Shortly before their overwhelmingly popular performance in the Coloseum [sic], Danny Elfman stopped by the KYXX-FM studios in the Sleaze District for a conversation with Stephen Rabow. Here is their discussion:

Danny: Hi. How are you?

Stephen: Well, I'm fine. I have a little bit of a cold but I'm o.k.

Danny: O.k.

Stephen: Better than just o.k., how about yourself, how are you?

Danny: Well they just flew us in here and we're ready to kick some butt tonight, if I might say so over the air.

Stephen: We're talking like major kick butt action tonight?

Danny: I think we're talking about ultra super major kick butt action tonight.

Stephen: I'm not really sure if Seattle and the surrounding areas are prepared for ultra super major kick butt action.

Danny: Well they are going to get it just the same.

Stephen: Are most of the members of Oingo Boingo classicly [sic] trained?

Danny: Umm, no, not really, I'd say it was just about split. Some of the guys are, some of the guys aren't. The keyboard player is more jazz trained in the past, and rock. The guitarist, Steve, he's done just about everything. The bass player had just been playing funk and rock bass for a long time. The trumpet player used to play in orchestras, the two sax players, their background is more rhythm and blues and jazz.

Stephen: But Oingo Boingo is so complex, in its arrangements and delivery.

Danny: Oh, no…it's simple, only the name is hard to say, that's all.

Stephen: Otherwise it's generic rock and roll, huh?

Danny: Actually, well, I've never been able to understand what it is that's supposed to be so complicated about our music. I mean to me it sounds real simple. Now obviously it's not generic rock and roll but on the other hand, it's not like Zappa's music, or stuff like that, that's intentionally complicated. Nothing we do do we go "Hey yeah, we're really going to knock them over with how complicated this tune is and how hard it is to play." Except for a couple of songs, the melodys [sic] and some of the things might be a little more unusual or how we orchestrate the music, but it's not that difficult, not really that hard, surprisingly enough. Our reputation doesn't make it seem that way.

Stephen: Well that's really interesting. It's nice to know that you are not premeditated in the sense that you are really not trying to go out there on the fringe.

Danny: It's quite the opposite. We try to make the stuff that sounds as simple as possible within the Boingo world.

Stephen: But comparatively to other bands, at least in the progressive "new wave" your music is by far way ahead of the game. It seems to be three or four steps beyond what other commercial bands are doing in experimentation terms.

Danny: Well thank you, the main thing we try to be is versital [sic]. The key factor is trying to put together albums where you'll hear the first song but you don't know what the third or the fifth song or the seventh song are all going to sound like. So I think within the context of an album, if we succeed in what we're trying to do there's a couple songs that are really very simple, and one might grab onto right away, with luck, and there are other songs that, after you listen to it more, will start to grow on you. Then there will be a couple that you didn't even notice except when you put it on months later, eventually those will start to pop out. That's really, like, our kind of objective. I have no idea if we've come within five percent or ninety percent of achieving that. That's kind of what we try for, to have more than one level of depth. You know, you have ten songs, if you make them all sound the same with the same kind of structure and the same kind of sound...

Stephen: Then they all sound the same and bleeeaaaccchh!!

Danny: You know, you listen to those first couple of songs and when you are tired of them then there is nothing else to go to, because everything else sounds just the same.

Stephen: You are talking about diversity and that's real important. I like that. Let's listen to some music right now.

Danny: O.K.

Stephen: And you go ahead and choose what you want to play.

Danny: O.K. well let's start with something a little stranger, it's actually one of our favorite tunes on the new album it's called "Nothing Bad Ever Happens To Me".

Stephen: "Nothing Bad Ever Happens To Me" by Oingo Boingo from the album "Good For Your Soul."

Danny: That's "Nothing Bad Ever Happens To Me" or my aunt Martha with Oingo Boingo on KYYX.

Stephen: How about a 101 introduction to Oingo Boingo?

Danny: It's kind of hard to do, I know the listeners can't see me over their radios but I've got two deep scars above my eyes where the lobotomy was performed. The band actually paid for this, they chipped in, pretty expensive operation too. They cut open the frontal lobes of the brain but they left a certain reasonable amount of intelligence, just enough to get by on a kind of hour to hour, day by day level but it kind of cuts down on the memory department.

Stephen: It's amazing what the wonders of modern day technology can actually accomplish.

Danny: Yeah, uhh, all I know is that we used to be something real bizzare [sic] and it wasn't a band, it was more of a kind of strange musical cabaret theatrical thing; sticking a lot of different kinds of elements together. And that was how I reacted because I thought rock in the seventies was just too mellow for my tastes that I responded by not doing any rock and roll. Towards the end of the seventies I really began to get inspired to write original stuff. It seemed like the energy level was shifting back and higher energy music was starting to pop out again and it was at that point that we kind of split up and reformed and came together as the trim little eight piece band, Oingo Boingo, that we are today and have remained ever since then, since about ‘78.

Stephen: So you are no longer an interantional [sic] conglomeration of various artistic elements?

Danny: No, no the acrobat and the fire breather is gone. We had to shoot the dancer because she broke her leg.

Stephen: Well how do you, in your own mind, make the jump from, let's say a non-commercial group of fringe element artists into the commercial world, getting signed by a major label and now performing, in fact, headlining at Bumpershoot?

Danny: It was really rough, because as a theatrical entity we were real successful. In fact just in ‘78 and ‘79, just as we were disbanded and came together again we had major offers by theatrical groups to put it together as a show with all the sets and rear screen projection that we could ever imagine and tour with it for two years and put us all on big salaries. But the thought of doing the same thing every night was really depressing and I was already starting to get bored with that whole format. We had already done what we had set out to do, we accomplished it and that was that. I always felt that once you do what you want to do, and you start to lose inspiration for it, you chance becoming a dinosaur or a group of dinosaurs that recit[e]s the same thing. So we took the chance and our audience just hated our new material, it was an older audience. We went from playing at major theaters and houses to playing in front of twenty to twenty five people at night in small clubs, in and around L.A.; but we knew that might happen. We figured that, well we'll try just the music, without all the crutches and theatrics prop[p]ing it up with all the stuff and if we succeed, great. And if we don't, well we gave it our best shot. And for awhile [sic] it looked like we really weren't going to pull through. But the kids in Southern California started discovering us, on their own volition and started requesting us on the local radio station KROQ (The Rock of the 80's for L.A.). They were in tune with what their listeners had to say and they built their charts around their requests. We were getting requested pretty heavily and suddenly our four song E.P., it was only a demo recording, just got things going for us. We sold a lot of those little things with "Only A Lad" and "Violent Love" and the next thing we knew we were signed to A & M and here we are today, three albums later.

Stephen: Thrills, spills, chills.

Danny: Well it hasn't been a Cinderella story, we're still just creeping along and we're still not accepted by the commerical [sic] market. They're just beginning to listen to what we are and we're starting to creep into radio stations and to creep onto the airwaves, creep on the t.v., and we're just building and building but it's just a step by step kind of thing as opposed to a fad or fashion or an overnight sensation, which is not what we want anyhow.

Stephen: No. I don't think that's the way you come across. When I listen to your records I hear a great deal of potential. I see an evolution from what you've done in the past to now and it seems to be momentum, moving the band in a constructive and positive way. I'm very excited for the group and I think you have many years ahead of producing wonderful music, not necessary "product" in the commercial sense of the word. Let's take another musical interlude right now.

Danny: O.K. Let's play something peppy.

Stephen: Alright.

Danny: "Who Do You Want To Be"

Stephen: Uhhh, oh, o.k. I understand.

Danny: Who do YOU want to be, ah ha, I tricked you didn't I?

Stephen: Almost, but I've got the album.

Music: "Who Do You Want To Be" by Oingo Boingo from the album [Good for your Soul].

Stephen: Where do you think you are going to go, both musically and personally. What are you trying to accomplish?

Danny: Well all we really want to do is to accomplish outside of Southern California what we accomplished there and that's starting to happen, to expand our boundaries, to make converts as it were. And everywhere we go on tour it's starting to happen, we go somewhere and get a good response from a small crowd then we come back and the seeds were planted, the converts bring more converts and BEHOLD!! The flock unfolds before us and grows, it's just seeing the whole thing get to a point where we can tour comfortably in other cities. Right now one city, they know who we [are] and in the next they don't know who we are. It's real touch and go, it's crazy but it's a lot of fun, it makes touring more challenging and exciting.

Stephen: But is it numbers you are looking for actually or is there a certain kind of philisophical [sic] ideal that you are trying to project?

Danny: Most of the stuff we play in some way or another, it's fun, it's crazy, but it's also got a point to it and we want to be played on the air. We want people to hear the music, we want people to get the crazyness [sic], the schitzophrenia [sic], the messages, to tap their feet, whatever they do we want them to do it. So sure, I mean we're looking to be accepted out there in that big cold world of music, of which too much of it to us sounds the same especially in the "new wave" kind of market, we want to shatter some of the images.

Stephen: Well let's suppose that you are accepted. Let's say that you've reached that pinnacle of all consciousness and understanding and you have a massive following all across the world and you can write your own check. Now what are you going to do?

Danny: Well first of all we're not after superstardom. We're just after acceptance. What we would do would be to keep doing albums. The very fact that we have an audience and that we are more or less successful, even at a moderate level, means that we can keep doing albums. That's all we're looking for is that, knowing that we have enough audience out there, throughout the country, that we can keep putting that stuff out. I'd like to do albums more than once a year. We've got a lot of ideas, a lot of things we want to do and we just want to work. We are workers, straight down the line, I mean you can keep the partys [sic] you can keep the cocaine we just want to work.

Stephen: I can relate, that's great. Any "tips for teens"?

Danny: (singing like Sparks) Tips for Teeeens. Well, first of all think different, think crazy. Don't let anybody push you around. Don't let anybody tell you what to think. Think for yourselves, that's what we tell everybody all the time. Whether they even know it or not that's what we're telling them in most of the music. We have a lot more respect for the kids out there then a lot of other people in this industry seem to have which is the reason why we got so popular down in Southern California cause they didn't like being preached to by their teachers or by cynical rock writers who think of them as a mass that'll gobble up anything they put out there, so I just hope that they expand their tastes and listen to different kinds of stuff. Use your heads. Grey Matter, you know what I mean?

Stephen: Grey matter. Danny Elfman, I think you are an inspiring genius.

Danny: Aw shucks, gee whizz...