Halloween Haunts: An Oingo Boingo Halloween
Halloween Haunts: An Oingo Boingo Halloween
By Joshua Millican
I’ve always loved horror more than Halloween.
Horror, that feeling you get when you face the darkness of the unknown, has fascinated and excited me since I was a kid. Horror movies, comics, stories, toys… you name it, I loved it! By my pre-teens, horror had already become a lifestyle for me. I was a spooky kid with morbid curiosities and a love of fear that made me a standout—for better or worse.
When you live horror 24/7, Halloween was just another day. Don’t get me wrong—I loved the fall season, the chill in the air, and the celebration of all things macabre (I still do). But even at its most extreme, Halloween was… well, it’s for kids. Halloween was pretend. Halloween is PG-13 and, for me, the best horror has always been Rated R.
I love and celebrate horror just as much on November 1st as I do on October 31st. Getting dressed up and “pretending” for a single day felt kind of silly compared to immersing myself in Fangoria magazine twelve-months a year. As an adult, I made a career of horror, and therefore remained in a world where Halloween was just a blip in a wide world of horror.
But I do have wonderful memories of Halloween—one in particular.
As a life-long native of Los Angeles who grew up in the 1980s, I was around when a band called Oingo Boingo was at its peak of popularity. While the group got national airplay with songs like “Weird Science,” there were, almost exclusively, a Southern California phenomenon. They had built such a rabid following, however, they were able to sell out a series of Halloween concerts every year at one of the largest venues in Orange County: The Irvine Meadows Amphitheater.
I was at one of Oingo Boingo’s infamous Halloween shows in 1987. It was just shortly after the release of their breakout album Dead Man’s Party. The band had a sound and aesthetic that was pure delight to a fan of dark art. Their music was festive, yet dangerous and ominous. It was an amazing night of music and spectacle. I still remember the show opening with the title track of Dead Man’s Party, and songs like “Grey Matter” and “No One Lives Forever” were absolute highlights!
Oingo Boingo was fronted by a scrappy young rock vocalist named Danny Elfman (a reveal many reading this most likely already knew). Before Danny was one of the greatest cinematic composers of all time, he was wild, frenetic performer with a unique and unparallelled energy. He held the audience rapt with his voice, his banter, and his movements—a combination of modern dance and skilled theatrics.
Oingo Boingo broke up in the early 1990s and Danny went into composing music full time. The rest, as they say, is history.
Danny Elfman returned to his rock roots after the Pandemic with a new album called Big Mess, featuring some of his most innovated work to date. While deeply reminiscent of his work with Oingo Boingo, his new music was a new beast entirely. Danny made a huge onstage comeback with a couple of sets at the Coachella Valley Music Festival in 2022 that included his work as a composer, his new songs from Big Mess, and a smattering of classic Oingo Boingo tunes.
Halloweens come and go, but an artist like Danny Elfman comes once in a generation (if that). Oingo Boingo was a crazy band that defied easy categorization, but they were captivating—and wonderfully creepy.
Some folks will go out trick or treating this year; others will attend parties or visit haunted attracts. I’ll probably hole up in my office and give Dead Man’s Patry a listen on my record player. For me, this is Halloween!
After establishing a personal blog in 2011, Joshua Millican quickly became one of the genre’s most prolific journalists, contributing to many websites before ultimately landing at Dread Central in 2016. One of the top horror outlets on the planet, Millican served as Editor-in-Chief from 2019 through 2021. His talk show Chronic Horror (sidelined by the Pandemic) explored the intersection of horror movie fandom and cannabis culture. Follow him on Twitter at @josh_millican.
Encyclopocalypse published Millican’s debut horror novel, Deeper Than Hell, in 2022. In addition to The Dreadful Years, the publisher released a sequel to Deeper Than Hell and Millican’s novelization of the 1980s cult film Forbidden Zone, written and directed by Richard Elfman. Follow Encyclopocalyse on Twitter @EnPocalypsePub