Gratuitious Boingo post!

So I compiled this list when I was in a very strange mood, apparently, and just found it a couple of days ago. Here are some weird, snarly, iconoclastic, misanthropic, corner-sitting, tear-it-up-and-kiss-the-shreds, snailshell songs. There is a very good reason why Oingo Boingo is my favorite band and why Danny Elfman is my favorite composer.

"Mary"
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This is the closest you will ever hear Danny Elfman get to folk music: simple guitar strumming with a huge backing orchestra. It's an apparently straightforward narrative, which is unusual for this band. Almost like a fairytale. The question, of course, is determining exactly what happened to Mary--I've heard "she got hooked on meth," "she went to a Buddhist monastery," "she got pregnant," "she had visions," "she left a religious commune to go into the real world." The answer, of course, is that whatever happened to Mary is what happened to you.
( And after a time, she became so sublime, she could look in people's eyes and read their minds )

"Why'd We Come (All This Way)"
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All this evolution stuff, was it really worth it? Despite all our apparent progress, aren't we really just monkeys with a little less hair and fancier sticks for poking termite mounds? And is this really a good thing? Should we have just backed the fuck away from that big humming monolith? Stayed in the trees?
Note the subtle ape noises in the background. I really like songs about evolution and/or monkeys.
( We still fall in love though we know better )

"Clowns of Death"
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A scathing meditation on the dynamics of weakness, the need for power, pain and manipulation, as expressed through the metaphor of evil clowns. This metaphor is far more apt than most people realize, and not just because clowns scare the bejesus out of me anyway. God, Danny, why'd you have to pick clowns?
The Danny/Tim slash comm, clowns_de_mort, is named after this song.
( And with a scream they pounce to kill and all the while they're laughing )

"Helpless"
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A wonderful auditory freak show, complete with accordian-and-calliope carnival music. Just listening to it makes me dizzy sometimes.
The lyrics are a weird mix of twisted anger and total weakness, crippled impotent rage turned sour. Danny sounds hoarse and broken and ready to give up.
( How did I end up in this little hell? )

"Burn Me Up"
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Less profound, more psychosis.
Would love to see one of those hardcore screamy punk bands do a cover of this. Danny's pretty much shrieking into the mic while the guitar's shredding everything else into little bits and the saxophone is just taunting him in the background.
( I’m exhausted, I’m committed, I’m outsmarted, I’m outwitted )

"Insanity"
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Best song ever. Gorgeous and dark and orchestral and sad and angry and twisted and beautiful and true and creepy and scary and demented. It's like "The Wall" squished into eight minutes of even more genius.
I finally managed to watch the video for this. Dolls hurting each other and little girls in dead white dresses cutting them up and apparently-institutionalized!Danny in monkey facepaint. Disturbing as fuck.
( I am a virus, are you the cure? )

"New Generation"
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This reminds me of "Transmetropolitan" so much. A lot of this is like something Spider Jerusalem would say. Except with less swearing and spitting and threatening to disrupt peoples' bowels.
That, or "Brain Candy," the "Kids in the Hall" movie, the one where everybody started taking the new super-antidepressant that made them so happy they stopped moving...yeah.
Danny sounds like he's about to cry all during this song, particularly during the monologue in the middle.
( Baptized in electronic water )

"This Vicious Cabaret" (sung by David J, written by Alan Moore)
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No, this one isn't by Danny, but it fits in with the general mood. I found it off scans_daily, where someone posted some "V for Vendetta" scans. (I really like scans_daily. Do you know how many libertarian-anarcho-paranoid superheroes there are? MORE THAN YOU THINK. The Question is only the beginning--there's Rorschach, Anarky, V, Spider Jerusalem...but I shall shut up and give you the lyrics before I get onto a rant about superheroes and fascism.
( But the backdrops peel and the sets give way and the cast gets eaten by the play )

I's difficult for me to concentrate on something that I don't really want to concentrate on for more than 5 or 10 minutes at a time, and if I take a few seconds out to type up a note for a song or an entry for statements, it's faster and less distracting overall than playing a quick game of Minesweeper or Tetris.
So since I've got a shitload of homework and little else to distract me, here's a challenge. Leave me a word or a topic and I'll go through my song library and find and post up to five songs pertaining to that topic.