ONLY A LAD
Only a Lad is the full-length debut album by Oingo Boingo, released in 1981 following their self-titled EP. The nature of some of the songs featured on the album generated mild controversy, such as the opening track “Little Girls”, of which the music video was banned in Canada. On songs such as “Little Girls” and “Capitalism”, Elfman has since stated that his intentions were to write in jest from the perspective of various disreputable characters, adding he was “out to offend everybody”. (More from Wikipedia)
Sometimes rock musicians go into an entirely different line of work: Danny Elfman for instance has become one of the leading writers of Hollywood movie scores. Beginning in the early 1970’s and through the mid-1990’s, he was also the front man for the quirky band Oingo Boingo. Only a Lad, their first full-length album came out in 1981 and is the one that I have; the title song, “Only a Lad” was a minor hit. That cover is a real hoot; it is a heavily redecorated Norman Rockwell painting that was used as the cover shot for one edition of the Boy Scout Handbook. The original was drawn on a completely white background, so that is why the “jaunty lad” (as National Geographic magazine described the original painting) is up in the clouds in Oingo Boingo’s reimagining.
(September 2012)
