"Cowboys" is not a glad-to-be-gay anthem but rather a Marty Robbins-style (remember "El Paso"?) narrative about man-man affection that's a levelheaded plea for understanding. "There's many a strange impulse out on the plains of West Texas/There's many a young boy who feels things he can't comprehend," goes the first verse. The second ends with a not-too-subtle point about questionable campfire machismo: "Well, a cowboy may brag about things that he's done with his women/But the ones who brag loudest are the ones that are most likely queer." It's got an infectiously rousing boys-in-the-barroom chorus too:
Cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other
Say, what do you think all them saddles and boots was about?
And there's many a cowboy who don't understand the way that he feels for his brother
And inside every cowboy, there's a lady that'd love to slip out.
Sublette (happily married to a woman, btw) has an exceptional career to say the least. Born 1951 in Lubbock, he has a master's degree in composition and performance from UC at San Diego. He relocated to New York City in the 1970s, joined the guitar orchestra of no-wave avant-gardist Glenn Branca (at the same time as Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore), and worked with composers John Cage and La Monte Young. In '82, he convened the Ned Sublette Band, combining traditional country-and-western songs with Tex-Mex and Cuban music. Inspired by the Urban Cowboy trend, he wrote "Cowboys" around that time. More recently, Sublette released the album Cowboy Rumba (Palm Pictures) and a comprehensive book, Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo (Chicago Review Press).
To the skeptics or homophobes accusing Nelson of cashing in on Brokeback Mountain or joining the Liberal Plot to Destroy America by cramming the "gay agenda" down our collective esophagus, think again. Not long ago, Nelson's for-decades touring manager and friend David Anderson came out of the cowboy closet. Nelson, long an outsider, understood. "The song's been in the closet for 20 years," he said in a statement on releasing "Cowboys." "The timing's right for it to come out." Or, to quote Bill Maher, "They're here, they're queer, get bored with it." — Mark Keresman Willie Nelson performs at 8 p.m. Sunday, March 5, at the Mizner Park Amphitheater, 590 Plaza Real, Boca Raton. Tickets cost $37.50 to $49.50. Call 561-966-3309. Conceptually Speaking
Not since the escapist early '70s has the concept album been so hip. In American Idiot's vaguely political wake, Ryan Adams released the autobiographical 29, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are hard at work on a musical essay about singer Karen O's cat (no joke), and Velvet Revolver is reportedly planning a concept album that will really "make a statement," according to bassist Duff McKagan.
Using our contacts in the Israeli Mossad and China's MSS (the CIA's intelligence capabilities not being what they once were), Outtakes learned that practically every pop musician of note is set to release a concept album in 2006. Here's a sampling of the brilliant concepts headed your way.
Morrissey's Ringleader of the Torturers is a rock opera about the singer's favorite kind of torture: dangling his lucratively ambiguous sexuality in front of his audience. Coy, jangly tracks include "Touch Me/Don't Touch Me" and "Let's Do It, No We Mustn't."
Franz Ferdinand's follow-up to You Could Have It So Much Better is to be titled Ferdinand Ferdinand. The piece is entirely fictional, concerning a group of art-school mushheads from the U.K. who rise to rock stardom, armed with good looks, suave clothes, and baffling lyrical non sequiturs. Duran Duran is reportedly considering pressing charges for identity theft.
Toby Keith follows up his pro-war hit "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)" with a concept album explaining why he himself has not enlisted in the armed services. Among the album's most compelling numbers are the whimsical "Blind as a Bat," the tragic "Chronic Elbow Pain," and a desperate-sounding "How 'Bout This: I'm Gay."
From gothy punks AFI, a darkly romantic saga in which singer Davey Havok performs entirely in the persona of Count Chocula. The track "Source of Five Essential Nutrients" is particularly brooding, as is "Turn Your Milk Brown."
Alanis Morissette is busy completing Venti, a woman's journey of self-discovery inside a Starbucks.
Coldplay is slated to release Ether, an album that dissipates and joins the ozone layer after one play.
Bono is reported to be working on his debut solo album, Hint, Hint, a series of love songs in Norwegian to the members of the Nobel Committee. And, of course, having promised to chronicle every state in the union, Sufjan Stevens follows up Illinois with Iraq.
Actually, the only truthful information we could dig up is that after a decade, Axl Rose still isn't done with his concept album Chinese Democracy. But we were finally able to confirm the underlying concept: bipolar disorder. — Andrew Marcus F-Troop
The Rock 'n' Roll Soldiers are about to release their debut, So Many Musicians to Kill, after struggling through nine years together. Thing is, they're barely in their 20s. The Eugene, Oregon, rockers formed in seventh grade, named their band after a tour by legendary Australian punk rockers Radio Birdman, and spent their high school years learning how to play their instruments. The result: greasy, '70s-era garage punk that would make the Stooges proud. Scarf-wearing, Jagger-strutting frontman Marty Larson-Xu divulges the Soldiers' manifesto.
Outtakes: You guys have known each other since first grade. Did you always have the same musical tastes?
Larson-Xu: Oh, yeah. We started out listening to stuff like Nirvana. Actually, we started off with L.L. Cool J in second grade. But then we moved on to Nirvana and then classic garage-punk stuff, like all these crazy Japanese and Australian bands like Radio Birdman. We'd draw the Radio Birdman symbol all over our clothes, so people thought we were Nazis.
Were the Rock 'n' Roll Soldiers everyone's favorite local band back in Eugene?
Pfft. We had this reputation as weird kids who thought they had a band but in reality were just terrible. We couldn't even play our instruments. We'd play shows around town, but it wasn't so much about the music. It was more just about crazy partying and the weird shit we could think about doing onstage. We just wanted to have the craziest time we could for 30 minutes before we got offstage.
What's the opinion these days?
Now that we're signed to a major label, people assume we have to be good.
Atlantic Records asked you to change your name. How'd that go over?
Sometimes people think we take ourselves a lot more seriously than we really do. They just don't understand the name is something we came up with in seventh grade, like, "Yeah, Rock 'n' Roll Soldiers, yeah!" We just stuck with it. It's not supposed to be some serious thing, but people don't understand that. So we wrote a theme song ["Anthem"], which is basically like a Rock 'n' Roll Soldiers fuck you.
What are you fighting for?
It doesn't really feel like we're fighting for anything. Um... I guess we're fighting for rock. But if you listen to our lyrics, you'll see they're all tongue-in-cheek — "We're out there to destroy all the rest of the music" type of stuff. We really just want to play the music we love and rock out. — Cole Haddon Rock 'n' Roll Soldiers play with Less Than Jake, Damone, and a Wilhelm Scream at 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 3, at the Culture Room, 3045 N. Federal Hwy., Fort Lauderdale. Tickets cost $17. Call 954-564-1074.
