the decade of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which contains the undeniably catchy "Time Warp". But, corralling this conversation and sending back down dead end highway, "Monster Mash" is an engaging party starter for any one of a number of parties featuring skull candles. The usual suspect list of graveyard menaces is accounted for. Ghouls, zombies, Dracula and progeny, etc...For me this is one of a handful of Halloween themed songs that holds up to repeated listening. Besides which would you have known it started out its life as "Transylvania Twist" hadn't flipped his coffin lid to tell you? Even on holidays you learn something new.