Whenever I queue up the YouTube of Oingo Boingo, live at the Ritz in 1985, I'm typically met with a familiar feeling that I shouldn't be doing this, not again. Yet, whatever sense of dread I feel is aligned with the doom-laden humour of Oingo Boingo Struggle Tweets 2. Incredible awe is met with inevitable dread. I carcrash my passions. I overindulge and reach a saturation point with my listening practices.
"Live from the Ritz, Oingo Boingo..."
Unsurprisingly, I first came across Oingo Boingo at a Halloween party years ago. I shazammed Dead Man's Party not once, but twice, and it seemed that my fascination with that one song sustained me for a long time. I still haven't tired of its bombastic horns and the snide Frakenstein-cries: "Don't run away! It's only me!" I make it my business to shoehorn it into every FOTW Halloween Listening Party x C&CM show.
Saying that, I fell in with Boingo slowly, mostly finding one-off tracks and listening to them on solitary walks around Hampstead Heath. Grey Matter, Only a Lad and Just Another Day became so apart of that rona-ritual of walking, thinking and keeping the hell away from other people. When Spotify Wrapped comes round with ever-increasing frequency, I tend to foreshadow it with the obvious, "I mean, surely it's just all Oingo Boingo?"
Nowadays, I make it a habit to listen to the Oingo Boingo Secret Appreciation Society, a podcast which dives deep into its recurring lyrical themes and connections, and it's a humbling thing to be at the beginning of my Boingo fandom. The episode of Not My Slave especially had this fascinating analysis about relationship dynamics. I love how they cooed over the poetics of the line: "With deafening sound, whisper, "I love you"..."
I like to listen, not to be an expert, but to figure out where these songs sit within myself. Finding whatever aspects that resonate, holding them to the light and thinking about why that is. It's much like walking on the Heath and pursuing whatever paths I want to take. I present interesting Boingo bits I find to my friend, Bec at Mild Scribbling. She also watches that performance of Oingo Boingo, live at the Ritz in 1985.
We talk about the gestures and Danny's maniacal expressions, how maddeningly raucous it is. I feel grateful that despite my predilection to carcrash everything, I can share my thoughts with my very own Boingo friend.
Oingo Boingo at the Ritz by Bec
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