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YOU ARE WHAT YOU IS

 Goblin Girl

Notes and Comments
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Hob-noblin
Wit de goblin
De Goblin Girl
From da mystery world
From: Evil Bob <evilbob@tbag.tscs.com>
  A bit of colorful alliteration. The literal meaning is "hob-nobbing with the goblin."
From: Cliff Heller <fnord@panix.com>
  "Hob-nobbing" is an old-fashioned english term for hanging out with sophisticated or important people (aka the "hoi-polloi").
  Again, only because it hasn't been mentioned and just in case there are any persons, hailing from strange non-english speaking lands in remote corners of the globe with customs incomprehensible to our own (France?), the song title is a double-entendre for oral sex. "Goblin" being a mythical halloween-type mischievous demon creature and "Gobbling" meaning eating.
"When they're a-gobblin, there aint a problin
When they're a-gobblin, I start wobblin"
  I hope this is painfully obvious, but you never know.
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Hob-noblin
Wit de goblin
She's black 'n green
'Cause it's Halloween
From: Evil Bob <evilbob@tbag.tscs.com>
  Actually, I've always sorta wondered about this - everyone knows that the Offical Colors of Halloween are Black and Orange. The only thing I can come up with is that "black and green" maintains the connection to the end of the song about the black guys in the band seen onstage in green light (plus the race connection to the You Are What You Is title track) - more about this important point presently.
From: fhbanta@mindspring.com (Fred H. Banta)
  I think it's more likely that these are the stereotypical colors of a witch: green skin and black clothes
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(TRICK OR TREAT NOW...etc)
  Footnotes from german songbook ZONX. (translated for you by Carl Berger <cap@imagine.de>)
  "Saying of the disguised children, who walk on Halloween from door to door. Means :"Give us something or we'll do something to you" ('Trick' is by the way also the special word by prostitues for their clients)"
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Talkin' 'bout the bad girls
All the Goblin Girls
Talkin' 'bout the bad, bad girls
The little Goblin Girls
Some are called Doreen
Some are dressed in green
They're tricking your treat
From: Evil Bob <evilbob@tbag.tscs.com>
  Again, for the benefit of foreigners who are possibly unaware of the Lore of American Halloween Practices 'N Stuff: The Official Phrase you are supposed to use when demanding candy from strangers at their door on Halloween Night is "Trick or Treat" - in that light we note another li'l play on words for humorous effect.
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But they're bad girls
They're very bad girls
(LEPRECHAUN LIGHT...etc.)
They make your face look like
you got scales on it
But that's okay...
When the green light shines down
On the black guys in the band
Everybody in the audience
Thinks they're seeing something
That looks like it's made out of
Fish skin
But Coy leaves the green gels in the truss
From: Dave Lane <dalane@domaincorp.com>
  Marque (Marque-son) Coy. The guy in charge of sound & lights. The green gels are what make the stage lights shine green.
From: Bill Lantz <lantz@primenet.com>
  Coy Featherstone, lighting director. He toured with Frank for years.
From: Pat Buzby <spb0377@alpha.cc.oberlin.edu>
  ..."Coy" refers not to Marque Coy (sorry Dave L.), but to Coy Featherstone, who was FZ's lighting director during this time. (I think that he's credited on OSFA.) Marque Coy didn't work with FZ until '81.
From: Vladimir Sovetov <sova@kpbank.ru>
  Absolutely correct, Pat
  It's form a gate-fold inside
Assitance -- PAUL HOF; RICAHRD "TEX" ABEL;

DICK BARBER; COY FEATHERSTONE;
 
Because he knows the guys in the front
Really enjoy looking like they've got
Scales all over their body...
  CC
From: Evil Bob <evilbob@tbag.tscs.com>
  And it is at this point that I find what is most likely the origin of the "Thing-Fish" idea. This was then probably just bolted on to the other elements of the "Thing-Fish" story: the connection to Lumpy Gravy, Billy The Mountain, Greggery Peccary, and The Torture Never Stops then sorta evolved further with the addition of this strange imagery of "Thing-Fish".
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