OXFORD, England — Oxford University musicology professor Edward Gosnold discovered new details lending credence to his hypothesis that the subject of both Peter Gabriel’s and Pixies’ monkey-themed songs are the same exact primate, confirmed bespectacled sources at a pub near the university.
“I’ve spent the better part of the past three years gathering evidence that the two monkeys are the same specimen. Members of both musical groups have been tight-lipped about the provenance of the monkey, but I’ve been steadfast in my pursuit of the truth,” said Gosnold as he inspected the “Shock the Monkey” 45 sleeve through a magnifying glass. “The monkey, called Chim Chim, was originally owned by Gabriel’s bassist Tony Levin, who used to ‘shock’ the poor beast regularly with his ribald humor, inspiring the oft-misinterpreted song.”
Former Pixies roadie Brian Montrose confirmed that guitarist Joey Santiago did in fact acquire a pet monkey named Chim Chim in 1986.
“Chim Chim was a great mascot for the band. Kim Deal used to feed him raisins,” said Montrose as he wound a long XLR cable in the correct manner. “A lot of people think that the song means the monkey died and went to heaven, but that’s not true. Joey felt that life on the road was too hard on the little guy, so he sent him to live at the Heaven Sanctuary for Show Business Animals in upstate New York. Frank Black was heartbroken to see him go, and channeled that emotion into writing a song. He shortened the name of the facility in the title to make it easier to write on setlists.”
Susan Cordova, the program coordinator at Heaven Sanctuary, spoke highly of Chim Chim.
“Chim Chim came to us in 1991 and has led a happy life here ever since,” said Cordova. “We’ve had many notable celebrity animals in our care over the years. We took in those big cockroaches from Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Closer,’ Slash’s boa constrictor from the ‘Patience’ video, as well as the poor dog from the cover of The Jesus Lizard’s ‘Down’. We also had the Bee Girl from the Blind Melon video with us for a time, for some reason. That might’ve been a clerical error, now that I think of it.”
At press time, it was revealed that Chim Chim had come out of retirement, most recently starring in David Lynch’s “What Did Jack Do?”