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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 'Cooky 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 'Cooky 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 'Cooky 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
"The 171 A studio was primarily a rehearsal studio, but it had a stage and great acoustics. I hooked up the Polly Wog Stew recording sessions with Scott Jarvis because he was left in charge of the studio while Jerry Williams was away on tour with the Bad Brains. Anyway, Scott was there and so I asked him, 'Scott can you record the Beastie Boys? I want to put out a record.' They had so much fun recording, even in spite of the cold (171 A was unheated)." - Dave Parsons, 2002
"The Beastie Boys asked me if I wanted to supervise the recording sessions of Polly Wog Stew. They also wanted to know if there was anything I thought they should do and whatnot. I said no, just go in with Scott Jarvis and do your thing. I'll just be hanging around like always and if I think of something I'll say so. Really, I just wanted them to go in there (171 A) and do the best they could and have a good time. I hung around all the time just listening to what they were recording. They were doing just fine. I wanted them to just be themselves. I tell you, it was great; I think they learned a lot then. They had made the jump from being kids who played after school to something bigger. They were sounding good and having a great time and I was happy because I was realizing a dream. I was 'producing' by letting them do what ever they wanted to. I never once said 'oh wait a minute, you guys need to do this or that.' However, I think I did tell them once to not get stressed out about it. I thought their friends should be hanging around, so I tried to create an atmosphere where a bunch of us were just sitting around on the sofas and generally hanging out listening in on the recording process. When they needed back-up vocals we all went up and did them. I was going for a 'factory' artist atmosphere and about the only thing I said to Scott Jarvis was that I wanted it to be a real 'hot' recording." - Dave Parsons, 2002
"I remember the day of the benefit concert well. We were all at the store and were fired up about this great bill we had lined up for the November 20th, 1982 Ratcage Records benefit at CBGB's. We were having lots of fun talking and hanging out when Michael's brother showed up. I was standing right next to him and he told Michael that their dad died. When I heard that I walked away to let them speak privately. They left the store together. When Mike D came back in he didn't have to say much, because the store was small and we had already heard the sad news. I'm not going into great detail but Mike said he was going to do the show...I knew right then that he was going to be a big success in show business. I knew he would make it, because he proved himself a trooper that night. I was as proud of him as if he was my own son..." - Dave Parsons, 2002
"The truth is that the Beastie Boys are just now getting around to some things which are similar to what they were up to on Beastieland. Of course, it was much more primitive than what you hear on their more recent releases. But like I said it was more pop-rock-punk-type of project and in my opinion was much better than anything on Polly Wog Stew. The Beastie Boys deserve every bit of the fame and recognition that they've gotten. I knew all along they could do it, if anybody could." - 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
"...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 [Cooky 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 course, 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
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