Most of our inspiration comes from the novelty music of the 20's -40's performed by the likes of Spike Jones, the Hoosier Hotshots, the Korn Kobblers, and any one else who played a bike horn or a cow bell in time with the music. More importantly they all realized the importance of unusual instrumentation played with a warped sense of humor and honed musicianship. This is a big difference between these older pre-rock Novelty songs and later ones which most typically took a standard tune and added dopey lyrics to it.
There are also countless other "hot jazz" groups of the 20's and 30's lay the ground work for may of our basic stylings and accents.
This was also a time of some of the great stars of klezmer such as Dave Tarras who themselves fused the old-world tradition with the "new" sound of jazz. A generation later Mickey Katz would come out of this klezmer tradition and warp it into true novelty schmaltz. Although Raymond Scott never considered his music "novelty", because of its subsequent use in too many animated films to count it is forever remembered as "cartoon music". Unlike Scott's disdain for this use of his music we find it incredibly appropriate, perhaps because we were encultured into it that way. A growing interests in turn of the century marches and rags find us going further and further back to the dawn of recorded sound for source material and inspiration.
On the opposite end of the spectrum contemporary music such as that of the Tiger Lillies and much of Tom Waits captures that's seductive slimy feel of dark perverted humor, something they didn't teach you in Clown School but you could smell it in the closet and basement... but I digress.