POP REVIEWS : Pumped-Up Oingo

The (rain) gods must be crazy--or maybe just big Oingo Boingo fans. Saturday’s showers stopped just before the L.A. band’s Halloween extravaganza that evening at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre. And Boingo had barely finished its encores when it began sprinkling again. Maybe the guy who looked exactly like the Pope tooling around the Amphitheatre before show time in a makeshift Popemobile confused those rain gods just enough to help keep the proceedings dry.

Pseudo-papal procession notwithstanding, the real show began when Oingo Boingo hit the stage and eased into the mid-tempo “Dead Man’s Party.” The tune’s lyrics made it an appropriate opener, and the fact that OB kicked off the set with a relatively slow selection was emblematic of the octet’s ongoing musical development.

But whether the music was fast or slow, old or new, the capacity crowd was on its feet the entire evening. And those feet were being put to good use, especially when Boingo strung together its hyperactive dance tunes--all loaded with clipped notes and Danny Elfman’s pumped-up Chick Hearn vocals. It was the farthest thing possible from a “Dead Man’s Party.”