"a cowboy's life is the life for me"

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what do you think is meant by this statement?

― hstencil, Friday, 16 May 2003 17:48 (twenty-two years ago)

That we blame you for this chap rash.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 16 May 2003 17:51 (twenty-two years ago)

illiterate, malnourished & sunburnt, yee-haw!

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Friday, 16 May 2003 17:55 (twenty-two years ago)

Hstencil 2: The Search for Curly's etc etc.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Friday, 16 May 2003 17:57 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.baxterblack.com/pics/baxter_black-3.jpg

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 16 May 2003 18:00 (twenty-two years ago)

It's kinda fatalistic, everything will go pear shaped coz of the dust-bowl and the rail roads.

Weren't cowboys around for like less than 10 years.

― jel -- (jel), Friday, 16 May 2003 18:01 (twenty-two years ago)

Cowboys are overrated...I'm all about the cowgirls. Even they get the blues, y'know.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Friday, 16 May 2003 18:02 (twenty-two years ago)

http://bitchcakes.topcities.com/images/cowboygareth.jpg

― Ally (mlescaut), Friday, 16 May 2003 18:04 (twenty-two years ago)

HStencil do you want a serious answer?

It means freedom--from anyone being your boss, from being stuck in the same locale, from marriage, etc.

I find the cowboy mythos totally seductive and I have little patience with those who blithely mock it. Not to say that's what you were doing Mr. Stencil.

― amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 16 May 2003 18:05 (twenty-two years ago)

I heart cowboys.

― That Girl (thatgirl), Friday, 16 May 2003 18:06 (twenty-two years ago)

cowboy mentality = going it alone.

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 16 May 2003 18:06 (twenty-two years ago)

And don't forget the rasslin baby cows with ropes and lassos and whatnot. Chicks dig that shit.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Friday, 16 May 2003 18:06 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/images/21/contents/dean_giant.jpg

::knees trembling, feeling faint::

― That Girl (thatgirl), Friday, 16 May 2003 18:07 (twenty-two years ago)

Sam, you made my day, I kiss you.

― luna (luna.c), Friday, 16 May 2003 18:08 (twenty-two years ago)

Even the recordings and footage I've seen of real grizzled old cowboys seem pretty awesome to me.

http://www.wim-wenders.com/art/images/photography/photo_6.jpg

"The end of the old West" = most poignant and boutiful trope known to the 20th century (or at least to me)

― amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 16 May 2003 18:08 (twenty-two years ago)

boutiful = some combination of beautiful and bountiful of course

― amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 16 May 2003 18:08 (twenty-two years ago)

a lot of people, including folk legend Odetta, have told me that Cowboys, REAL Cowboys, were black. That's why they were called boys.
(because black men were not considered true men 100-some years back)

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Friday, 16 May 2003 18:09 (twenty-two years ago)

Um there were a lot of black cowboys but they were hardly all black. There were a lot of Mexican cowboys too actually.

It wasn't so much that black men "weren't considered" true men as it was convenient for many people to treat as if they weren't in certain situations, hence the address of "boy."

Anyway,

http://www.coleccionables.com.ar/images/0fonda.jpg

― amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 16 May 2003 18:10 (twenty-two years ago)

It wasn't so much that black men "weren't considered" true men as it was convenient for many people to treat as if they weren't in certain
situations, hence the address of "boy." that's what I meant, with a lazy way of saying it.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Friday, 16 May 2003 18:13 (twenty-two years ago)

My ghost-thesis (i.e. the one that wasn't and will never be written) = comparing different postwar cultural "revisions" of the Old West mythology.

― amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 16 May 2003 18:19 (twenty-two years ago)

mine was ridin' broncs and gettin' syphyllis

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Friday, 16 May 2003 18:23 (twenty-two years ago)

well see now syphilis etc. is part of the revisionist mythology. i once saw some feminist movie where the lead character (=director) contracts a VD from a cowboy out West. she reflects on the meaning of the Old West and its passing partly in terms of this unfortunate occurence. gosh i wish i could remember the name of that movie.

― amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 16 May 2003 18:28 (twenty-two years ago)

my thesis would of course have been called "TS: lonesome dove vs. dead man"

― amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 16 May 2003 18:28 (twenty-two years ago)

I totally grew up in cowboy country. My high school mascot was the Cowboys, even. This was a high school of 400, for which kids would be bussed in from as far away as 60 miles because it was the closest school for them. We had no baseball diamond or soccer field but we did have a rodeo grounds. Beginning in 8th grade when a girl's thumb got torn off by a rope that snagged her hand wrong on the horn of her saddle, I saw rodeo-related accidents increasing in severity through my high school years. At least two boys ended up in comas, requiring intense physical rehab.

It's a big ranching community, at one time the 'cattle capital of the world' due to the sheer amounts of livestock traded there. (of course lots of other towns claim this too.) Geronimo bought sugar at our general store because he liked the sweet stuff. A famous singing cowboy grew up there.

I didn't have much use for cowboys while I was growing up. The further away I get from them the more I romanticize them.

― teeny (teeny), Friday, 16 May 2003 19:14 (twenty-two years ago)

Where have all the cowboys gone

― amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 16 May 2003 19:16 (twenty-two years ago)

one one?

― amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 16 May 2003 19:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Ian Tyson is sometimes real good.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Friday, 16 May 2003 19:18 (twenty-two years ago)

He is, too!

― amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 16 May 2003 19:21 (twenty-two years ago)

i like the william gibson stylee cyber cowboy

― Mary (Mary), Friday, 16 May 2003 19:25 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.vernacularphotography.com/images/I

― amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 16 May 2003 19:28 (twenty-two years ago)

http://sweb.uky.edu/~cdcpre0/cowgirls/bas1.jpg

― cprek (cprek), Friday, 16 May 2003 19:35 (twenty-two years ago)

http://bitchcakes.topcities.com/images/dukesofhazzard.jpg

!!!!

― Ally (mlescaut), Friday, 16 May 2003 19:36 (twenty-two years ago)

FUCK YES. And quite a team of cowherds he's got there.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 16 May 2003 19:37 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.monkeywarplane.com/photos/friends/page2/greg.zac.toronto.jpg

"We could take 'em."

― amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 16 May 2003 19:40 (twenty-two years ago)

I love cowboys. And cowgirls. And cowboy poetry. And riding. And singing around the campfire. And the round-up. And taking a week to drive a herd down from the high-coutry before the snows hit.

Shit, I need to get back west!

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Saturday, 17 May 2003 01:49 (twenty-two years ago)

elvgren can eat my fuc. Out of pure love.

― That Girl (thatgirl), Saturday, 17 May 2003 08:26 (twenty-two years ago)

Context:

I am just a cowboy lonesome on the trail
A starry night, a campfire light
The coyote call, the howling winds wail
So I ride out to the old sundown

I am just a cowboy lonesome on the trail
Lord, I'm just thinking about a certain female
The nights we spent together riding on the range
Looking back it seems so strange

Roll me over and turn me around
Let me keep spinning till I hit the ground
Roll me over and let me go
Running free with the buffalo

I was took in Texas I did not know her name
Lord, all these southern girls seem the same
Down below the border in a town in Mexico
I got my job busting broncs for the rodeo

Roll me over and turn me around
Let me keep spinning till I hit the ground
Roll me over and let me go
Riding in the rodeo

Roll me over and set me free
The cowboy's life is the life for me

― hstencil, Monday, 19 May 2003 01:50 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.cowboysindians.com/articles/archives/0797/cybercowboy.gif

― Millar (Millar), Monday, 19 May 2003 01:56 (twenty-two years ago)

or better yet:
http://www.animeinfo.org/featured/bebop/pics/spikewall.jpg

― Millar (Millar), Monday, 19 May 2003 01:58 (twenty-two years ago)

I was took in Texas I did not know her name
Lord, all these southern girls seem the same

Baby, you don't gotta go writin' songs about me.

― That Girl (thatgirl), Monday, 19 May 2003 05:45 (twenty-two years ago)

sunburnt

with a hat that big? As if!

― MarkH (MarkH), Monday, 19 May 2003 07:49 (twenty-two years ago)

That Girl, 'twasn't me. Those are the Thin Lizzy lyrics what inspired this here thread.

― hstencil, Monday, 19 May 2003 13:16 (twenty-two years ago)

eight years pass...

Can anyone recommend some good cowboy song comps? Tumbling Tumbleweeds, Cool, Cool, Water, Home on the Range, etc. I used to have tons of these that popped up in thrift stores but it doesn't seem to be as easy to find in this digital age.

Listening to Slim Whitman right now and wish I was on the prairie.

― Telephoneface (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, 15 September 2011 17:22 (fourteen years ago)

"The Cattle Call" is effing heaven on earth. Gives me the same feeling "Sunday Morning" did the first time I heard that one.

― Telephoneface (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, 15 September 2011 17:23 (fourteen years ago)

There's a bargain-priced CD called "Cowboy Songs" by Riders in the Sky that's real good.

― banjoboy, Friday, 16 September 2011 01:59 (fourteen years ago)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kbtH5aDlSg

― Chapman Pincher Overdrive (Noodle Vague), Friday, 16 September 2011 07:40 (fourteen years ago)

ten years pass...

Apropos that this thread is inspired by Thin Lizzy as I've been listening to a ton of Johnny the Fox and "Borderline" has prompted me to think about the origin of the male cowboy/gunslinger motif in rock and roll. That song is like the most "lighters up" song of all time.

What are other examples of this trope in music?

What is the earliest example?

Did Thin Lizzy create Bon Jovi out of whole (loin)cloth?

― we only steal from the greatest books (PBKR), Friday, 6 May 2022 13:41 (three years ago)

I just realized this thread is on ILE not ILM.

― we only steal from the greatest books (PBKR), Friday, 6 May 2022 13:44 (three years ago)

The Eagles' Desperado LP was '73.

The Beatles' "Rocky Raccoon" was '68.

Dylan's "Outlaw Blues" was '65.

― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Friday, 6 May 2022 13:49 (three years ago)

1960:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d9/Diddley_gun_slinger.jpg

― Josefa, Friday, 6 May 2022 13:53 (three years ago)

And IIRC, there are other Cowboy Bo songs from that period too.

― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Friday, 6 May 2022 14:05 (three years ago)

The Eagles' Desperado LP was '73. - Absolutely. This is exactly the stuff.

The Beatles' "Rocky Raccoon" was '68. - Certainly western, but as discussed below, I'm looking for a particular strain.

Dylan's "Outlaw Blues" was '65. - This doesn't really seem western or outlaw other than the title (and maybe the attitude).

Way Out West by Sonny Rollins if we're going for pre-rock. I guess I'm looking more at stuff like Desperado that leans into the whole kinda obnoxious lonesome male outlaw angle.

Maybe American Horse by The Cult.

Dead or Alive by Bon Jovi is the ultimate example. Probably every hair metal act has one of these.

― we only steal from the greatest books (PBKR), Friday, 6 May 2022 14:06 (three years ago)

That Bo Diddley cover is great.

― we only steal from the greatest books (PBKR), Friday, 6 May 2022 14:07 (three years ago)

John Wesley Harding (67) and Knocking on Heaven's Door (73)

Bad Company by Bad Company (74)

Back in the Saddle (76)

― bulb after bulb, Friday, 6 May 2022 14:16 (three years ago)

Some, but not all of Elton John's Tumbleweed Connection LP (1970).

― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Friday, 6 May 2022 14:25 (three years ago)

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