It was a busy day inside singer-songwriter and composer Danny Elfman’s recording studio, which is tucked away among industrial-style warehouses in Los Angeles. He and his band gathered earlier this month to rehearse for the forthcoming back-to-back “From Boingo to Batman to Big Mess and Beyond!” shows scheduled for North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre in Chula Vista on Thursday, Aug. 3 and FivePoint Amphitheatre in Irvine on Saturday, Aug. 5.
The show, which was originally created for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio in 2020, had been postponed until Coachella 2022. But it played off well during both weekends of the festival that year, delighting fans who witnessed Elfman take the stage and perform a handful of songs from his band Oingo Boingo, several cuts from his 2021 double album “Big Mess,” and familiar pieces of orchestral music from films he’s scored including “Alice in Wonderland,” “Batman,” “Edward Scissorhands” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
“While I was putting the show together for Coachella I thought, ‘This was the worst idea I’ve ever had in my life,’” Elfman said sitting inside his studio, noting that it’s a huge, fast-moving show with about 50 musicians — including a full rock band, orchestra and choir — who all need to be and stay on the same page for the duration of the set. After receiving such a positive response at Coachella, he decided to do an extended version of that show and bring it to the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles for two evenings last October. For the pair of upcoming shows, he said the setlist is basically the same as the L.A. gigs, but they’re fleshing out a little extra surprise for those that come out this summer.
The shows will also include two new band members as Nine Inch Nails guitarist Robin Finck swaps places with Limp Bizkit’s Wes Borland and Nine Inch Nails drummer Ilan Rubin replaces Josh Freese. Finck was in the original band back in 2020,…
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