The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo

I have had a few fleeting moments of spare time recently....(well, spare time that I wanted to devote to this blog) and I have become interested in doing a blog post for the band Oingo Boingo.

You remember Oingo Boingo right... The band Danny Elfman led before becoming a composer of countless movie scores.

Quirky, a bit spastic, and very talented. Oingo Boingo started in the early 1970's right after Elfman spent some time wandering around Africa, seemingly, with a violin and not much else. Upon his return he joined his older brother's...for lack of a more fitting word, "group": The Mystic Nights of the Oingo Boingo. After a few years working up to an appearance on the Gong Show...which the internets have saved forever...this is pretty hilarious stuff.



A few movie soundtracks included Oingo Boingo (Back to School, Fast Times At Ridgemont High, and of course Weird Science) and they achieved a modicum of success in the 1980's.

As I was trying to figure out which Oingo Boingo songs to include here I found a series of blog posts that go beyond anything I could ever hope to present about the band. I feel like a normal kid playing with lincoln logs in his backyard only to find out that Phineas and Ferb have moved in next door.

The following link will take you to part one of a three part blog post by a man who goes by the blogger name "saltyka"
and I really can't describe how thorough and complete this blog is...

http://saltyka.blogspot.com/2010/04/oingo-boingo-part-1-mystic-knights-of.html

If you are interested in anything this band has ever recorded or has ever said to another person, go there now and read and download to your heart's content.

If you don't know Elfman's music from films or don't know Oingo Boingo I think this song blends the two together perfectly even though it came out a half decade or so before he started writing full time for motion pictures.Nasty Habits

Here is a selection from a movie soundtrack (from the end credits of "Fast Times At Ridgemont High"
Goodbye, Goodbye

I was in Chicago last year and went into a Dunkin Donuts and their in-house radio station was playing the Oingo Boingo song "Private Life", probably my favorite song by them... and NOT one that I have ever heard on the radio before. If i wasn't so lucky to have a beautiful and loving family, I'm sure this song might be on the mix tape to my miserable life.
Private Life

Second post of the new year!

For Christmas this year I received a book entitled "We Never Learn: The Gunk Punk Undergut, 1988-2001" It is widely available and even though I am only 50 or so pages into it, I am enjoying it. It covers and era of Punk that I am most familiar with - the end.

Punk Rock has turned into a drop down menu item option for a question on an internet personality survey. Right after - "Which gaming system(s) do you own?" and "How many hours a week do you spend surfing the internet?" It's pretty meaningless anymore. But at least in the 80's and early 90's it meant that you had to put forth a little effort or risk to find new music or a new hang out place or even more so, to make new friends...

One very slight risk I took one day in the early 1990's was to take the advice of some kid selling records in the Euclid Tavern. I bought this 7" - "Stuck On You" by a band called Gorilla (notice there is no Z at the end of their name!)

I just know this band will get mentioned somewhere in the middle of "We Never Learn" as this song is a highlight of the era.


Their label had this to say about them:
"Hailing from the Lower East Side, Gorilla sprang forth form the rhythm and blues, swamp rock, garage scene of New York during the early 90's. Their placement of vox organ as a driving catalyst for there songs is what truly separates Gorilla from the rest of the pack"

The Vox organ is in there, driving the song along, but man is this song fun to sing along to! I wish I had time to transcribe the lyrics for you all...

Stuck On You

Back From The Grave

Happy New Year!!!

I left this blog alone almost completely in 2010. but have decided to resurrect it in 2011, and want to do that with a really terrific song...

I have literally been exposed to thousands of new songs and scores of new bands with the explosion of music blogs and filesharing that exists today. A genre that has become a favorite of mine through this newfound exposure is Power Pop. I like all kinds of Power Pop, but the peak late 70's early 80's mixed Punk and New Wave into the formula and this era has quickly become a favorite of mine.

One of the best songs from that era is this one...

When We Were Young

by a band called Pumphouse Gang.

A fellow named James at a blog called Worthless Trash gave me my first introduction to them and keeps a dedication page to them at that link. They apparently have an unreleased record that James shared a few low quality samples of in the past.

I am sharing his file of "When We Were Young" with you here and it is a low quality MP3 but somehow that makes me like it even more. Something bittersweet and sentimental about this song always keeps me playing it... a great example of a time and place that gave rise to a really addictive sound! (more of which will follow)