Dirty Herry wants to know if you’re feeling lucky, punk?
It’s a day of ghosts, goblins and those nasty fucking black and orange wrappered candies that are made out of poison. But Halloween also happens to be a Monday, so that means it’s time to scare the bats out of the vault and drag another skeleton out of music’s closet as we take a trek into the spooky crypt of lost songs we like to call the Dusty Vinyl Archive! DJ Scratchy’s got her witch’s hat and matching fishnets on for the occasion while the candy corn Sponkies dig up today’s earworm trick treat. Maybe it wouldn’t be appropriate today to actually blow the cobwebs off this old 45 before chucking it on the turntable….
The name Fred Schneider might not mean anything to you, but I’ll bet you know who he is. That really weird guy that sings for the B-52’s, the one whose Chrysler is as big as a whale…. that’s Fred. During a hiatus by the band in the mid 80’s, Fred put together a solo album in 1984 titled Fred Schneider and the Shake Society with a little help from bandmate Kate Pierson and former Parliament-Funkadelic member Bernie Worrell. The album was a resounding failure… only gaining some measure of success when it was re-released in 1991 in an attempt to capitalize further on the mega-stardom 1989’s Cosmic Thing gave the B-52’s.
The Love Shack went up in flames…. just like Fred’s career.
But Fred’s first solo jaunt wasn’t entirely unfruitful… he managed to give us one of the first videos to ever be banned from MTV! On this Halloween morning, please enjoy taking a gander at Fred Schneider’s “Monster”…
Beyond the blatantly obvious (and to be honest, extremely frightening) sexual references to the “monster” in Fred’s pants, this presentation is the kind of extremely fucked up mess that should have won it some kind of awesome music video award. It has dancing pecker monsters, fake booty shaking, a drag queen, and Claymation effects that blow away anything those fucking Raisins could ever hope to do…
Every monster needs a wrinkly nutsack…
A lack of exposure on MTV kept “Monster” from becoming anything more than a dirty little secret from new wave’s past… but it was a staple of USA Network’s cult classic series Night Flight, and somehow… the song managed to actually crack the Hot 100 at #85 following that re-release of the album in 1991…. an era when people were more readily embracing hard edged acts like Nirvana and NWA, not some weird white clown from the 80’s…
Well…… um, nevermind.
I’ll return next Monday with an earworm that’s a little less scary…
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
I can’t remember this Fred… although the jacket was an eyecatcher :o)
Wow. Just fucking wow. I’m…speechless.
I want to go dancing around telling random people about the monster in my pants…
Okay but I don’t have bail money…
The really scaring thing will probably be NEXT week’s ear worm. Gulp…
Be careful what you wish for!
That is one crazy video! The dancing pecker monsters…wow. I don’t even know what to say!
I always enjoy looking back into the lost vault of music videos just to try imagining what the people who made them were smoking at the time….
Just when you think you’ve seen it all………………..you haven’t. I do like his hair – oh, and that jacket is cool too.
Happy HOWL-O-WEEN
Pam
The hair and the jacket belong to Vanilla Ice, and I probably insulted Fred by comparing him to the lamest rapper of all time. I think at least Fred KNEW he looked like a fool…
ody & biskit….de food servizz gurl haz all de california raisins….sum place ~~~~
sorree we haz mizzed yur blog fora few heer …. de food servizz gurlz werk izza bass terd N de inter net izza bass terd N burdz iz all wayz a bass terd……itz just been a bass terd kinda few dayz………happee howl o ween ♥♥♥♥♥
Stupid burdz… it’s always their fault! Don’t worry, you didn’t miss much. I only cured cancer, won a Nobel Prize for Dumbassery and killed Buster a few more times while you were away…. nothing big!
Wow, shame on you, Fred. Snort! How did he think that was going to fly? Also, I love the reference to the poison black and orange candies! I remember your post about them from last year. LOL!
I think I mock that toxic candy every Halloween! I rarely see them in stores anymore, at least in their classic form, so maybe the FDA finally banned them!
They still have them in the bulk candy area of our local grocery store. I could send you some…
But … but … it’s … GREEN. Why is it GREEN????
Not enough oxygen, I guess. Gotta let the monster breathe….
Oh my gosh. That was so terrible I was staring at it with a huge grin on my face the whole way through, like I couldn’t believe it was really happening…
It’s amazing! I’ve watched it about ten times since I first dug it up again last weekend…