Boys Don't Cry ... the band

Quick post today before I get to a long day of Annoying Stuff I Have To Do:

From VH1 Classic this morning, one of those songs that I hadn't thought about in 15 years or so but can recite from memory upon hearing the first bit. It's Boys Don't Cry's I Wanna Be a Cowboy.

If, like me, you had repressed all memory of this campy drum-machine, spoken-word hit and its preposterous fantasy video, take a look ...



You can also see it at the keyboardist's site.

It's such a random song that I'll have to go with random observations:

1. I guess the main difference between seeing this at age 16 and seeing at age 30... (cough) ... is that I now see a cowboy-themed video and immediately start looking for gay subtext. I'm not sure they get any closer than "Camping on the prairie / Plays havoc with my hair." Today, I guess we'd call that metrosexual subtext.

2. I like the way the woman in the video smiles even as she yells "help!" A lesser actress would have made it seem more like an actual hostage situation and less like a bit of silly -- possibly kinky -- fun.

3. Lemmy is in this video. Let me repeat ... Lemmy. The guy from Motorhead who strums his bass like a guitar and spits out Ace of Spades plays the bad guy. As Butt-head said, "He's Lemmy. He can be in any damn video he wants to."

4. Boys Don't Cry's Wikipedia entry currently makes this claim: "The song has been described as the perfect musical realization of a spaghetti western movie." By whom?

5. Also from Wikipedia: One guy worked with a couple of Yes-sters, including Jon Anderson, and two guys sued Paula Cole over Where Have All the Cowboys Gone? I'd have sued her over I Don't Want to Wait for attempting to refashion grammar in own image (it's "say a little prayer for ME," Miss Precious). Rolling Stone, though, says it wasn't Cole's fault.

6. Oh, they also sued Kid Rock. No word on whether they sued Jerry Seinfeld for saying "I don't wanna be a pirate!"

7. The lead singer remade the song a decade and change later.

This was followed by the Rush video for Limelight, one of several from the Moving Pictures/Signals era in which someone figured they'd just run cameras while the guys were in the studio and do some fancy split-screens. And maybe splice in some shots of Geddy on stage in a cape.