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Production Credits:
Cookie Puss Click for Lyrics
First Appearance: Cookie Puss EP 1983
Written by: Beastie Boys
Performed by: Beastie Boys
Production Notes: Engineered by Dug Pomeroy at Celebration Recording Studios in NYC, March 1983. Originally released on Ratcage Records.
Behind the Beats and Lyrics...
Samples:
- "Beastie Boys" by the Beastie Boys - Pollywog Stew by the Beastie Boys
- "My Real Name" by Steve Martin - A Wild And Crazy Guy by Steve Martin
References:
- Cookie Puss - Carvel's specialty character ice cream cake
- Cookie O'Puss - During St. Patrick's day, Carvel used to have a special Cookie Puss cake that was supposed to be Irish, hence "Cookie O'Puss"
- Carvel Ice Cream - ice cream company founded in 1934 by Tom Carvel, famous for their soft ice cream & uniquely shaped ice cream cakes
Sample & Reference Breakdown:
- "Ahh, B-E-A-S-T-I-E go!" sampled from "Beastie Boys" by the Beastie Boys
- "My real name is..." sampled from "A Wild And Crazy Guy" by Steve Martin
- "My sister's name was..." sampled from "A Wild And Crazy Guy" by Steve Martin
- "And my mother got to call us for dinner..." sampled from "A Wild And Crazy Guy" by Steve Martin
Commentary:
Beastie Boys:
"'Cookie Puss' was the name of this ice-cream cake that you get from a chain of stores in America. Whenever you came in from a club, you'd turn on the TV and there'd be these late-night commercials for it" - Michael Diamond
"We were trying to do an album and we made 'Cookie Puss' by mistake. We just got bored in the studio and we weren't liking anything that was happening so we just said, 'Let's record a disco thing. It'll be really funny.'" - Adam Yauch, 1986
"Tom Carvel (founder of Carvel's ice cream store chain) was going to sue us until his nephew Kevin talked him out of it. We're friends now with Tom Carvel's nephew" - Adam Yauch, 1987
"We went into the studio and we did the song 'Cookie Puss' as a joke. We were making fun of Malcolm McLaren and the whole downtown art scene that was exploiting hip-hop" - Adam Yauch, 1987
"[When we recorded 'Cookie Puss'], we recorded at a place we'd never recorded at before, and it was really kind of disastrous. The only salvageable moments were where we were just fucking around. I can't stand to listen [to the song] now, but that's just me" - Michael Diamond
Family & Friends:
"I am not sure if the Beastieland tapes still exist, but it is quite possible that there are still cassettes of it. I myself had the masters at one time as well as cassette copies. At the moment, I can't even remember any of the other song titles, but I know the concept very, very, very well. You know that picture of the band skipping hand in hand across the cover of the Cooky Puss picture sleeve? That was shot in New York's Washington Square Park. It was one photo from a fairly large series which were taken for what was going to be the first full length Beastie Boys album on Ratcage Records, with Polly Wog Stew having on been an EP. It was going to be a major affair. The name of the finished LP was going to be Beastieland. The packaging was going to feature a gatefold sleeve and a game. The game was designed somewhat along the line as the popular children's boardgame Candyland, but with all the downtown spots featured in it. The concept of the LP was all the band's idea. It was very clever and cool and the songs were a considerable departure from the Polly Wog Stew, but carried that same sense of humor as a one can tell by listening to Cookie Puss." - Dave Parsons, 2002
"A few months before Some Old Bullshit came out, the Beastie Boys contacted John Loder at Southern and expressed to him that they wanted to put out the material (Polly Wog Stew and Cooky Puss) themselves on the Grand Royal label. Since the Ratcage Records label was inactive at the time, it was a logical move. The deal with Southern was that John Loder could finish selling all the remaining copies of Polly Wog Stew and Cooky Puss since it was not worth the expense of doing a recall. That is why it is possible today that you may still find the compact discs for Polly Wog Stew and Cooky Puss for sale in some out-of-the-way place. I know you could find them as late as 1998. However, in most places those discs were pretty much were gone by 1995-96 and replaced with Some Old Bullshit." - Dave Parsons, 2002
Press & Print Media:
"...a sexist and racist stylus-scratch rendering of a pornographic phone call to an ice-cream sandwich store" - Creem 1987
"...documented an actual taped phone call to an unaware counter girl at a Manhattan Carvel outlet, the caller inquiring about the ice-cream company's nationally advertised children's "Cookie Puss" cake novelty. [It's] a gleefully offensive aping of an insolent black youth harassing a female Carvel employee from a pay phone" - Playboy, 1987
"...a crank call to Carvel ice cream's 800 number - the Boys talking in fake black accents - over a hip-hop beat. While [Cookie Puss] offended some, it became a hit on college radio" - New York Magazine, 1998
"[It] doesn't have any lyrics, so to speak, but against its quite stark, hip-hop influenced beats, it sets samples from a prank telephone call the band made to an ice cream parlor. The Carvel ice cream company made a type of ice cream cake called a Cookie Puss, and the band had taped a phone call to their local store wherein they ask to speak to Cookie Puss as though it were a person. They then abuse the hapless telephonist when she, inevitably, fails to comply with their request" - excerpted from Rhyming & Stealing: A History of the Beastie Boys by Angus Batey, 1998
"...basically a Jerky Boys-presaging prank call to an ice-cream parlour over jack-hammer beats - which also featured the trio talking in pseudo-Ebonics" - Select, September 1998
"...snippets of a prank phone call over a sleazy but funky drum machine backtrack, intermingled with scratches of an old Steve Martin record. The Beasties, in their best jive-ass voices, repeatedly called a local convenience store asking for the popular ice-cream cake 'Cookie Puss' as if it were the name of an actual person. Of couse, the hapless victim of the call had no alternative to hang up, while the Beasties menacingly muttered 'Damn bitch...she ain't got no right hangin' up on me.' It was sexist, pointless and childishly funny." - Record Collector, December 1998
Released Versions:
Live:
No Known Performances in Concert.
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