Pretty Boy Floyd, "I Wanna Be With You"

Next Time, Just Pass Her a Note  

THE VIDEO Pretty Boy Floyd, "I Wanna Be With You," Leather Boyz with Electric Toyz, 1989, MCA

SAMPLE LYRIC "I wanna be-eee with you-oooh / I wanna be with you-ooh! / I wanna be-eee with you-oooh" (repeat endlessly) 

THE VERDICT I've been doing mostly well-known, everyone-can-sing-along power ballads so far, so I decided to throw in one lesser-known track. Now if you've been reading this blog for a while, you might remember that the last time I talked about a Pretty Boy Floyd video, it took quite a beating. 

If that upset or distressed you in any way, you should probably stop reading right now, 'cause spoiler alert: This song is horrible. But it's so amazing in its awfulness that I have to talk about it. 

Recall that Pretty Boy Floyd claim to be "dirty glam," and to have styled their look and sound after Mötley Crüe. Now spend a minute thinking about how awesome Mötley Crüe are, especially like Shout at the Devil. Once you feel you have sufficiently reacquainted yourself with how badass the Crüe are, listen to this song. I mean seriously, listen to it. Make yourself do it. Good lord. Listen to it. 

I mean even just the beginning: "As I was walking out of class / the other day at school / I saw you." 

One: We're supposed to believe these guys are in high school?!?! 

Two: We're supposed to believe these guys are badass, dirty, raunchy rockers when they are singing about stuff like this? 

I mean sure, on the one hand, if it's like "Yeah, I'm a gross twenty-something dude hanging around the high school picking up underage chicks," I guess that seems sort of like, LA Guns-ish. But based on the rest of the song, that's not what's happening here. No, it's something much lamer. "I don't live too far / we could walk down to the park / if you got nothing else to do." Seriously, this sounds like Milhouse trying to ask out Lisa Simpson! 

The video more or less acts this out. Well, sort of. It's all in black and white, and one shot fades into the next really quickly. 

Complicating matters further, there's some serious spotlight abuse going on. The spotlights keep shining directly into the camera, making it even harder than normal to tell who's who, since everyone in this band looks like Nadir D'Priest (except for Vinnie Chas [RIP] who as I've pointed out before looks like a glam double for Warrant's Joey Allen. But he's barely in this video, so). 

They also keep throwing in crazy shots for no reason. Like there's a really long shot of drummer Kari Kane that's basically from the point of view of one of the cymbals. WTF is the point of that?

 

Anyway, Pretty Boy Floyd are standing around on these risers that are covered in spotlights. Singer Steve 'Sex' Summers (say that five times fast) is looking extra like a lady. I don't know if it's his big Carly Simon hat, or his little gloves, or just his like, smoky eye look, but the whole package does not fit with the everyone-firing-tommy-guns intro to the video. 

And of course, we're supposed to believe that the girl in the video wants to "be with" him. She's a super-wholesome-looking blonde, very much not your usual metal video gal. She kind of reminds me of Victoria Jackson, the comedian with the breathy voice who used to be on SNL in the late 80s/early 90s —probably best remembered as the lady who had all those extra fingers. 

Anyway yeah, they literally act out the song in the video. Steve calls her from the video — like right there, in the middle of all the risers and spotlights, there's a freakin' payphone. While Kristy Majors rocks out in the background, he coos this song's ridiculous lyrics to her. 

She's lying on her bedroom floor reading a magazine, and seeming more genuinely like a high school girl than most of the women you see in metal videos (though to be clear, she seems way older than high-school age). 

I also need to point out that everyone but Steve seems to think this is a wayyyyy more intense song than it is. Kristy machine-guns his guitar and throws punches at the camera, Vinnie thrashes around and glares intensely, and Kari looks like he is competing in a "Make Your Best Tommy Lee Face" contest. 

Seriously, his mouth is open in that sort of fake "Oh no!" pout the whole time — then again, his nickname was 'The Mouth.' I should also mention the enormous amount of drumstick spinning going on, like way more than you need for a song like this. I mean this is a drippy, slow-ass song.

 

Anyway, of course toward the end of the song, the girl shows up at the video. Steve leaves with her, acting awfully bashful for someone whose nickname is 'Sex'. The other guys are left to just sit there with all the spotlights, but then look — she called all her friends! Yeah, they look more like, you know, not-super-young single moms than like high school students, but whatever. It's still enough to get Kari to do a double-take. High school girls for everyone! 

They all leave, but the spotlights are still going. What, is this just like, where Pretty Boy Floyd hang out? They never do any meta-stuff, like showing cameras, the fact that they're making a video or whatever. Likewise, the girls don't seem like, impressed or interested by the band's whole setup. 

Does this mean all these spotlights and crap are actually in like, Kristy's mom's basement or something? You know actually, that would make sense. 

Oh man. I kind of alluded to it before, but seriously guys, this song is awful. Why does Steve suddenly have a Madonna-esque British accent? And the freaking chimes every time the verse begins again? This is verging on being physically painful. Could anyone have done this song and made it into a good one? Possibly Stryper, but the lyrics seem a little too risque for them. 

I talked about this at length the other time I talked about Pretty Boy Floyd, but here it's even more apparent. They think they're doing a whole "dirty glam," sleazy Mötley Crüe thing, but come on. You're asking high school girls to take a walk in the park with you! And you actually mean a walk in the park, it's not like, a gross metaphor for some weird sex act. 

But alongside all these wholesome lyrics, we've got all kinds of black leather, draggy makeup, and the lascivious nicknames. This makes the whole situation even less realistic, if that's possible. 

I mean, I can't imagine my high school self sitting in my high school bedroom, and my mom like yelling up to me, "Honey, Sex is on the phone!" Or like, "The Mouth called while you were in the shower." And then to have him call and screech "I wanna be with you-ouuu!" into the phone? Sorry, but no. Just... no.

Pretty Boy Floyd, "Rock N Roll"

Send in the Clones

THE VIDEO Pretty Boy Floyd, "Rock N Roll (Is Gonna Set the Night on Fire)", Leather Boyz with Electric Toyz, 1989, MCA

Click here to watch this video NOW!

SAMPLE LYRIC "Let me take you one step higher / rock 'n' roll is gonna set the night on fire / rock 'n' roll is gonna set the night on fire / yeah"

THE VERDICT Why is it that ever since "Rock and Roll All Nite" (personally one of my least favorite KISS songs), every band has to make a song that is a tribute to, well, rocking? Think about it: "The Right to Rock" (Keel), "I Wanna Rock" (Twisted Sister), "Rock Rock! ('Til You Drop)" (Def Leppard). And generally, the weaker the band, the goofier the song, and the harder they seem to feel they have to convince you of their ability to rock -- viz. the Vinnie Vincent Invasion's "Boyz Are Gonna Rock."

Pretty Boy Floyd is one of those bands where you know a label thought "well we'll just sign ten of these and see what sticks." They managed to make a surprising number of videos from this album before being unceremoniously dropped by MCA, and this near-success may have helped them to reunite nearly ten years later for album #2. In spite of giving their first effort three stars, All Music describes Leather Boyz with Electric Toyz as "definitely a CD to avoid." (Though let me also mention it doesn't have their one pretty good song, "Shut Up," which is too bad.)



Like Trixter, Pretty Boy Floyd suffer from the disjuncture between the Good Guy and the Bad Boy. However, they have the opposite version: Bad Boy image, Good Guy lyrics. Gangster references and black leather aside, PBF have Good Guy lyrics -- just listen to "I Wanna Be With You." It's about dating a girl in high school, for pete's sake! And to clarify, this is not in the Winger sense -- this is while you yourself are in high school. Again, this is not a Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused situation.

And yet, right around this same time, guitarist Kristy 'Krash' Majors appeared on Donahue in an amazing "Rockers and Their Moms" episode (that sadly, PBF themselves have had yanked from YouTube!). I mean check out all the eyeliner on these guys. In terms of style, they are somewhere between the glam and biker quadrants (gosh, I think I need to chart this out somehow). PBF are not cute n' cuddly Bon Jovi types.

But at the same time, they're so... pretty. And shooting all their videos with all these saturated, high-contrast colors is doing them a lot of favors. If anyone should have learned a lesson from LA Guns videos, I mean, that was it. It makes the pale skin pop against all the waving ebony tresses and eyeliner. Also Steve 'Sex' Summers' hat is straight out of Phil Lewis' closet.



This is particularly the case with our vocalist Steve -- approximately half the shots in the video are close-ups of his face, hair, and lace-gloved right hand. Even though bassist Vinnie Chas is blond, it's really the instruments that allow us to tell the members of Pretty Boy Floyd apart from one another. Otherwise, for all four, the ingredients are as follows: Super-shiny hair (a lot of hot oil treatments for this band I'm thinking); tight black leather (though Steve gets some red); eyeliner (black); lipstick (red); hoop earrings (silver and large). They kind of come off less glam and more drag, since it's not that over-the-top -- PPF are probably closest in appearance to Lizzie Borden, whose vocalist was actually going for a drag look. Also worth mentioning is that minus the clean hair, this is pretty much how they dress Jenny on Gossip Girl.

The parts of the video that aren't close-ups of Steve's face are more or less a shot-for-shot remake of VVI's "Boyz Are Gonna Rock." Weirdo opening? Check. Increasing levels of guitar face and vocal histrionics? Check. Does the guitarist burn and smash his guitar? Check. Do we have a lot of pyro for the finale? Indeed we do.



The only real differences are less colorful outfits, as noted above, and a set that is more reminiscent of -- okay bear with me, but it reminds me of a combination of a Warrant stage set (platforms, band's name written really big) but with the band's name written more in the style of the vulgar tee shirts favored by the band's members (Jerry in "Big Talk," Jani in "Down Boys"). (On a related note, since no one in the fashion world can come up with anything new, this "Frankie Say Relax" / Wham! look has actually become a popular t-shirt style again thanks to the UK's House of Holland.)

Anyway, the stage is covered with the band's name written in big, white on black block letters. Someone should have thought harder about this set design, because since the word "Floyd" is on the actual part they can walk on, unless it's an overhead shot, all you can see is "Pretty Boy." This makes me think not of gangsters but of parrots. And yes, while obviously the main definition of this word involves colorful birds, "parrot" also means to "repeat mindlessly." Touché, set designer, touché.