Oingo Boingo – Live At The Country Club, Reseda – May 21, 1984 – Band Soundboard –
Anyone who spent more than 10 minutes in Los Angeles during the 1970s and 80s is familiar with Oingo Boingo. From their early incarnation as Street Theatre through to their almost daily appearances at any one of a number of clubs and concerts between the San Fernando Valley and Long Beach – they were everywhere. Or at least it seemed that way.
Fronted by Danny Elfman, who has gone on to become one of the pillars of Hollywood Film Scoring, Oingo Boingo, for a time, fit in with the L.A. aesthetic quite well during the 70s and 80s – in a town no stranger to the outlandish and outrageous, Oingo Boingo gathered a large and loyal following and made them pretty much household names around town for the better part of their 17 years existence.
They were known for their high energy live concerts and experimental music, which can be described as mixing rock, ska, pop, and world music. During the mid-1980s, the band changed line-ups and adopted a more pop oriented style, until a significant genre change to alternative rock in 1994. At that point, the name was shortened to simply Boingo and the keyboardist and horn section were dropped. The band retired after a farewell concert on Halloween 1995, for which they reverted to the name Oingo Boingo and readopted the horn section.
Following the band’s dissolution, Danny Elfman continued composing for film and has been nominated for four Academy Awards for his work. While he has provided the scores for Tim Burton’s films almost exclusively since Pee-wee’s Big Adventure in 1985, Elfman continues to be much sought-after by other directors in the movie business as well. Elfman’s other scores have included those for Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Good Will Hunting, Men in Black, Spider-Man, Big Fish, and The Nightmare Before Christmas. Elfman has also written themes for more than a dozen TV series, including The Simpsons, Batman: The Animated Series, Tales from the Crypt and Desperate Housewives. Elfman almost exclusively employs former Oingo Boingo guitarist Steve Bartek as his orchestrator.
As a reminder of the earlier days, here is a gig they performed in the San Fernando Valley at the Country Club, Reseda on May 21, 1984 – not sure if this was broadcast, but it’s high-energy nonetheless.
