I'm a Boy

[Quaco]

Neat Beach Boys-styled bridge too.

Yeah it's so great! It is so different from all the power pop that it supposedly influenced.

[Matt Wilson]

Yep, couldn't be any better.

The usual suspects will tell you the Small Faces had better songs though.

[robertff]

Superb song, just superb.


Then along came Happy Jack and Pictures of Lily, what a trio. Magnificent.



.

[Brickyard Jack]

One of my fave who tracks.

[KeithPratt]

That year or so when they were the greatest band in the world.

[Rayge]

No argument from me. The best singles catalogue of any British act, and this is one of the top five, easily.
The lyrics of this, Pictures of Lily and Substitute were parsecs ahead of the competition at the time. It's too bad that that brilliant native wit got increasingly buried by self-consciously arty po-facery in latter years.

[Goat Boy]

All kinds of wonderful

[BARON CORNY DOG]

Even I love it!

[Matt Wilson]

I was drunk listening to this on the way home last night. It's remarkable. The harmonies, the menace of the "my name is Phil and I'm a headcase..." The joy of the thing.

Bill.

[Count Machuki]

Wow, just me who's not too keen on it?

For one thing, I don't hear:

A brave song about gender

It seems to me more like a (pretty immature) joke than some kind of gender studies statement.

It's a little bit too sing-songy for me, maybe. It's OK.

[Count Machuki]

I think I remember reading something to that effect, yeah. Wasn't it supposed to be part of a bigger work, a whole concept thing?

[Quaco]

I think I remember reading something to that effect, yeah. Wasn't it supposed to be part of a bigger work, a whole concept thing?

"Quads"

The song was originally intended to be a part of a rock opera called 'Quads' which was to be set in the future where parents can choose the sex of their children. The idea was later scrapped, but this song survived and was later released as a single.

The song is about a family who "order" four girls, but a mistake is made and three girls and one boy are delivered instead.

Taken out of its science-fiction context, I have always interpreted it as parents (or a mother) who just wants the boy to behave and be more like a girl to the point of making him actually dress like one. It's a bit silly, but they don't keep playing it for laughs. Once you hear the premise, it just sits there uncomfortably. Townshend has always been a bit kinky -- and in the '80s he made a statement about feeling like a woman inside -- but I don't think this was autobiographical in terms of the family relationship.

This guy sees it as a brave song about gender:
https://themiddlespaces.com/2014/04/29/ ... er-anthem/

[Darkness_Fish]

Wow, just me who's not too keen on it?

No, me too (no hashtag), though I think that would be expected. It just seems very much of its time and place, and not a particularly interesting example of a banal 60s rock song.

[mission]

Weird double post shenanigans.

[mission]

Fishy, I don't think it's possible to explain how mystifying your narrow-mindedness sometimes is to me. It is as though there is no history for you, no time where there was a wasn't.

Can you even begin to imagine how almost completely insane this song would have sounded on the day it was first played on the radio?

Banal?

Fuck, do you wake up in the morning and choke back the come of a racehorse just to find something new?

[KeithPratt]

Precisely.

A song in 1967 with the line "I'm a headcase".

[Darkness_Fish]

Fishy, I don't think it's possible to explain how mystifying your narrow-mindedness sometimes is to me. It is as though there is no history for you, no time where there was a wasn't.

Can you even begin to imagine how almost completely insane this song would have sounded on the day it was first played on the radio?

Well, it was a full two years after My Generation, Little Richard had already been around for over a decade, and it's a fairly lame nursery sing-song... so what would've been shocking?

And to answer your stallion-fellating point, it's not the shock of the new I'm always after, but I'm staggered by how much this board just concentrates on the past. Nothing wrong with dipping into different decades, but it's like the last 40 years never happened, most of the time.

[Rayge]

Precisely.

A song in 1967 with the line "I'm a headcase".

A common phrase at the time, at least in the teen London I lived in. Not knocking the conclusion, just a strange (to me) illustration of it

[soundchaser]

I’m a Boy, was a huge part of my childhood and I strongly identified with its bravado and anger.

Rage.

[soundchaser]

I like the sing song nature. Those opening chords of A - Esus4 - E are uplifting, and then lyrical content is depressing but defiant.

I didn’t know those were the chords, but I can hear that Sus4 in my head now.