Cows may come
And cows may go
But the bull
Goes on forever
Cows may come
And cows may go
But the bull
Goes on forever
Uzi wants to play his space invaders
Dina’s watching cartoons on channel five
I think I’ll fall from grace if I don’t get out of here
While I’m still alive
Mama’s screaming she can’t find her purse
And it looks as if she’ll lose her head
We spent a thousand bucks on the gardener
And all the grass is dead
We won’t have to spend any more on the Caddy
‘Cause Bob totaled it last night
Daddy’s screaming at Philip
‘Cause Phil left the lights on all night
Our clean slate washer broke down this morning
And the sewer backed up into the basement
I try to turn a blind eye on what’s going on
But this is my life, no replacement
Cows may come ...
Diane came in late for work again this morning
But the boss still wants to fire me
She gave him a smile that made him spin
Before he could shout Where were you, chickadee?
The waitress dropped the hot lunch on my clothes
And I couldn’t even go home to change
While I feel the boss is slowly clipping my wings
And my life on this job becomes deranged
I shut the car door with the keys inside
And I didn’t have a spare key on me
I think I’m gonna grab the bull by the horns
There’s just too many cows around me
Wherever I go
Whatever I follow
There ain’t no end
To all the bull I swallow
Wherever I go
Whatever I follow
There ain’t no end
To all the bull I swallow
Cows may come ...
Cows may come
And cows may go
But the bull
GOES ON FOREVER!
©1986 The Hesh Inc./Reality Shock Music, Inc.
Sometime during the school year when I was in sixth or seventh grade, while shopping for art supplies at one of my favorite stores in my hometown—to wit, Echo Stationers in Long Beach, New York—my eyes fell upon a poster that was for sale with the slogan that makes up this song's refrain. I bought it and put it up in my room at home; it got a laugh or two from friends and family. Later on, when I moved to Israel, I put the poster up in my room in our new apartment in Rehovot, and when I temporarily relocated to my high-school dorm in Jerusalem, the poster relocated with me and found a place on the dorm-room wall. My roommate during my senior year was none other than Izzy Kieffer, he who became my longtime musical compadre, and when the end of the school year came and I had to clear all my decor from the walls, he asked if he could have it. I said sure, and it found its way to his bedroom wall at his home. It was a long, strange journey for such an artifact from my childhood.
Sometime during his army service, probably while figuring out a way to manage the usual military bullshit, he got the idea to turn the slogan into a chorus for a song. We got together when we both had weekend leave from our respective units and set to work on the verses, which were an early experimentation with rap. (My brother and younger sister get name-checked in the first verse.)
We recorded this as part of an eight-song demo at Gal Kol Studios in Ramat Gan, with all sorts of top session musicians helping us out. Unfortunately we rushed through the mix and didn't have it mastered; had we done that, we'd have had an excellent debut album. But it remains on cassette, somewhere in Izzy's and my archives.