Hype Hype Hooray is a biweekly “critique” of the music scene and the blogosphere that feeds it, told through the lens of Jamie Hale, a journalist who likes music about as much as he likes scotch and a firm leather chair. Please enjoy with a grain of salt.

A sharp breeze blew through the cluttered streets of Somerville, Massachusetts in the brisk fall of 1947. While the world reeled from the aftershock of war, and carefully eyed the ominous rise of Communism, a young boy sat quietly in a Somerville theater, soaking up a much different world.

Young Bobby Pickett didn’t seem to belong in the culture of Somerville. Boys in town tended to grow into gangsters or athletes, and Bobby had no interest in either. What interested him was his father’s movie theater, where he would spend his time absorbing the monstrous worlds created by Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, of Vincent Price and Lon Chaney, Jr. He aspired to be an actor, to inspire the same love and fear his idols inspired in him.

As he sat in the chilly theatre, wistfully dreaming of the day his own face would be projected onto the screen, he could never have guessed his legacy would instead wind up in the world of music. While his face would later grace the silver screen, his name would be forever etched onto a tombstone labeled “Monster Mash.”

There’s no need to introduce the song–by now we all know it well. But as this year marks the 50th anniversary of the world’s one and only true Halloween song, I’ve decided to dig beneath the surface of the soil that covers the tune in its timeless grave. For many, it might be enough to know that the “Monster Mash” was simply a graveyard smash, to know that it did, in fact, catch on in a flash. But why aren’t we digging beneath the surface of the novelty hit? Why aren’t we excavating the coffin and ripping it open with the rusty crowbar it deserves? Join me, won’t you, in correcting this grave injustice, with: Unearthing the True Message Behind “Monster Mash.”

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