Oingo Boingo Album: “Best O' Boingo”

Having been a major Boingo fan for years, I found the "Best o'Boingo" to be a bit of a disappointment. They kept many of their better songs intact for this collection - "Stay", "Not My Slave", and "Just Another Day" are three of my faves. However, eight of the seventeen tracks are not the original Boingo classics, but re-recordings; and nowhere near as good as the original releases. (The re-recordings of "Dead Man's Party" and "No One Lives Forever", well, stink.) If you are a serious collector of Oingo Boingo music, this might be a good choice to round out your collection; but if you're buying your first Boingo CD, I'd suggest going with one of their older albums, such as "Dead Man's Party".

There are re-recordings of some of the more popular songs on this album, most notably the one that starts the whole thing off: "Dead Man's Party".

This isn't a bad thing. In the case of "Dead Man's Party", the oddly sluggish feel of the original is gone entirely. Most of the songs, in fact, sound tighter, brighter, and the whole thing just *bounces* along with the cheerily macabre sensibility that an Oingo fan dotes on. I listen to it and find I get the keenest enjoyment from it in the car, despite my rotten speakers. There you are, zooming through space in your little tin-can with internal combustion. Death is not far from your mind, more often than not, and it's invigorating to hear it discussed with such happy relish.

The mood of this compilation is perhaps a bit lopsided: the friskier pieces such as DMP and "Not My Slave" tend to be near the beginning, while the album slides toward wistful sentiment and pretty minor-key warbling toward the end. In the car, the opening trumpets of DMP are a clarion call back to the lighter side of things. Without the "Repeat All" function, it kinda wiggles to a halt. Not bad at-awl.

If you love Oingo Boingo like I do, then I almost guarentee that you'll also love this c.d. It has a lot of re-recorded, really cool music on it, like Only A Lad, and Dead Mans Party. All of the songs are great, and I just can't stop listing to it, althought I have had it for more than seven months, so you'll never get tired of it.

Oingo Boingo made records that managed to appeal only to a certain in-the-know crowd, and almost all seemed to be in California. They were possesed of a certain goofiness that permaeated all their best songs and a positively rivitig frontman in Danny Elfman. This best-of offers some re-recordings of the Boinger's best known songs (which did not bother me all that much), and shows off the band's greatest gifts.

"Dead Man's Party" and "Weird Science" show the band at their peak. The rythym is irresistable, the hooks undeniable, and Elfman's yelp cutting through it all. Horns percolate in and out, and the band had a chemistry that just cooked. But they also show the band's shortcomings. Elfman knows basically one song style (busily frenetic) and one arrangement style (loud and stuffed). To the band's (and Elfman's) credit, they do this better than absolutely anyone else. It makes early stuff like "Only A Lad" sounds great even almost 30 years on. Given that Elfman eventually transitioned this very same style into his film-scoring career, "Best o'Boingo" makes a good look at the man's roots.

I live in Brazil, and in 1989 I heard Oingo for the first time here. Some songs from the album "Stay" (may be this one was exclusively to Brazil). Since then, I've been trying to find this album in CD, but is very hard to find some CDs in Brazil, as you may know. This "best of" is very good in my opinion, but there's only one fail: they forgot the song "We Close Our Eyes" that is the moust magical song that I heard from Oingo. If you have some hint, please send me e-mail to: pp1cz@bol.com.br