356: Camp Comedy Cash-In Records

When I posted about the 1966 single, “Boy Wonder I Love You”, I wondered as to whether people picked up on the odd suggestion of rabid homosexual fannishness it proposes at one point.

Well here some other records from the same period that go a lot further
What both the LP “These are The Hits, You Silly Savage!” and the single “Kay, Why?” are capitalising on is the new trend for camp humour on both sides of the Atlantic, growing throughout 1965 – 1966. Before 1965 camp comedy meant a humorous incident that took place in the army, the scouts or at little league (although this quote from a review of Kenneth Williams by Ken Tynan from April 1961 may or may not have been titivated for collection in 1967, but is proof that camp had a refuge in the theatre all along). What it’s also worth pointing out is that for some time tv and film critics and audiences were ambivalent, not entirely sure who camp humour was aimed at. Is it something that mainstream audiences can participate in, merely the latest exploitation, or is there still some secret homo code that deliberately excludes the uninitiated? Straight audiences in the UK enjoyed “Julian and Sandy”, not necessarily aware of how gay all the Polari words were. Contemporary reviews of the film of “The Loved One” were often unsure as to whether the film was pandering to a gay in-crowd or was intended for a mainstream audience. But judging from audience reaction, by late 1966, suggestions of homosexuality and “camp” were enough to get big comic rewards. At this time Alan Bennett can get a big laugh from his sophisticated BBC2 audience just by acknowledging the word “Camp”, let alone camping it up, and radio show “I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again” gets showstopping guffaws from a few camp mannerisms and puns, because presenting camp characters is the cutting edge of humour.


“These are The Hits, You Silly Savage!” by Teddy and Darrel
from Mira, a LA-based studio
Dec 1966/Jan 1967?

If you really, really want, you can listen to the tracks here:
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2005/11/the_hits_of_196.html

“Teddy and Darrel” were Theodore Charach and Darrell Dee. Theodore Charach appears as the narrator and one of the characters in the 1967 documentary “Mondo Hollywood” 1967. This may or may not be related to the fact that the film was music directed by Mike Curb, who was also the producer of this LP. Besides narrating, Charach also performs various novelty horror songs in the film, after openly admitting that he’s looking for a schtick (which I think explains “These are The Hits, You Silly Savage”). Charach would appear to have a natural thick-tongued lisp (a la Percy Dovetonsils), and an overly dramatic declamatory manner, so camping it up on this LP only requires so much effort.

To put any amount of effort into producing any LP would suggest those involved think they have some commercial possibility, that this campness is something au courant to which they can hitch their delusional wagon. It’s all put on in such a way that it’s more of a novelty intended for a straight audience.
When I describe this album of consisting of a load of lisping, purring, and camping through a selection of recent hits, with additional comments, and the occasional thrown in rough-trade appreciation, then it’s exactly what you think it’s going to be. In practical terms, camping it up means Charach doesn’t even have to try to sing, just camply speak his way through the lyrics in a slightly high sissy voice with impromptu side comments. When he’s really camping it up I think he sounds more like Peter Lorre having a psychotic fit (hence possibly the attempt at horror novelty songs). Those songs which have become gay bar standards get the best results, so you can at least give Teddy and Darrel some credit for spotting potential this early on. Unusual, is that in the last track, “Hold On, I’m Coming” degenerates into a sequence of groaning and panting predating “Je t’aime” by a couple of years, and a final acknowledgement of the sexual component which has been only semi-suppressed through out this entire enterprise since unlike the English there’s not much actual innuendo or double-entendre.
“Silly” has been a word with unmanly connotations in America for a very long time. “Savage” too when used in a camp manner seems to crop up repeatedly. So “Silly Savage” gets reused a couple of years later as a band name by “Ben Gay & The Silly Savages”, 1973


1967 – “Kay, Why?” single by The Brothers Butch


This novelty I suspect is intended more for a gay audience. Well, how much is a straight audience willing to listen to a song which is a sequence of hardly disguised allusions to the practicals of sodomy?
“Kay, Why?”, yep, as the cover makes clear, alludes to KY Jelly, and then a lyrics which include “you made a mess/ slip through my fingers/ little squeeze / come again/ get to the bottom/ can’t get through”. Choruses of camp oohing. Just prior to piano solo, there’s a spoken part where encouragement sounds more like someone like sexually coaching a virgin – with the follow-up “Didn’t hurt a bit, did it?”
It's some escalation on the genial world of “Julian and Sandy”, more of an unacknowledged precursor to the single-entendres of Julian Clary.
Comparing these bitching, passive-aggressive London queens to Julian and Sandy, I think they sound more like Mick Jagger actually


Oh, and during a Christmas episode broadcast on 25 December 1967 The Monkees highlight the phrase “gay apparel” with a flash of limp wrists during a performance “Deck the Halls”. No laughter but then to highlight it too much, might have been to alert Network Standards.

345: Burt Ward - Boy Wonder I Love You

Vocals: Burt Ward
Arranged by Frank Zappa
November 1966

This single dates from a few months after the release of Zappa’s first album “Freak Out” in 1966. In its own way "Boy Wonder I Love You" explores some of the same territory as Zappa’s early album, criticising the cheesy commercial popular culture teenagers are expected to buy into because of their exploited nascent sexuality. The sound effects are typical of Zappa and that slightly stressed repetitive “I will” passage is like bits from his other early albums.
Apparently this is a composite of real fan letters.
And if it weren’t for what happens at about the 1 minute, 30 second mark I wouldn’t be posting it here. The letter suddenly gets a little more intense in its declarations of devotion and invitations for the Boy Wonder to come visit. Suddenly there’s the qualifier, “I hope you know this is a girl writing”, which rather than comforting, raises the previously unconsidered possibility that it might be a man writing such a passionate letter. Apparently this suggestive passage (although not the hints of homosexuality) got the single pulled from some radio stations.

For more than you’d care to know about this single:
http://globalia.net/donlope/fz/related/Burt_Ward.html

I’m certain Burt Ward says “man mail”, but I suspect it’s just a slip of the tongue for “fan mail”.

278: Bonzo Dog Band - Trouser Press

(Disregard the images in the video)
“Trouser Press” by Roger Ruskin Spear
From "The Doughnut In Granny's Greenhouse" (1968) by The Bonzo Dog Band

The Bonzo Dog Band were one of the delights of my late teens. (Balls to U2 and INXS. So very heartfelt, and so very loud: Woah, woah, feelings, with the amp turned to eleven). Intelligent nonsense and parody will always win over turgid rock n’roll sincerity, in my book. (My book is ‘Ulysses’, if you must know.) Every one of their records (five in 1969 -1972) is just crammed with gags, throwaway weird effects, songs that demolish whole genres of music. There’s so much happening in just this one silly little song. However, it’s the spoken word bits which must attract our attention today.

One, two, three, kick!
Come on everybody, clap your hands
Ooooh, you're looking good
Are you having a good time? I sure am
Do you like soul music?
Well, do the Trouser Press, baby!
You’re so savage, Roger!
Ecstasy, Bruce, ecstasy!

This rather effeminate camping about is in contrast to the raucous noise of the main part of the song. These bits are spoken by Joel Druckman, a temporary member of the Bonzos. He was also American, which may go a little way to explaining “Ecstasy, Bruce, ecstasy”, since as I’ve pointed out on several occasions Americans will not be dissuaded that “Bruce” is an innately Gay name. "You're so savage" also seems to be a 1960s West-coast gay stereotype too. The Bonzos weren’t averse to little liner note gags about “Hairstyles by Maison Poov”.
Viv Stanshall’s early performances made for a decidedly camp stage presence, posing on stage in attitudes which don’t just grab your attention but hold it hostage (he had studied under Lindsay Kemp), essaying assorted upperclass drawls. Vide his rather fey Elvis impression when performing “Death Cab for Cutie” on the Beatles’s film of “Magical Mystery Tour”
While I must go and try figure out everything that’s happening in “Rusty (Champion Thrust)” – “Marty and Frank were just full of this Gay Front. They just wouldn’t stop talking about it. What’s with this Gay Front? I mean I only just got the front painted up. Jezuz, aint that gay enough?”

272: Fag Rock 7 - Alice Bowie

“Alice Bowie”

Starts at 2:00

From “Cheech and Chong’s Wedding Album” (1974)
Written by Tommy Chong, Gaye DeLorme, and Richard Moore

My momma talkin' to me tryin' to tell me how to live
But I don't listen to her 'cause my head is like a sieve
My daddy, he disowned me 'cause I wear my sister's clothes
He caught me in the bathroom with a pair of pantyhose

My basketball coach, he done kicked me off the team
For wearin' high-heel sneakers and actin' like a queen

The world's comin' to an end, I don't even care
As long as I can have a limo and my orange hair
And it don't bother me if people think I'm "funny"
'Cause I'm a big rock star and I'm makin' lots of money
money, money, money, money, money, money



Musically, this is probably the most ambitious of the various parodies.
As an actual performance on stage, it’s pretty bloody groanworthy, if not outright abysmal.
Putting on a pink tutu and pratting about on the stage like a bad Chuck Berry has little to do with the original song, and is not a terribly ambitious means of eliciting laughs. Baahhh.
God forbid, but this even gets its own Wikipedia entry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earache_My_Eye

268: Fag Rock 3 - The Goodies

The Goodies
“Superstar”, 7 July 1973
Written by Bill Odie and Graeme Garden, with Tim Brooke-Taylor
“I don’t want your love” by Bill Oddie and Michael Gibbs

Barbara Mitchell as "Isabel Chintz"
John Peel as Jimmy Saville, the host of "Top of the Pops"

The Goodie’s comic satire of the contemporary music business. The first half isn’t germane to my purpose. Watch it if you like, I’m not the boss of you, see if I care, but you won’t get credit either way. The basic set-up is that The Goodies decide that popular music is becoming too sexual. The upshot of assorted auditions is that only Bill gets signed to an agent. The agent establishes Bill’s image as a virile famous pop star called “Randy Pandy” (a pun on the children’s character Andy Pandy, and the word randy, meaning horny). Fearing that the British public maybe in danger of getting bored with him, she decides he needs an image change, and that he will play the lead in a new rock musical, “St Augustine Superstar”.

ISABEL: You are gonna star in a new rock musical. And this is it: Saint Augustine - Superstar.
TBT: That sounds rather nice.
ISABEL: Don't you believe it. He's Saint Augustine.
TBT (horrified): Him!
ISABEL: Oh yes yes yes. He's pure, he's good and he's holy, but above all he's unbearably sexy.
TBT: No he's not.
BO: Yes he is!
TBT: Not.
ISABEL: He's got all the girls screaming for him...
BO: Yes! Yes!
ISABEL: So what does he do?
ISABEL: He goes into a monastery.
TBT, GG & BO: He WHAT?!
ISABEL: Yes, along with all the fellas, you see what I mean?
(She nudges Tim suggestively.)
GG: Oh, come off it. Saint Augustine wasn't a.... nancy.
ISABEL: He is in here. To an extent.
TBT: How much of an extent?
ISABEL: A large extent.
BO: Yeah, yeah, but what about me groupies, miss? I don't want...
ISABEL: Oh, don't worry, hun. This way you get everybody going for you. See, the butch fellas like you 'cause you're not after their sheilas, the sheilas like you 'cause they want to convert you, and you even score in the twilight zone.


Starts at 1:55


So in this parody, glam rock isn’t about sexual liberation, it’s only calculatedly marketing sexual ambivalence for commercial reasons. While you can make some sort of argument that there is a degree of social comment in all this about music and sexuality - that the music titillates its audience of young girls under cover of gay insinuations - really, it’s an opportunity to make jokes about behaving camply. Which is the major problem with many of The Goodies’ attempts at satire - their idea of what is funny is too similar to what the audience for an ITV sitcom would also find funny. It doesn’t go against the grain enough, and so as time moved on, The Goodies got left behind. Hell, we’re only watching it for historical reasons. Earlier in the same episode there are jokes about money-grubbing Jewish lawyers with comically large noses. It’s all that sort of level. In the same way, later on, it’s funny to call someone a “Superpoof”, but for somebody to think you’re a poof is deeply annoying, and hence also funny. Camp men showing their attraction is also amusing. Between the three different gays played by Tim, Graeme, and Bill, you get them dressed up in leather, furs, and shiny materials. And the need to put on gruff voices, and prove you’re not really poofs.
You also get a parody of “Jesus Christ Superstar”, the film version of which had come out only a couple of months earlier the same year. It’s more a parody of the “Top of the Pops” than the musical. So here’s Bill in outrageous costume, pouting, pawing with his limp wrist, skipping about on the stage, and then stripping down to his undergarments. The Mincing Monks are neither subtle as a joke nor as a performance (though they are played by The Fred Tomlinson Singers, for Monty Python trivia fans).
Youtube is not the finest medium, and so I can’t tell whether the final joke of Tim and Graeme, still dressed as gay men, being chased off by police and sailors, is because the mob fancies them, or because they want to beat them up in frustration and disgust.
There may be little bits cut out of this. Apparently the Australians censored this quite heavily. Gay jokes were not popular in Australia in the mid-70s. When Dick Emery went on tour, some parts of the Australian media said he was disgusting for playing a homosexual.

155: Village People parody

Saturday Night Live 14 April 1979
(transcript from http://snltranscripts.jt.org/78/78qrock.phtml)

[Pop music impresario Don Kirshner (Paul Shaffer) sits in a TV control room, woodenly reading off cue cards, addressing the camera.]

Don Kirshner:
I'm Don Kirshner and welcome to Rock Concert. I first met the Village Persons two years ago when their lead singer, Lyle Manning, provided the floral arrangements for my daughter Karen's bas mitzvah. Today, thanks to the brilliant disco production of Giorgio Morali and to their manager Maury Mineo, they have become a vibrant force in the music industry. Now, to introduce them from the perspective of a young person who can enjoy their music without understanding its homosexual connotations, here is my daughter, Karen Kirshner.

[Applause for Karen Kirshner (Gilda Radner) who enters and sits next to Don -- she, too, reads the cue cards woodenly, sounding exactly like her father.]

Karen Kirshner:
I first saw the Village Persons perform at L.A.'s famed Roxy Theater where they debuted their hit single "Health Club Man." Tonight, thanks to my good friend Herb Karp at Polysutra Records, they're here to perform their new hit, "Bend Over, Chuck Berry." Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome The Village Persons.

[Applause. Disco music begins. Dissolve to a mirrored chandelier and pan down to reveal a glittering disco set where the Village Persons gyrate to the beat: a native American Indian in full tribal regalia (John Belushi), a construction worker (Bill Murray), a biker in leather with a thick mustache (Dan Aykroyd), a sailor, a cowboy and the wildly intense, energetic lead singer, a uniformed cop (Garrett Morris).]

The Village Persons:
Bend over ... Bend over and over
Bend over and over and over
Bend over and over and over

Cop:
I went down to the disco to make it with my local deejay
Well, he looks so good in leather and he knows which records to play
Well, I walked right up to him but I didn't know what to say
Uh huh!
Well, he told me he was macho and he worked out down at the gym
Ha ha! Yeah!

The Village Persons:
Bend over, over and over

Cop:
I said, hey, look, you're the boss and the turntable started to spin

The Village Persons:
Bend over, over and over

Cop:
And before too long I was really gettin' in to him

The Village Persons:
Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho!
Bend over, Chuck Berry
Put your guitar away
'Cause they're playin' disco music
From New York to L.A.

Cop:
Not to mention Philadelphia, P-A.

The Village Persons:
Take a look around you
There's no more rock and roll today
So bend over, Chuck Berry
Disco is here to stay

The Village Persons: [posing provocatively]
Bend over ... Bend over and over
Bend over and over and over

Cop:
... Yeah!
So the next time you're lonely and you're crawling on your hands and knees

The Village Persons:
Bend over, over and over

Cop:
And you're checkin' out each young man to find out where he wears his keys

The Village Persons:
Bend over, over and over

Cop:
Come on down to the disco where the deejays aim to please

The Village Persons:
Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!
Bend over, Chuck Berry
Put your guitar away
'Cause they're playin' disco music
From New York to L.A.

Cop:
The places goin' down in 'Frisco Bay.

The Village Persons:
Take a look around you
There's no more rock and roll today

Cop:
Do you hear me, man? Bend over!

The Village Persons:
So bend over, Chuck Berry

Cop:
What would Little Richard say?

The Village Persons:
Hey!

[Song ends. Dancers stop. Applause.]

----------------------------------------

Saturday Night Live has always parodied new trends, and so from its heyday, here’s a pastiche of the Village people. The Village People have been the ubiquitous, maybe even archetypal out-gay stereotype (the leather cop in particular) for clueless sods for almost the last 30 years. See how it’s taken just 10 years for gays to go from being weird unsexual transvestites to growling hairy clones. That straights keep dragging up the leather cop image for comedy reasons gives you some idea as to how hard this hits a nerve about homosexual sex. But anyway, here we have a parody of the Village People from when they first fresh and new.

However, given the background of these performers and writers this sketch is acting out some fundamental assumptions about the importance of popular music in the lives of this particular generation. The careers of these writers and performers take in either the early ‘70s Woodstock parody “Lemmings” or else “The Blues Brothers”. If these people lived a rock n’roll lifestyle, then it was because rock n’roll was part of their cultural DNA. The promotion of rock n’ roll was a crowning part of their generation’s cultural achievements. Furthermore, rock n’roll is unremittingly heterosexual, and had become a young person’s music of choice to get laid to. Disgust about disco being “fag music” is really petulant irritation from a lot of straights who are suddenly find they’re not where the sexual action is. That the Village People seemed to be promoting and attracting a particular gay aesthetic only confirms that the order the heterosexual baby-boomers had made for themselves over the last 10-20 years was not the only story. For those who were a little older it means that they’ve got a sudden glimpse as to their irrelevance. For younger mainstream blue-collar music fans disco is an affront to their heterosexual hopes and assumptions. Watching documentary footage of rock fans torching disco records in “Last Days of Disco” can give you some idea as to the extent of their outrage.

So therefore in this parody, you not only have the performers ridiculing disco, but also heralding the possible death of straight music. If Chuck Berry introduced rock n’roll with “Roll over Beethoven” then here the SNL stars can lament the death of rock n’roll with the image of Chuck Berry being sodomised by disco, as the Village Persons also sing about the easy availability of gay sex. That disco music was about gay men and sex can’t be denied. But the typical straight boy trick of deriding something they don’t like as “gay” or “faggy” is suddenly undermined by the fact that the matter under scrutiny unabashedly proclaims its gayness. All that these satirists can do is outrageously emphasise the homosexual overtones, demonstrating how this music can never hope to appeal to the bland tastes of mainstream music-buying America, hence the intro by the unhip Kershners. All they can do is try to make homosexual expression and need for sex funny. And it is the fact that it has been a taboo until recently but is now broadcast on national television that makes it outrageously funny to most of the audience. These are fag jokes that your uncle would never make, so be hip with us is the invitation of SNL.

The sudden final reference to Little Richard is because he has always been surrounded by gay rumours.

117: "Big Bruce"

“Big Bruce” (M. Vickery, D. Tyson, Bud. Reneau-Bill Stith).
Sung by Steve Greenberg.
Atlantic 1969

SPOKEN: The folk history of America is the history of its heroes. Big working men like John Henry, Paul Bunyan and Big Bad John. But today, I’d like to introduce a new folk hero. He didn’t work in a mine, or in a railroad, or any of those strenuous occupations. He worked in a beauty salon, and his name was Bruce...

Well, every day at the salon, you can see him arrive
He stood six-foot-six, weighed one-oh-five
He's kinda narrow at the shoulders, narrow in the hips
With a curl in his hair and a smile on his lips
Big Bruce
Big Bad Bruce

No one seemed to know where Bruce came from
He kinda swished into town and stayed all alone
Never said much, kind of quiet and shy
And when he spoke at all, it was just to say “Hi!”
Big Bruce
Big Bad Bruce

Same say he came from New Orleans
Where he had a social group called The Cajun Queens
Some say Hollywood or Beverly Hills
Where he got arrested for passing three-dollar bills
That’s Bruce

Then came the day of that terrible fire
Something went wrong in the #5 dryer
Into the chaos of those matronly caves
Went Big Bad Bruce, just a-fannin’ the flames
Big Bruce
Big Bad Brucie-Wucie

Well, the flames grew higher and the fire got worse
And someone heard Brucie cry, “Mercy, I forgot my purse!”
Into the fire with a squeal and a shout
We waited an hour, but he never came out
Poor Bruce
Poor old Bruce

Where that salon once stood is a grocery store
But his name will live for evermore
In the annals of time
And in the Hall of Fame
As a gay young cat who went down in flames
Big Bruce

You might say this is a big kind of fairy tale

--------------------------------------

This is a parody of Jimmy Dean's "Big Bad John". This is a slightly rewritten cover of “Big Bruce” by The Country Gentlemen (Rebel 263, 1966). This version charted on the Billboard Chart at #97, July of 1969.

Not a gay cowboy song. Rather the joke here is the transposition of a gay scenario –hairdressers and their big city homosexual milieus (which we might recognise from #89: The Pied Piper of Burbank) – into a country ballad. In this there is of course implicit critique between the masculine he-men of the west, and even the typical macho western singer's drawl, and the effeminate fashion gay.
This also has significance because it is an early instance of Americans getting somewhat worked up in their belief that “Bruce” is a very gay name indeed.

While trying to find out more about "The Ballad of Ben Gay" and "Big Bruce" I found this Queer Music Heritage website which has an exhaustive history of gay cowboy songs:

http://www.queermusicheritage.us/apr2005a.html
http://www.queermusicheritage.us/apr2005as.html

116: The Ballad of Ben Gay

The Ballad Of Ben Gay, 1973
written by Darrel Gulland & Edd McNeely
performed by Ben Gay & The Silly Savages
Elm Records, 1973. GNP Crescendo, 1974.

Hi, I'm Ben Gay.
I'd like to dedicate this song to Wayne and Bruce
and all my friends at the Chartreuse Moose
One, two, buckle your shoe!
OK boys. Lets slap it from the bottom.

Born to be a cowboy,
That's what I try to be.
Wanted to be a cowboy,
But they poked fun at me!
Dreamed of riding horses,
Roping and herding cattle;
Oh how those brutes terrorised me
when they saw my velvet saddle.
(Can I help it if my skin's delicate?)

I tried to be a wrangler
Really and truly I tried
But after this experience
I'll stick to pony rides
You should've seen the way they looked,
Their faces all turned pale,
Each time I took my brush out
and ratted my horse's tail
(I though it looked just dahlin'!)

OK boys. Play the bridge
(Bridge)
Not that kind of bridge, you silly savages
You want Ben Gay all over you?

A cowboy's life is not for me,
in fact it was a curse.
Want to know why I gave up
They took away my purse
Now my wrangling days are over
But I can honestly say
Whoever heard of a cowboy
named Hopalong Ben Gay
(I don't know why they took my purse.
They have saddle bags, don't they?)

If you want to be a wrangler
Take Ben's advice. Hang Loose!
Come see old Wayne and me
we'll be at the Chartreuse Moose
Fix you up. Whatever!?
They laughed at me when I ripped my panty hose pulling them on over my spurs!

------------------------------

An American song to balance off the contemporaneous English parody by Bill Oddie. A deliberately fey, and lispy flirty voice for this one. And the joke being the delicate, fashion-obsessed sissy gay transposed into a cowboy environment, and then this gay cowboy doesn’t realise why it is that he’s being picked upon. This was sufficiently popular that it was re-released by a larger label.

115: The Goodies - "A Cactus in My Y-Fronts"

“The Goodies – Almost Live”, 2 November 1976

Starts at 6.10

“The Midnight Cow Person” – Tim Brooke-Taylor

Another gay cowboy joke. “Midnight Cowperson” with its pre-Politcally Correct phrasing is a reference to the film “Midnight Cowboy”, in which Jon Voight played a hustler who make occasional forays into homosexuality.

This was originally performed on the 11 November 1973 episode of “I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again”. It was sung by its writer Bill Oddie (the short bearded one). That version has shtick missing from this, where cowboy yodelling becomes a chorus of camp “Ooooohs!”

The song is torn between two different sets of gay clichés and just silly jokes about sitting on a prickly pear and animal gags. The pear/ bottom gags, one could possibly see as deferring any real gags about sodomy or sexual interest. Its all about a comic painful incident rather than any real suggestion of S&M. The frilly pink comical cowboy outfit is slightly at odds with all the fetish gear mentioned in this song, but that’s just one of those confusions which comedy writers in the 70s have difficulty coming to grips with. Predatory or pouffy?

-----------------

My name is Two Gun Pierre
I wear rose buds in my hair
And a chi-chi pink bandanna round my neck

I came down from Tennessee
With a cowboy on my knee
And a pair of leather chaps around my legs ... hold on boys!

I was down in Cripple Creek
I was dying for a leak
So I dropped my pants behind a cactus there

When I fastened up my belt
I can't tell ya how I felt
But I knew the meaning of a prickly pear ... ouch!!

Oh I've got a cactus in my y-fronts and a vulture round my head
I've just been kissed by a Tennessee miss and I wish that I were dead
I've a jockstrap made of leather and pants of PVC (ee - ee - ee - ee - ee - ee)
The cactus in my y-fronts make a loser out of me!

In Californ - i - a
Where the rustlers are so gay
I bought a gentle gee-gee name of Jacques

But he livened up a lot
When he felt my prickly spot
And that buckin' bronco broke my buckin' back!

So I walked up to Nevada
Where the gals try so much harder
And I met a beefy belle called Caroline

But when she felt my prickles
She cried "Oh Lord, that tickles!"
And now she's run off with a porcupine

Oh I've got a cactus in my y-fronts and a vulture round my head
I've just been kissed by a Tennessee miss and I wish that I were dead
Do you like my high heeled horseshoes, I got them from Paree (ee - ee - ee - ee - ee - ee)
The cactus in my y-fronts make a loser out of me!

Oh I've got a cactus in my y-fronts and a vulture round my head
I've just been kissed by a Tennessee miss and I wish that I were dead
I've got sequins on my saddle and I smell like a jasmine tree (ee - ee - ee - ee - ee - ee)
The cactus in my y-fronts make a loser out of me!

Well I'll be hornswaggled! What are you gonna be?!

37 - Frank Zappa: Bobby Brown Goes Down

From “Sheik Yerbouti”, 1979

Again, here’s another instance of what tries to be a string of coarse gags. When you try to tie them all together they contradict each other though and it all becomes rather scurrilous nonsense instead.
This song has the dubious honour of being one of Zappa’s biggest hits. Because of its lush melody, this song went on to become a #1 hit in Scandinavia. Teens apparently remained ignorant of its crass sadomasochistic content as they danced and romanced at the disco. Zappa would probably argue that the whole point of the exercise is to exploit the tension between sentimental musical hypocrisy, which promotes one false set of societal stereotypes, and this gross social reportage.
A few defences by Zappa critics:

“Bobby Brown” is part of Zappa's politically dubious speculation that women's liberation has turned men gay as they find career women 'would be like fucking a slightly more voluptuous version of somebody's father', as Harry-as-a-Boy puts it in Thing-Fish. The historical actuality is that the rise of feminism has given the opportunity for all kinds of repressed sexual minorities to voice their identities. However, all considerations of fairness are swept aside in an outpouring of scandalous couplets over a lush, vibrant melody. It does not matter what Zappa actually believes - in The Real Frank Zappa Book he talks some half-baked nonsense about the duty of American citizens to breed the next generation - because of his ability to foment all the taboo areas in a single song.
– “Frank Zappa: the Negative Dialectics of poodle Play” by Ben Watson, 1994

"Bobby Brown Goes Down" is a disputable bit of social commentary about sexual confusion that would probably have fit perfectly on Lather. While some have called this song anti-gay, it's not an indictment of homosexuality, but a blatant attack on careerism. Bobby Brown is a preppy, privileged guy who thinks he's "the cutest boy in town”.' He drives a fast car and dresses sharp and acts cool. He gets the attention of all the cheerleaders. Bobby Brown has a simple outlook on his life that could have been shaped by the white-bread values of the '50s. But it's not the '50s anymore - it's the '70s. The emergence of feminism and gay rights has overturned the dominant social order. The road to wealth and power is no longer a sure thing, and Bobby Brown's dreams of getting ahead end up, instead, with him helplessly giving head. His first encounter with a lesbian leaves him desperately unsure of his masculinity. Suddenly, Bobby Brown's means to achieving success come from acts he finds degrading ("I can take about an hour on the tower of power/'Long as I get a little golden shower"). Zappa is saying that Bobby Brown's hyper-aggressive masculinity ("I tell all the girls they can kiss my heinie") was just a cover for his submissive personality ("With a spindle up my butt till it makes me scream/An' I'll do anything to get ahead"). Rather than being a smug assault on homosexuality, Zappa's song confronts our culture's masculine ideals:
When the band performed the song during the 1984 tour, lead vocalist Ike Willis inserted a "Hi-ho, Silver!" partway through. This reference to the Lone Ranger, which cracked up Zappa to the degree that he could barely sing, was an observant bit of improvisation. It came from Lenny Bruce's classic routine "The Lone Ranger;' a satiric jab at the personification of masculine ideals in our heroes. Bruce suggested that once the Lone Ranger doubted his powers, he revealed a submissive side. This leads the townsfolk to speculate that "the Masked Man's a fag!"
– “Dangerous kitchen: The Subversive World of Zappa” by Kevin Courrier, 2002

"Sheik Yerbouti" includes several controversial songs, including “Bobby Brown Goes Down” and “Jewish Princess”. The former was attacked by gay rights groups for being homophobic, and by feminists for being sexist. It was both, but Zappa naively believed that if you parodied something, that made whatever you said all right. The song is about Bobby Brown, a college jock who sleeps with a 'dyke' called Freddie. She has been influenced by the women's liberation movement, which is 'creeping all across the nation' like a plague. This encounter turns Bobby into a homosexual and, as this is a Zappa song, he gets into S&M, so that Zappa can sing gleefully about the 'tower of power'. It is basically one of Zappa’s schoolyard get togethers with all the little boys saying dirty words
– “Frank Zappa” by Barry Miles, 2004