I try not to overwhelm you all with awesome, Danny-Elfman-filled goodness but some days I just have to share. While Everybody Needs finishes out the theoretically solo 1984 album, "So Lo", we all know it was a record contract dodge and the rest of Oingo Boingo is backing him.
The real question about this album is, "What is it that Everybody Needs?" As with so much Boingo, this album as well, the answer is usually, "A release." It's often, "A way to escape my life," and sometimes, "To know that I'm not the only one." Considering the depth and breadth of bad behavior Elfman and Co. explored over the years, you'd be hard pressed to find something you know better than to do that you keep finding yourself doing that isn't shared by plenty of others.
Of course, now we have the Internet and need Oingo Boingo much less. We can get that reassurance via a simple Google search that will bring us thousands of results to soothe our sense of deviance. Personally, I still like to go back to the old-school way and let Danny Elfman tell me I'm okay.
For Friday, have one of my all-time favorite love songs: Not My Slave. I'm not generally the violins and sweeping gowns type, you know. This one offers that unique Danny Elfman twist (and voice) and a huge Oingo Boingo sound perfect for spinning wildly in the arms of the one you love. Where else can you find lines like, "We make ourselves like clay from someone else's dreams?" Now list to it, darn it! I'm off to dance.
I thought it might be nice to post a little wake-up music for that dude who's been out for a couple of days. What better to welcome him back than a cautionary tale about the dangers of Big Brother from Oingo Boingo? In case that was too obscure, Wake Up (It's 1984).
Now, when the "Good for Your Soul" album dropped in 1983 people naturally assumed it was a song about the following year. I heard this quite a bit in 1984 and then people thought it was stupid and dated and stopped listening to it. Those people clearly don't read.
Happily, I was just at the right age for Orwell and so read 1984 and Animal Farm right about this time. Naturally, the song speaks to me, more so every year--or at least ever legislative session. So, happy Jesus wake up day to you all and have a little Boingo to get you going.
Today is one of those days when, in the pursuit of one thing, I find myself distracted by something entirely...ooh, shiny! Wait, where was I?
In truth I can't even remember where I started when I found myself confronted with a song titled Bim Bam Boom from four different artists, one of them the Oingo Boingo song from the Forbidden Zone soundtrack. Naturally I got to wondering if that song had been a cover, as Violent Love was.
Happily, I can say that that particular bit of bizarre is, in fact, not a cover. However, we're left with The El Dorados with their doo-wop song, Roger Klug with his neo-swing song, and Surferosa with their synth-heavy 80s surf-punk shouter. Yet all of them are named Bim Bam Boom.
I blame Percy Faith for this. He recorded a raucous, swingin', late-60s ruckus of a track that made everyone want to use that name for their own. They don't have that one on Groovshark so I've included a static video so that you can hear the whole thing. I'm not generally a fan of his but, dang, this one really moves.
For this, my 1,000th post, I thought I’d share some thoughts on what the heck I think I’ve been doing here for four years. To that end, I’ve been considering why I blog and music bloggers in general.
The entire point of blogging is to get your opinion in front of other people. That holds even more true for sites that offer reviews and recommendations. The reason for wanting to do that, however, varies widely.
For me, blogging about music is an outlet for a long-standing habit: telling people about the weird songs that I love. I hardly fancy myself a tastemaker (my recent joining of the Tastemaker X site notwithstanding). My motives are purely selfish.
I’m hardly angling to be influential in the music industry or to make a pile of money from selling my opinion to the most-popular bidder. Were I pursuing that angle this would be the All-Pop Jukebox, after all, wouldn’t it?
Here’s my reasoning: if I put the music I think is great out there and more people hear it more people will buy it. The more people that buy it the more encouraged (and financially able) the musicians I like will be to make more. With a modicum of luck, they’ll have noticed my humble efforts here and send it to me to share with you all and then around the circle goes again.
Lacking a circle of friends interested in every great new band I had just heard, I started posting here looking for feedback from like-minded fans and open-minded listeners. What I found was that few people give me much on the posts but that everywhere else I spend time on the web has turned into a place I find a few other rabid music lovers (except Google+, where I’ve found an entire community of hundreds of them). Their comments and recommendations in response have fueled The NPJ at least as much as my own findings over the years.
I may never be a big-name music blogger on an international scale and I’m certainly not ever going to make a living here. That’s just fine with me. You, my darlings, quiet though you are, keep me wanting to find and share more wonderful songs and artists and to keep digging into the ones I already own. I won’t lie and say it’s all for you but without readers and interaction, wherever it occurs, a blogger tends to get discouraged.
Much as I enjoy blabbing and gushing and occasionally chastising here at The NPJ I doubt I’d have kept on if you all hadn’t been willing and sometimes eager to tell me what you thought. For that I thank you, dears, and offer you one of my favorite songs of all time which I’ve been saving for just this occasion. If you’ve been around for more than a couple of posts you’ll be unsurprised at its being Oingo Boingo.
Try to Believe also counts a Jukebox Roots post, as it's one of the first songs I posted. I’ll shut up now and let you listen to the song. Tomorrow I’ll be back to my briefer self.
You poor dears have been left without an Oingo Boingo song for far too long. Let's remedy that with a fantastic Danny Elfman creation like Just Another Day. In fact, let's listen to Just Another Day on this, just another Friday.
I bumped into a remix of Blood Orange today, for which I didn't particularly care, but I thought I'd check out the band after the glowing reviews of them on the page. I'm so glad I did. They're like slipping on a comfortable coat, instantly familiar and cozy. But as I listened to Forget It I found myself increasingly reminded of another song: Oingo Boingo's Not My Slave.
Now, it could be the singer's proclamations that "I'm not your savior, baby girl" but somehow the two seem to go together. Not My Slave is so energetic that I tend to think of it as fast while Forget It has more of a lushly mellow feel to it. But I listened to the two back-to-back and discovered that, tempo-wise, they're pretty close. Lyrically, they're two different animals, with Blood Orange getting stingy with their words while, as usual, Danny Elfman wants to tell you a story.
I don't know if Blood Orange intended it, but they have a sort of 80s vibe to them, like Depeche Mode covering The Pet Shop Boys covering The Cure. Maybe it's the vocalist's voice, maybe it's the sparse music, maybe it's the keyboards. I don't know. I do know that I immediately went out and bought Forget It. Let me know what you think: are to two a match or am I full of malarkey?
I seem to be addicted to cover songs of late. Today I'd like to share a baker's dozen versions of Rawhide, from the original Frankie Lane version through rock, blues, a capella, and punk, and including the version that absolutely slew my from The Chaps. I've got Johnny Cash and The Blues Brothers, naturally, plus The Tubes, the Dead Kennedys, and a live version from Oingo Boingo with terrible sound quality. What more can I say about a song that everyone knows, even if they don't know they do?
So just enjoy Jello Biafra's distinctive voice, The Coats doing their own commentary and sound effects, and the surf music twist from The Meteors. And if you've a favorite version of Rawhide that I've missed please do let me know. I can always use more frenetic cowboys!
Sometimes you need a reminder that all of those bad things that happen to you are fleeting, that if you just pick yourself up and move on they can't keep you down. And who better to remind you of that in his own inimitable way than Danny Elfman with Oingo Boingo? Here's a song about all of the horrible things that happen to a man but still he says, "Darkness can never last too long if you laugh in its face."
It Only Makes Me Laugh is a big sing-along song for me when I having a tough day. Five minutes in the car with the volume cranked up never fails to put things in perspective. (Well, four minutes and few seconds but who's counting?) Have a listen and let me know if you agree with my interpretation.
I promised weeks ago that I would post this song. That's because Pedestrian Wolves is a major earworm for me. I don't know if it's because the concept of pedestrian wolves and suburban lions just caught my imagination or because, like so much of Danny Elfman's music, it's just so darned interesting. Consider the lyrics:
And I like you just like you are
And I love you, kind of, just like you are
And I love you like a sticky piece of cotton candy
I'm not even sure what that means but it keeps me playing the song. Listen until you get past the discordant intro because the music if far deeper than you'd guess from the (admittedly) unattractive beginning.
I'm going on vacation starting tomorrow so posts are going to be a bit sparse and short for the rest of the month. I hope you enjoy what I do find, however. I'll be back in February with something a bit meatier.
I managed to resist inflicting my favorite band of bygone days for months, now. I think it's time for a little Oingo Boingo break, my dears. On your behalves I've been listening to a bunch of their stuff to decide just which song you shouldn't miss from their rather extensive catalog. I've settled on Pain, in part because they could have written it last week and used the very same lyrics.
Technically this isn't 80s music, as it was on their last album and released in 1994. But regardless of the decade-bleed over and the fact that they started doing their crazy thing in the 70s they'll always be an 80s band to me. That's when they did what I believe to be the best of their work.
"Boingo" was a darker album than most of the earlier work, not so much in subject but in tone. The music itself has a more minor, creepy feel to it. But that didn't stop it from being a fantastic set of songs. I could have sworn I'd posted Pedestrian Wolves but I don't see it anywhere. I'll rectify that in the near future, if you think you can take it. In the meantime, have some Pain.
For this, my 500th post, I thought I'd share a slew of songs. But what to post for such a nice, round number? It took me a bit of pondering before I finally realized what was needed. I compiled a play list today of all of the songs I had that included a number in the title. It turned out to include one hundred songs exactly. That seemed to me an interesting enough coincidence for a post, and a perfect match for this milestone.
Of the 100, seventeen began with actual numbers, including two versions of 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (Paul Simon and Throat Culture) and four songs whose titles were just numbers (1-2-8 by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Prince’s 7, 19 from Paul Hardcastle, and Phoenix’s 1901). Two were phone numbers and one included a zip code. Heck, I've even posted 60 Revolutions. Thirty-five were various pieces of classical music that I won’t bother including. Another eight were different version or portions of the same song, such as Come On In Part2 and Part 3 by RL Burnside. For some reason Part 1 doesn’t seem to exist even though the album is named “Come On In”.
At any rate, I thought I'd offer you some of the fruits of my labor as a reward for sticking with me through this long and often winding journey. Thank you, dear listeners! I wish I could have included Two in the Bush (Is Worth One in the Hand but, alas!, no one else appears to find that song as entertaining as I do. Where possible, I've included the version from the album on which I own the song. I tried to mix them up to give you a feel for what my typical listening session sounds like. Enjoy!
It's been a couple of month since I inflicted any Oingo Boingo on you fine folks. I thought I'd share one of my favorite examples of what drew me to Danny Elfman and company so long ago. The picture of this Lilliputian army, so vividly drawn, makes absolutely no sense. Surely, you think, there must be social commentary about military service or rabid patriotism without reflection. Danny Elfman usually had something relevant to say about the state of American society.
If there is a moral, I've never been able to find a hint of it. I've probably listened to this song five hundred times over the course of the past twenty-three years and it's just a beautiful little piece of the bizarre. What more could you need, really, on a lazy Saturday morning than a perfect cartoon image that leads you nowhere but your next cup of coffee? It'll definitely do for me.
I thought I'd posted this one from the tickler file I added, but a quick check of my handy-dandy listings showed me that it was not so. As it's been quite some time since my last Oingo Boingo post, I thought it was high time to share a great, classic Boingo song. As I noted, Danny Elfman makes a questionable sex symbol but, when bouncing along to Elevator Man you hardly consider his looks. This one doesn't get explicit, exactly, but it does rate a raised eyebrow along with the chair dancing it will undoubtedly inspire. All in all, it's a fun little ditty that reminds me of why I so adore Mr. Elfman and hos talented bandmates. I hope you like it as much as I do.
Violent Love was one of the very first songs on which I posted. There's a reason for that: it's one of my favorites. For me, laying the Otis Rush version cheek-by-jowl with the Oingo Boingo version is the best way to listen to the song. For your edification, I've included the Skankin' Pickle version of the Oingo Boingo cover and one from Willie Dixon much more faithful to the original. As you can see, Grooveshark has fixed their little widget problem, so I've added the playlist from yesterday's post on Ya Ya as well as getting these gems here for you to enjoy.
This song stands as proof that Oingo Boingo was even better live than their recordings, a rare feat in this over-processed, cheese-pop-raddled world. If you didn't know who was playing (and weren't familiar with Danny Elfman's voice), you'd never peg Burn Me Up as one of their songs. It sloppy, punk-y, and wild without the usual control that Mr. Elfman and the others generally displayed. You can almost see them cutting loose, rip-roaring this barn-burner for a couple of precious minutes in the midst of their final appearance together.
I generally avoid live tracks because they rarely live up to the thirty-take album version, but in this case not only is there no album cut but I can't imagine this song tied town in a studio to the sort of cutting and mixing to which most songs are subjected. Burn Me Up epitomizes the reason that people attend concerts - because live performances ought to offer something more and better than pre-recorded tracks. There should be more energy and more experimentation. There should be more songs like this.
These days, life seems like an endless race not to lose ground. Thus, Oingo Boingo has been playing in my head for days, about Running on a Treadmill. I suppose it’s better than speeding my way on a hamster wheel, as at least I don’t have to look at the bars. I always remember this song as being much faster, although I suppose it’s about as fast as I’d dare go on a treadmill, in any case.
It’s strange, the way a song can stick with you. Oingo Boingo released their first full album, “Only a Lad”, in 1981 (although I admit to not owning it until 1986 or so). On that album was the song Capitalism. Last night I dreamt I was on American Idol and performed that song. I had a field day belting it out, and got booted off the show. Then Danny Elfman called to thank me for singing it. It was a great dream, because I love the song but I don’t want to be dodging paparazzi and having my children’s wardrobe criticized in People Magazine and thus wouldn’t want to win the contest.
Capitalism appeals to me, in part, because of it its snarkiness and refusal to pull punches. Danny Elfman wasn’t messing around when he wrote this one. Consider the bridge, “You’re just a middle-class socialist brat from a suburban family and you never really had to work. Now you tell me that you’ve got to get back to the struggling masses, whoever they are.” Truly, I could add the lyrics for the whole song, but why ruin the surprise?
Buy Capitalism (That seems appropriate, don't you think?)
Oingo Boingo put on one heck of a live show, and included two songs in those shows that didn’t appear on any of their studio albums. I would have loved to hear what the band did with Cinderella Undercover in a more formal setting, considering their creativity and energy. At least you can enjoy the energy of the live version on the first disc of their “Anthology” album, and, of course, here.
I’m holding off on posting Oingo Boingo songs because I know that, if I don’t restrain myself, I’d post one a week. For all that I enjoy newer music, some days it’s nice to return musically to an old friend and to hear intelligent, quirky lyrics backed by hyper horns, a great voice, and some clean 80s synth. Cinderella Undercover offers all of that in one wild package.
For those of you who were never Oingo Boingo fans and think that Danny Elfman is just some Tim Burton toady, I offer Try to Believe as proof that the band had more to offer than a wicked horn section, political commentary, and catchy lyrics. That’s not to say that I don’t love all of those things about the Boingo bunch, but this song shows the group's breadth as well as their depth. It’s a feel-good tune and a sort of love song, a reminder to believe in yourself and your dreams. For those of you who are thinking, “What a cheesy-sounding song for Oingo Boingo to perform,” have a listen. The fire is still there. Boomp3.com Buy Dark at the End of the Tunnel (because you’ll get Skin, Run Away, Flesh N’ Blood, and Is This to go with Try to Believe, plus you can't buy mp3s of the album from Amazon).
I try not to overwhelm you all with awesome, Danny-Elfman-filled goodness but some days I just have to share. While Everybody Needs finishes out the theoretically solo 1984 album, "So Lo", we all know it was a record contract dodge and the rest of Oingo Boingo is backing him.
(That seems appropriate, don't you think?)
