December 27th, 1986, Hollywood Palladium, Los Angeles. I was counting down the hours all day long, waiting for 8 P.M. ... I would soon be watching the show of my dreams: Oingo Boingo.

Huge crowd, commotion in the street, rushing to the ticket booth and... SOLD OUT! The tickets had sold out. I attacked a scalper, who lowered the price from $30 to $20 (it cost $15 in the box office).

Inside, there was nowhere to sit down, so everybody was watching standing up. Beer & Woman a lot! [sic] It was scorching inside, but outside it was 41 degrees, can you believe it? The boys went onto the stage and everybody freaked out.

Danny Elfman wore all black and suspenders. He didn't even say good evening and just began playing music. There were two girls in the backing vocals with hairdos a la B-52's and guys in suits and bowties.

The half-bald drummer John Hernandez, wearing shorts and sneakers, was one of the most enthusiastic. The guitarist Steve Bartek was shredding the solos, and the two newest members of the group - the small John Avila and the keyboardist Mike Bacich - were hopped up, making sounds that seemed to transcend death itself.

The crowd was pogoing crazily to "Wild Sex", "Only a Lad", making everyone go wild. The skinnier guys who were in the pit were thrown onto the stage, along with their shoes and shirts, and Elfman had to tell everybody to calm down. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Behind the stage, there were movies and visual effects. I'll leave the rest of the show to your imagination.

For the americans, it was just another show from 1986. For me, all that remained was an exclamation: "Jeez...!" And it was just an Oingo Boingo show.