A Brief History of Boingo
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Oingo Boingo |
After seventeen years, nine albums, an ep, three 'best of' compilations and dozens of film soundtrack appearances, Oingo Boingo has called it quits. It's sad news, but don't weep quite yet... Though there won't be anymore live performances by the band (the ideal way to experience their music), Boingo is adding two posthumous releases to their catalog: a double live cd, Farewell, and a double live video due out May '96.
For long time fans of the band, Oingo Boingo's Halloween show in Los Angeles was a festive annual event, a sort of mini, self-contained Mardi Gras-style freak show. So, after a brief two week tour of the West Coast (which never really left California), Boingo chose to perform their final gig at the Universal Amphitheatre on All Hallow's Eve 1995. Judging by the sound of this release, a gala affair it was. According to OBEN, the official Boingo newsletter, the final show went on for over four hours and no one wanted it to end.
Seventeen years of rocking presents a band with a lot of material to cover in a farewell concert. Only 2 hours, 25 minutes of that can physically fit on a double cd (the cassette version of Farewell, believe it or not, contains two extra tracks the cd doesn't have). There are 30 songs here and just over half of them are from Boingo's golden era (1980-1985) when they were putting out an album a year and touring regularly. During this period Nothing to Fear and Good For Your Soul were produced, arguably two of the band's best albums, if not two of the best albums to emerge from the otherwise musically dreary years of '82 and '83.
Boingo as a band didn't record much new material during the six years following 1987's BOI-NGO . This was due in part to the meteoric rise of Danny Elfman's film/tv scoring career; during this time the band seemed to become secondary to him. Elfman has always been the only music writer for Boingo, but in the realm of film music he received a critical and popular acclaim that had always been elusive of the band and, for the most part, still is. He's scored dozens of films... if you've seen Batman, Batman Returns, Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, or watched The Simpsons (among others... and we all have), you've heard an Elfman score.
During this time Boingo could only find the time to release no fewer than three compilation collections (Including Boingo Alive: A Celebration of a Decade- two discs worth of live soundstage re-recordings of Boingo classics). The only new Boingo album to come out from 1987 to 1993 was 1990's Dark at the End of the Tunnel, arguably the band's weakest effort. On Farewell, there are only two songs from this period, none of them from Dark.
But just last year, Boingo released an ambitious album entitled, simply enough, Boingo. For eager fans who'd been waiting for a real Oingo Boingo record since 1986, this release was somewhat of a godsend. Danny Elfman must have gone through a psychedelic phase... producing 11 great tunes that would not sound out of place on a radio blaring in the year 1967. Half of the songs from Boingo appear on Farewell which has four original tunes of its own, plus re-worked versions of Boingo classics like 'Nasty Habits' and 'No Spill Blood'.
If you haven't listened to Oingo Boingo since the '80s, then half of the material on Farewell will be brand new to you. This new stuff is great and hints at the direction the band would have taken had they remained together. The newest of the new tracks, available only here in this live form, are 'Burn Me Up' (a slam dance-able tune with jazz influenced intros and outros); 'Water' (a honky tonk tune with a Lennon-esque bounce to it); 'Piggies' (a seven minute opus about a disturbed young man-- possibly the illegitimate son of 'Only A Lad'); and 'Clowns of Death' (a fast/slow rocker about a different kind of gang).
Oingo Boingo surely will be missed. Thankfully these boys opted to go out in style releasing for their fans -on audio and video- performances of their very best tunes along with some new ones. Boingo fans of past, present (and future) can express their gratitude to Danny and Oingo Boingo by running out and buying the band's Farewell. cd.
I can't wait for the video. Now if they'll only compile those unreleased b-sides, soundtrack tunes and other rare tracks... well, let's just say the Boingoloids will provide the band with plenty of retirement royalties.
- –Mattro