Ocelopotamus

Via Gadget Girl, let us now thrill to this 1976 appearance by Oingo Boingo on The Gong Show, from the early part of their career when they were still called The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. With bonus Bill Bixby!

 
(As the notes on the YouTube page point out, you might think that’s Danny Elfman wearing the rocket ship, but it’s not — that’s Danny’s brother Richard Elfman, the actual founder of the Mystic Knights. Danny is playing trombone.)

Since we’re Boingo-ing, here are my two favorite classic Oingo Boingo videos. First up, the song that made me an Oingo Boingo fan circa 1982, “Private Life.”

 
… I can’t even tell you how much I loved the Nothing to Fear album in high school. It was like a sacrament. I loved how Oingo Boingo’s music seemed to be made out of the unexpected stitched to the unlikely; the way big band horns would suddenly jump out at you in the middle of punky guitars and a ska beat. It felt like the musical version of the Marx Brothers’ comedy, a triumph of non sequitur, pastiche, and pure pandemonium.

And from the follow-up album Good For Your Soul, which I loved almost as much, here’s “Nothing Bad Ever Happens” … featuring the ever-popular flaming bathtub.

 
And another real find … this is an outtake from Urgh! A Music War, with Oingo Boingo performing “Imposter” — one of the songs that didn’t make it into the film. At the end, starting around the 3:35 mark, there’s some great interview with Danny where he mentions how The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo started out as a theater group, and how the speed and energy of punk saved him from The Eagles.

 
Note: This post has been a 100% “Dead Man’s Party”-free zone. Well, except for that last sentence.