I have. The mash (dance) was actually fairly easy for males/guys/boys/dudes. Doing the jerk was a bit awkward. A lot of pop songs were mashable.
Funny, I was just thinking about that song the other day and the line “The kids in Bristol are as sharp as a pistol when they do the Bristol Stomp.” Sharp as a pistol? WTF?
I’m confident that it was originally “…sharp as a bristle…” We, as 8-year-olds, had no idea what a pistol was. “Fanner 50” would not have rhymed.
I’d be sharp as a thistle
I would build a guided missile
If I only had a brain
Yes, in the few seconds I ever spent considering the question I came to the conclusion the monsters were dancing some kind of mash and it’s referring to the event not some particular song.
I can imitate the Karloff imitation used, one of the few things I can sing without people sticking their fingers in their ears, clocks breaking, etc.
And “The Bonnie Lass of Fyvie-O” includes the line “The band played ‘The Bonnie Lass of Fyvie-O’”.
So it’s just a tribute to the scariest song in the world?
And what’s wrong with that? I’d like to know…
Which they had evidently lifted from some other source material.
The song doesn’t mention the ensuing copyright infringement lawsuit. IANAL but it sounds like Drac would have been due some royalties similar to the Chiffons who prevailed in court against George Harrison’s My Sweet Lord.
What I really want to know is: whatever happened to the Transylvania Twist?
What I want to know is, do monsters ever do the twist, the stomp, the mashed potato, too?
That’s one chorus.
The five choruses were these:
He did the Mash
They did the Mash
They played the Mash
It’s now the Mash
Then you can Mash
At no point, did anyone sing the Mash. It’s something that people do.
As for playing it, a musical group can play a Waltz or play a Tango.
Those of us alive (or undead, at least) when the song came out know that the airwaves were full of songs about dances - the Twist, the Watusi, the Locomotion, etc., etc., ad nauseum until the Beatles rescued us. Monster Mash fit nicely into this niche, but with much more clever lyrics.
Since you could dance to the record (not that I did, being a tad young and having Two Left Feet) I always thought they were playing the Monster Mash the song while describing the Monster Mash, the dance, like the rest.
How monster meta.
Voyager: You would have been a big hit doing the monster mash with 2 left feet.
Nope. Wikisays Pistol. External link to lyrics say the same.
I thought that was Hotel California.
(Whoosh)
As a kid, I always thought that the phrase “sharp as a pistol” referred to the crack of its being fired. As in, “that’s sharp as a pistol’s crack.” Therefore, this lyric didn’t even get my notice.
Whether or not it’s appropriate for these times…
Voyager doesn’t mention that he also had three right feet.
I believe the lyrics answer that one: “It’s now the Mash! (It’s now the Monster Mash!”)