O/T: Oingo Boingo - Dead Man’s Party

Hi Gene,

I'm no expert on Oingo Boingo, but I did a little digging after reading your post, as I'm a pretty big fan of this track. For one, I was surprised to learn that
apparently, "Dead Man's Party" was never released as the A-side of a 45 here in the States, but only as the commercial B-side of their single "Just Another Day". As you
pointed out, the label for that single has a listed time of 4:14.

The common 6:20 album version appeared on 1985's Dead Man's Party and was recycled on the Back to School movie soundtrack the following year. After that,
the 8+ minute Party 'Til Your Dead Mix you mentioned above was released on a 12" single with a remix of "Stay". The "Stay" 45 featured a different B-side, not "Dead Man's
Party".

The "Short Version" tacked on the Rubellan Remasters expanded release, which I haven't heard, is interesting in the sense that it doesn't appear to have ever appeared on a
promo 45 or 12". My guess is that it's probably the video version, although that is 1000% conjecture on my part as I have never heard the 4:14 45 version or the video version.
Rubellan appears to have had access to the master tapes, so one would think that the <4min. version is also official in some capacity.

Anyway, back to the facts: I found 3 CD's at Discogs that appear to contain versions that run between 4:14 and 4:19, which would seem to be the 45 B-side mix:
• Priority's Rock of the 80s Volume 6 (1993),
• Hip-O's The 80's Hit(s) Back 3 (1997), and
• MCA's Soundtrack Smashes - The 80's and More... (1990)

Hope this helps!

Edited by EternalStatic

Coming back around on this one. I was able eventually to find a copy of Rock of the '80s Vol. 6 online, which contains the 4:19 "single edit" (B-side of "Just Another Day" 45). It's a simple edit of the album version, with only one edit at about 3:14. The edit occurs during two very similar segments of the song and try as I might, in reverse engineering it from the remastered CD album version, I couldn't 100% confirm that exact edit point. What sounded best to me was cutting from the double-snare hit ("Only me...") at 3:14.08 to the similar double-snare at about 5:16.341. Ending of the 45 version is cold like the album version.

I haven't tried to reverse engineer the ~3:50 "Short Version" that seems to be the Video Version, but it is also an edit of the album version. It keeps some elements that are edited out of the 4:19 single edit, so you can't simply make further edits to the longer edit to get down to the shorter one.



Edited by EternalStatic - 25 October 2025 at 12:50pm