Grapthar's Song of the Day: Oingo Boingo - 'Only a Lad'

of the last few days, as I was listening to Oingo Boingo in the car today, and figured they'd be an excellent choice for today's tune. The group was originally formed in 1972 by Richard Elfman under the name The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo as a performance art/theatre troupe. Richard's brother Danny joined the band in 1974, and by 1979, had become the band's leader, turning the group into a full on rock band, though the experimental weirdness still remained. Although they're often classified as 'new-wave', Elfman incorporated lots of musical ideas from nearly every genre, and experimented with really interesting and strange instrumentation and arrangements. If you are a fan of his movie and TV soundtracks, you can hear a lot of those elements in Oingo Boingo as they were slowly coming to fruition. The group's direction was altered again in the '90s, taking a more alt-rock approach, and going by the name Boingo, before breaking up in 1995.

Only a Lad, which is personally my favorite album from the group. It is definitely the weirdest, and most genre bending. The albums that followed are great, but seemed to fit within the new-wave genre a bit more solidly. On this release, Elfman shows off his incredible writing skills; though the songs are often poppy, with catchy choruses, he incorporates some really complex, interesting harmonic and rhythmic ideas. From the beginning of this song, you can hear these things; the song starts out with the main guitar riff, which is accented by sudden drum and bass hits, which come on really strange upbeats, giving it a strange, off-kilter sort of feeling. When they move into the verses, the chromatic guitar line continues, with a more solid, straight-forward beat underneath, before getting to the super catchy, poppy pre-Chorus and Choruses. However, when the break comes around, the band again utilizes some weird ideas, this time, chopping up that main guitar riff, and filling in the gaps with completely new progressions. If you play guitar, I recommend learning this song. It's SUPER fun to play, and a great exercise in creating interesting rhythms in what is a very standard, straight-forward meter.