"Uncool" music you dig. Out with it!

I'll leave it up to you to define "uncool" yourself. I put in quotes to make it extra fun.

Here's mine. Hitech psystrance. Can't get enough of this stuff, but I doubt it'll ever be featured on Pitchfork.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3YC69g7lZY

sock rock

Let's do it, baby

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF1628qACPM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF1628qACPM

i don't know, i guess jan hammer is cool.

Even as a sock thread this is a throwback.

yeah forget that jeff beck, anybody who says it isn't cool doesn't even exist in this universe

lets do it baby

it's not a sock if the poster posts exactly the same

70s Status Quo
the odd Phil Collins tune
Darude - "Sandstorm"

Just posting some things to dig that may not make the "cool" cut.

I like hitech psytrance because it's like a modern iteration of Hawkwind. Fast, noisy, powerful, psychedelic, and spacey. But totally under the radar.

It's not really New York Magazine material, but I think it's fun.

I made this as an opportunity to shed your aspirational taboos and anxieties and have some fun!

i see.. a real honest music thread, well damn

The second wave British "trad rock" stuff; namely Coldplay and Travis. Both of which I genuinely, unironically, like.

THERE HAS NEVER BEEN MUSIC DISCUSSION HERE. THIS HAS ALWAYS BEEN A FORUM FOR REPOSTING TWEETS.

*zombie-like mob descends on you and throws you into the lava pit*

nelly furtado

but i wouldn't say she's uncool really

i don't like cool music

can't answer.. everything i listen to becomes cool

like what you like, ultimately yeah

xp wow u trendsetter

I am having a lot of fun on this thread

I don't listen to music I only cool it

the doors? tbh I have been investing a lot of time and effort into making them cool again in my social circles and it is paying off

my friend Doors fans aren't made, they're born.

true

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5s-TjbXJLo

Another one - synthwave! I love this stuff, too. I say as an American, since our country is burning to the ground, we might as well enjoy ourselves without shame. It's the least we can do for ourselves.

Like hey, if you felt the chains tugging too tight on you, now's the time to chop them off. We're free, baby.

I was trying to think what the most universally uncool music would be in the age of poptimism where we have the illusion that everything is cool now. Josh Groban?

groban definitely up there. stuff thats not targeted to people under 35 even remotely.

random american idol/talent show contestants maybe falls under this?

(sorry, thats two separate ideas, plenty of singing show artists are marketed to under 35 audiences)

there was a brief time when there was ILM love for some of the early idol contestants I think -- did I dream that?

John Mayer maybe. You'd probably get a few "well he really can play the guitar" takes but mostly reviled.

is lawrence welk still uncool? i have a couple of his cds i inherited from an ex, i think they're actually genuinely fun weird background noise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSvCNBxF6dI

I don't know what genre it is exactly but that cutesy minimal electropop that usually comes from germany and japan. It's very uncool and completely lacking in sex appeal but I love it.

Example:

https://youtu.be/S38sf1zi_Fk

I know it's uncool but isn't it adorable?

I really like Charlie Puth and Selena Gomez's "We Don't Talk Anymore." Now that's uncool music even by poptimist standards.

there's some contemporary Christian pop and rock that I like!

^ woop!

moka, what makes you think that song is "uncool"?

@josh az: i am right there with you. that song rules.

hell yeah it does

Well it's the sort of music I play mostly for myself... whenever I have anyone else in the room and something like this comes on I get silent looks of dissaproval.

Which makes me think it's uncool music... it's kind of quirky but quirky has been uncool for a decade now.

Dido

Loads of commercial EDM and Drum & Bass.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biTMPeQm4jE

Also, Cotton Eye Joe.

"sandstorm" was inescapable at loft parties in montreal 2 years ago (when the latest wave of getting into house & techno began but before anyone took it too seriously) generally raver 90s (even though darude was very late and euro-corny within that) are looked upon favourably now

there's lots of stuff that's uncool in the age of poptimism but it's more middlebrow than lcd; like rock for normie college students (alt-J, black keys, uhh cage the elephant?) or bros (festival edm), or non hipster white alt like the beardo bluegrass/folk scene or like the hippie festival circuit, shit like Cat Power if they still exist

Uncool music: anything they play on Radio X in the daytime. Biffy Clyro, Kasabian, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, Blossoms, Foo Fighters etc.

Ed Sheeran's "Galway Girl". It's catchy.

xp to flopson: resurgent popularity of darude sandstorm probably linked directly to the darude - sandstorm meme, right?

no Pat Boone fans here?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3Yc3HhSl1Q

I love Stan Freberg

I love the first two Kings Of Leon albums. They're uncool right? I don't know anymore....

Dave Matthews because his guitar parts/melodies are interesting and because my parents would play his music during very happy family gatherings back when everyone was younger and alive.

10cc

Xpost Guys they said "uncool", not "artists whose stink will be permanently seared into your DN"

I dig Norah Jones. I guess Zero 7 is considered uncool. I like them a lot. I love Basia to kind of a ridiculous degree. It's like if your uncool mom decided to become a pop singer. You can't help but love and support the guileless charm which informs the endeavor.

Xpost Guys they said "uncool", not "artists whose stink will be permanently seared into your DN"

― Neanderthal, Wednesday, September 13, 2017 8:46 AM (forty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, of course! Keep the ilx meme alive!

i still have a soft spot for some of the bad trance i listened to in high school

eg robert miles <3 <3 <3

I genuinely like Easy Lover - is that still uncool?

wait. i've got it. for me this is counting crows

brad!

no

I still like the first Shiny Toy Guns album a lot

Ben Folds Five

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-xvK7eUXog

Styx

I had been thinking that I don't get this thread at all but Styx is the first example where I can't imagine anyone who would consider them 'cool'. 70s albums are obv classic btw.

Does anyone consider Bach or Mozart or Schubert cool?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vWHNwmzf1o

oh you can get away with those if you say yr actually listening to glenn gould xp

no Pat Boone fans here?

Here! Sure his Little Richard covers are pale copies, but fun junk like this is the reason I love the satellite 50s channel. I think his "cool" maybe got resuscitated a bit via the lounge revival and "Golden Throats," but ultimately Pat Boone will never be cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VIqxobNtGo

Xpost: there was a guy I knew in highschool who was a huge Bach nerd and pretty much all he listened too, he was also very attractive and easy going so naturally everyone thought he was cool, Bach fixation included. He's the only person I've met who listened frequently to classical music.

So I've no idea how uncool it actually feels is to listen to them, attractive people tend to ruin surveys. You can say you don't like bald men then you meet someone bald but extremely attractive and suddenly you do like bald guys.

Some of the '90s 'alternative' I listened to in high school has retained/regained its cachet but much of it is, I fear, deeply uncool at this point but I still enjoy throwing on the tatty flannel poncho and moshing around to those tunes with an OK Soda in one hand and the NYT glossary of grunge speak in the other like a sad latter day analogue of those dudes in the Freedom Rock commercial.

I think trendy music tends to become deeply uncool as time passes on. Yeah several 90's alt bands are very uncool at this point... Smashing Pumpkins is the first one that comes to my mind. In the early to mid 90's they were one of the cool bands the cool kids listened to. Corgan himself kind of pissed on that and public perception of the band and its fans is either non-existent or uncool.

Recent one that comes to mind is that quirky sweet indie music in the early to mid 00's that finally ended its course around the Juno movie. It's very very uncool music that got associated with the DIY trend but really it was more like ad music for selling food and light drinks.

Richard Marx - Endless Summer Nights

jon secada - just another day

Ben Folds Five is cool!

i listen to TONS of 50's jazz and vocal stuff that nobody under the age of 70 listens to. definitely not "cool".

Does stuff like Thom Bell and Debarge count? Critics act as if liking genius schmalz is cool but in many social circles it doesn't seem so.

i listen to TONS of 50's jazz and vocal stuff that nobody under the age of 70 listens to. definitely not "cool".
Actually that IS cool!

I love the first two Kings Of Leon albums. They're uncool right? I don't know anymore....

I like early KoL too, up to and including [Because of the Times.

my real answer though is Blue Rodeo

haha love me some blue rodeo, that's a great one

I thought Justin Trudeau was cool?

I have to listen to P.D.Q. Bach's "The Seasonings" at least once a year.

I thought Justin Trudeau was cool?

not in my house

Tremolo is a classic album and not just for featuring a pre-9/11 anti-Giuliani song

i have sincere love for U2.

i still own and enjoy Ten Summoner's Tales by Sting.

i consider Whitesnake's self-titled 1987 album to be a pretty fine achievement.

is Jamiroquai uncool? Yes. I love them.

i love '90s acid jazz. like all those random comps that Ubiquity put out and Dusty Groove would blurb all over.

i like Zero 7 as well. Also: Thievery Corporation.

i've always liked the Manic Street Preachers.

Is Supergrass uncool bc of that dude's name? I like 3 of their first 4 albums a lot.

a couple of those forgotten, ill-favored jam-type band albums from the '90s I always liked. Stratagem by Big Head Todd & Red by God Street Wine. I haven't heard them in twenty years, I probably wouldn't like them know.

I seem to like pretty much any trip hop, even stuff that people largely dissed or dismissed at the time when trip hop was a thing (e.g. Baby Fox, Smoke City).

The odd Sarah McLachlan number
Laura Brannigan
Some Coldplay but recent work is beyond redemption
Some Happy Hardcore

blue rodeo is great

sarah mclachlan is extremely cool imo

I still like the My Dick album

sarah mclachlan is cool agree w/ brad

How is Jamiroquai not cool?

jamiroquai is considered lame/cheesy and "lol 90s" by most in anglo countries ime

my picks off the top of my head:
The Eagles
He's already been mentioned itt which made me remember I enjoy a few of the songs of Richard Marx
80s Scottish pop that I like for nostalgic reasons but earnestly (Wet Wet Wet, Deacon Blue, Danny Wilson)
I don't know much about country but I like random 70s or 80s country songs that I hear that I'm sure don't have any cool cache e.g. I'm No Stranger to the Rain by Keith Whitley is a jam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLoYFvbR0XY

unclear or extremely cool?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPAbx5kgCJo

my daughters think this is v. cool

re: blue rodeo's coolness, no one can convince me this isn't pure AM gold

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqpZ5bMkShI

I kinda have a soft spot for the Killers that I can't explain

Lots of "cool" music heads like vintage R&B, but I don't know anyone who loves, like, 1990s Charles Brown CDs as much as I do.

I had been thinking that I don't get this thread at all but Styx is the first example where I can't imagine anyone who would consider them 'cool'. 70s albums are obv classic btw.

― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r)

a couple months ago i was listening to a canadian pirate radio broadcast from the '80s and they were playing styx. i think if you get played on pirate radio you technically qualify as "cool".

no styx is not cool this is not up for discussion

wait are you saying the 80s pirate broadcast only reached the airwaves a few months ago

lmao why would a pirate radio station play Styx they are already on commercial radio and grocery store and pharmacy playlists all the time

Russell Malone (jazz guitarist) is probably the least cool musician that I like. He's best known for working with the Diana Krall trio. IDK, is the Diana Krall Trio cool?

jazz fusion, chiptunes, video game soundtrack music, new age

PHISH those guys and their fans are very very uncool but I think that's the point?

whatever type of music canyon.mid is

those aren't meant to be disparate things btw, they're a single spectrum of uncool

andrew m. at 2:35 13 Sep 17

I have to listen to P.D.Q. Bach's "The Seasonings" at least once a year.

@440, B.A.D, Sputnik, U2, B.R.M.C, James Last, Ray Coniff < all get regular airings at mine after a drink or 2.

cool obv varies regionally. i've got to the point where 90s smashing pumpkins in all their baroque splendour sounds pretty fresh. jamiroquai have always been lovably* naff

*contentious

is Pat Metheny cool?

I don't really think most jazz or classical is cool in most people's eyes. (Gould is not my favourite Bach interpreter, by the way.)

Afaict, 90s alternative rock is pretty big with young adults these days, tbh.

I saw a toddler wearing a Nirvana shirt the other day. Literally nothing has ever made me feel older.

wait are you saying the 80s pirate broadcast only reached the airwaves a few months ago

― Neanderthal

no silly i'm saying i listened to an _aircheck_ of the broadcast on the internet, which has become kind of a thing of late.

lmao why would a pirate radio station play Styx they are already on commercial radio and grocery store and pharmacy playlists all the time

― marcos

i don't know, i didn't play them on pirate radio! but in fairness they probably weren't on grocery store and pharmacy playlists in 1981.

Sappy ballads written by Diane Warren for Hollywood summer blockbusters in the 90s.

Barenaked Ladies

sarah mclachlan is extremely cool imo

otm

Weird Al 4 life.

always liked that first Crash Test Dummies album.

the Presidents of the USA are one of the coolest bands ever but look at those guys they are huge dorks.

i still like RATM even tho they are corny af and really dated

Yeah big love for Sarah Mclachlan she cool.

chantal kreviazuk

Also Sarah founded lilith fair and those lineups were amazing

no styx is not cool this is not up for discussion

― Neanderthal, Wednesday, September 13, 2017 7:54 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

styx is a good choice for this thread

the sarah mclachlan reappraisal is at least two years overdue

does this reappraisal extend to "I Will Remember You" and "Angel", or are cool people still only allowed to like her early stuff? every once in a while I resolve to listen to a Sarah McLachlan album, but then I flash back to all the graduation ceremonies and slideshows I suffered through as SM's music played on repeat in the background, and I immediately scurry back into my hole and stay there until the next time I hear someone raving about Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. I don't know if I'll ever reach a point where I'm able to set aside those unpleasant associations and listen to her music with unbiased ears

i should dig into sarah mclachlan more, i enjoyed her peak '90s stuff. what's good beyond solace/fumbling towards ecstasy?

i will remember youuuuu yeah that songs rules. having trouble seeing her as ever being uncool.

fwiw i never went to any school dances so maybe i avoided the over-exposure

I tried so hard to like Sarah McLachlan in the late 90s because she was so beloved.

If there was a Lilith Fair held today, I would totally attend that Lilith Fair.

i would have thought Sarah McLachlan would be considered prime MOR Radio 2 approved and hence deeply uncool. What does uncool mean, therefore?

I was on the bus the other day and some gang of late teenage girls were giving some stick to a hapless young schoolboy at the back, who was blasting out some grime music on his loud bluetooth speaker. One of them said: "You're so fucking sad r you. I was listening to that bab in year 7, and it's older than your mother's blouse you sad little prick". Well, you had to be there of course!

The future generation of ILM posters

I might start blasting out some Duke Ellington on the back of the bus, next time I feel like dying!

canada: the uncool country you dig

i would have thought Sarah McLachlan would be considered prime MOR Radio 2 approved and hence deeply uncool. What does uncool mean, therefore?

"Fashionably attractive or impressive" is what my dictionary says and how I've been interpreting it. Idk about now but I really felt like I was missing out by not getting, and frankly hating, her at the time. I can see Styx being mainstream school-dance cool in 1981 but not today. Lots of people like them but it's not an appreciation I see as being especially attractive or impressive to anyone: a bit old and geeky for a mainstream pop or rock listener; mainstream, safe, and a bit retrogressive for a prog snob; goofy-looking dudes.

And I'm realizing that is the most I want to think about coolness in music for the next year.

the sarah mclachlan reappraisal is at least two years overdue

― sick, fucking funny, and well tasty (katherine), Thursday, September 14, 2017 3:32 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is exactly right, as proved by this screenshot of my soulseek downloads folder in january 2015 with Mirrorball on it:

hi flopson

paula cole

i saw sarah mclachlan on tour for solace in 1992; she was pretty grebt

jon secada - just another day

― plp will eat itself (NickB), Wednesday, September 13, 2017 11:31 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this song rules, too

I listen to much more old 70s bluzy hard rock or southern rock like Foghat, Rick Derringer, Marshall Tucker Band, Nazareth and Black Oak Arkansas than is probably normal. ILM in general isn't all that 'into' white dudes playing blues rock, although it likes old thuddy stuff. There are some around here that dig old 70 fusion, so there are some fans around here, but I have listened to it a ton too. I'd say the most unkool ILM band I have heard quite a bit is probably Black Label Society. It is totally obnoxious music and definitely not liked by many.

Dude Black Oak Arkansas is the shit! This absolutely rips:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=407lz-x_MiQ

Uncool music I dig-out with it: Spoon, the Ace of Spades, Dig

jon secada - just another day

since i wrote that i can't stop jamming it on my headphones at work. it's amazing!! but i get deeply paranoid that someone might hear what i'm listening to, i have to keep checking it's not coming out of the speakers somehow by mistake. i think i'm going to have to go for a drive somewhere remote just so i can crank it up loud in safe surroundings

it is all the very worst bits of shopping mall trance beats, michael bolton-style wounded manbaby bawling and chintzy bruce hornsby piano and i really love it

I think I like REO Speedwagon but I need to hear more of their oeuvre. Going to scour charity shops for secondhand copies of their albums.

I like that Jon Secada song quite a lot. It's one of those 'coming in from the cold' songs, like 'Wonderful World', 'Don't Look Any Further' and 'Running Up That Hill'

'Wonderful Life' by Black, not 'Wonderful World'

Try and beat this uncoolness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ah2I166f_U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtF80UCgarY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC2ihnPXXi4

Note for when the links die: that was GI Joe animated movie intro, Soul Edge intro and Psychic Force intro.

I'll nerd you one better:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnakUvv2U-Y&t=37s

When I was a kid I was obsessed with these then-untranslated tactical RPGs from the 90s. You could choose a path where you march on heaven and kill God, so man and demon could live in harmony free from servitude and oppression.

Never saw anything like that in a video game at the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnakUvv2U-Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2O9ryz7Eik

In 1982 i was on a field operation in south Korea as a Marine, Me and a friend got to go out to a small village for a little R&R before anybody else on our base, wandering around we came upon a mud and straw building, but on the inside you could hear loud music we opened the door and Rosanna was playing on a system that was worth more than the building itself, there was about 8 working girls sitting around talking we stayed all afternoon drinking beer and enjoying the company of those fine lady's.

Der Langrisser doesn't have embarrassing vocals that would have people at a cool party climbing up walls.

Hokuto No Ken/Fist Of The North Star soundtrack You Wa Shock.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxkezvGwI20

I think Christmas music is often the height of uncoolness.

Nada Surf. Probably the most "uncool" band I've stuck with since their first lp. Feels like dad-rock avant là lettre, in that I'm not a dad yet, but I grew up with these guys since both they and I were teenagers. And their music is still thoroughly uncool, unnoticed, unreviewed, completely outside of the reviewers eye. I get why. Which is what makes it so uncool. But boy are they consistently great at what they do. Every new album. It's not even by choice; we'll grow old together in spite of each other.

I heard a busker singing "Wind of Change" earlier and it made me so happy

I can see Styx being mainstream school-dance cool in 1981 but not today.

In 1981 you'd have Styx playing out on your driveway while you had your driveway barbecue going, it was great, man, I was there. Wasn't old enough to go to school dances then, though.

Also, where does They Might Be Giants fit in here? I still really like those records A LOT. The difference is, I like Styx records and enjoy that they're in no way cool, while They Might Be Giants records are, in my view, extremely intrinsically cool records that cool people largely never got into and which are thus not widely thought of as cool, quite the opposite in fact.

TMBG are really awesome but they do have a bit of a nasally singing voice and have the classic nerd look down. the music is extremely good -- coolness really has nothing to do with music quality imo.

first time i heard them was "Particle Man" on Tiny Toons and that is probably as uncool as you can get lol.

I used to love the most saccharine-laced love songs released during the 80's, which I blame by growing up in that decade. Just to let you know I'm not equivocating, 80's-era Genesis ("Hold on My Heart") and Richard Marx's "Angelia", which lets be honest, is kind of a badass Def Leppard B-side, is two songs that I bet I'd still love if I fired up again.

Speaking of Richard Marx - the epitome of uncool - the song "Hazard" is fucking brilliant. I mean, it essentially portrays the Tim Robbins' character in Mystic River a decade before it happens; not in every element, but the general gist.

Everyone likes "Hazard" iirc.

Is there still such a thing as uncool music?

????? explain...

feel like uncool music is more music you feel embarrassed about when played in the wrong company, than any music being uncool

^ otm

"uncool" is relative

OBVIOUSLY

i don't know about that... we've got a pretty good list goin here!!

exactly

ah a thread about what's cool! can't wait to post

wheeeeeeeee!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjoJlM2r3qs

Amazed I didnt post this abomination.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsfhADiaP5E
For anyone who doesn't know, the Marvel Vs Capcom 2 soundtrack is widely considered terrible and terribly fitting for the game. But the select screen music caught on to people and became a kind of guilty pleasure.

I prefer the select music from the previous game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxMdFMJdeYg

I wonder how many people request the most embarrassing or inappropriate music for their funeral just to make their family and friends squirm?

i was rocking the second stealers wheel album a couple days ago

maybe that's actually cool, but if it is i'm insufficiently cool to know this, so i would argue it counts

Ben Folds Five

― Well bissogled trotters (Michael B), Wednesday, September 13, 2017 8:57 AM (six years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Playing this morning for the first time in a long time, and yeah, same.

i can't say i ever listen to ben folds five but i will always have a soft spot for them as the epitome of freshman year of college music

First album in particular is just stacked top to bottom with hits. The playing is ragged and loose but accomplished, the vocal parts surprisingly challenging, the lyrics unserious but smart... Folds is a knob but the band had something no other band of their era (or since?) had.

Third Eye Blind is not a band seen by anybody as "cool", but boy I sure love that first album.

yeah I've never cared about Ben Folds solo career, but those first two BF5 albums are classic

The first two Dido albums are absolutely fantastic.

Never listened to a Dido album but could absolutely see that. Will give them a go.

Country music -- I really like a couple Sara Evans albums and she's definitely not one of those country artists who would ever show up in respectable year end lists plus she's pretty MAGA. Little Big Town is frequently pretty great, they have some really stunning tracks and some good albums but nobody outside of country music fans seems to give them much notice.

I still like Tranceport by Oakenfold.

I have a weird soft spot for God Bless the USA, probably because in spite of being the most "normal" and conservative song imaginable, it's actually kind of weird and awkward compositionally and lyrically.

Doesn't really get any less cool than that.

The worst (from a music criticism perspective) bands I like are 311 (really just Grassroots and Transistor) and Sublime (I’ll take almost all of it still) but I still listen to them at least yearly if not more frequently…great for road trips too when you are looking for something familiar that doesn’t require too much focus/concentration.

I still like lots of very uncool dubstep & d&b music, the kind of dubstep & d&b that people seem to want to distance themselves from.

I didn't know Ben Folds Five was uncool???

I just found an early 2000s fan page for "geek-rock" bands, with pages for Ben Folds Five, Weezer, and They Might Be Giants.
https://geek-rock.tripod.com/main/main.htm

I think I'll leave it at that.

I have defended 311 a bunch, not to say I *love* them but I think they are underrated. FWIW they just did a Tiny Desk concert, which I'm curious to check out.

I still like lots of very uncool dubstep & d&b music, the kind of dubstep & d&b that people seem to want to distance themselves from.

hello.
as anyone who follows my twitter knows all too well re my love of cheesy dubstep mixtapes.
also, add bloghouse to the list.

I think those styles of music would prompt 90% of the population to say, “Whatever this is, it’s too cool for me”(!)

I actively disliked ABBA when I was a kid. They are now a guilty pleasure.

It’s been cool to like Abba for ages. Where you been, jimbeaux?

Josefa just recommended a book about this very topic.

They still strike me as deeply uncool. Anti-cool, actually.

I have similar feelings about the Bee Gees, although I think they are cool now.

beegees cool as fuck glad u reconize lol but not lol

I still like Tranceport by Oakenfold.

― omar little, Thursday, March 14, 2024 11:17 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

hah, should relisten to that, I remember liking it a lot when I was a teenager but yeah even then some of those vocals going "ooooh aaaahh you are the gamemaster" was a bit much

speaking of I do like Shpongle a lot. they're pretty embarrassing in spots but I think their records are really well crafted and all have a lot of great moments. and Nothing Lasts is an absolute tour de force album

Same deal with Bee Gees.

Carpenters too, if we are going down the alphabet.

I like Christmas carols and the bands James and The Tea Party

So, so much...Simply Red's "Holding Back the Years" comes to mind immediately.

(xpost) For a long time, definitely. But didn't the Carpenters get a second life sparked by Todd Haynes, the If I Were a Carpenter tribute album (with Sonic Youth), and the tragic dimensions of Karen Carpenter's story?

“holding back the years” is awesome, surely it’s been reclaimed by younger generations as one of those Miami Vice “stare through your apartment windows” heavy melancholy mood type thing, it’s quite vaporous

I enjoy the “rapping” on blues traveler’s “hook”

It was used memorably to open an episode of Pose, so maybe you're right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROIxst-LfSU

( beegees To Live Somebody was my wedding dance 25 yrs ago, a little biased)

er “love,” but at this point yo i lived it

I think ABBA, Bee Gees and Elton John suffered from overexposure in the 70’s and early 80’s and were considered uncool for a couple of decades but they have been rediscovered as iconic, cool artists with some great music with people born mid 90’s onwards. I have never heard anyone younger than 30 have a negative opinion on them.

i was listening to petula clark sing in french last night...

she is 91 years young i might add...

I have similar feelings about the Bee Gees, although I think they are cool now.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Saturday, 16 March 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Heard a 12 year old recently muttering "Staying Alive" while walking down the street. I don't get it but I'm old now

growing up in the 90s, i remember elton/abba/beegees being "around" but more as like ... kinda "novelty oldies." also it was considered "gay music" in a lot of circles+carried connotations.

the 90s were fairly homophobic, idk if anyone else remembers that????

moka says overexposure- i say at least partial damage was done by "DISCO SUCKS."

(i think the three acts are fine. all are "greatest hits=good enough" for me.)

xpost i see you, scott! in the end, is early france gall _that_ much different?

Holding Back The Years has always been great, don't know why Simply Red were so hated for so long. I sometimes think about this scene from the otherwise pretty good film 24 Hour Party People

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B6AZdgQbeU

The quote (from "God") is "It's a pity you didn't sign the Smiths, but you were right about Mick Hucknell. His music's rubbish, and he's a ginger." - I am a ginger myself, and this sort of thing can fuck right off.

disagree. i don't deem anyone "uncool" for liking music, but 'holding back the years' ... nah, very dud. much no. you do you, but i can think of better ways to spend my time.

(like slagging off 'holding back the years' for an immediate example)

(also yes, 24 hr party people very good despite many problematic things)

but wait what about the "cool" version...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbwlFDZDh_U

Whoa, I had never heard that!

Pretty good! I was bracing myself for the worst because of the band's name, but they get the mood basically right. The vocal is fashioned after Hucknall's, the music no--Mick Hucknall fronting the Velvet Underground.

The Frantic Elevator’s singer is Hucknall.

Oh god--that's the most spectacularly boneheaded mistake I've made since I reviewed an unmarked cassette of the La Bamba soundtrack in 1987 and complained that the version of "Who Do You Love" lacked Bo Diddley's menace or something like that...and it was Bo himself (I don't think the original, but maybe that too).

^^Bo w/Los Lobos backing him, IIRC.

Yeah, I looked it up--and it was, as I recall, a pedestrian version.

I like the Frantic Elevators' original, like the hit better.

It sounds like Bo doing his lyrics over a random Los Lobos song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq-vmb8Gem8

ABBA was cool in the ‘90s… Think “Muriel‘s Wedding.” ABBA Gold was a cool CD to have. I honestly don’t remember a time when Abba wasn’t cool.

Xxxpost: yeah the 90’s were very homophobic but also very cynical for the most part… so artists using gimmicky outfits and making bombastic, heartfelt party music was probably seen as corny or uncool. I’d argue the 90’s were one of the corniest decades for music, ironically.

dang I LOVED the La Bamba soundtrack, would still like it if i heard it I'm sure

my contribution to this conversation is probably Steve Miller Band "Abracadabra"

this is secretly the cool version of 'holding back the years' fyi:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4R6UGHAVdI

I will never understand the love Los Lobos get. They are as replacement-level as it gets IMO.

As far as the actual subject of the thread, uncool music that you love...Al Di Meola. A North Jersey guido playing fake flamenco and shredtastic metal fusion? I am in. I also listen to Yngwie Malmsteen more often than I probably should.

The ABBA fan club includes Lester Bangs, John Lydon, Elvis Costello and Pete Townshend - they were always cool to ppl in the know, it's just they look very uncool to the squares.

Ian McCulloch used to bang on about them in the 80s too

I have a morbid fondness for a lot of 90's and 00's Modern Rock radio hits, I think partially because that stuff comes from such a culturally and geographically distant world to me. "Breakfast At Tiffany's", "Iris", crap like that - I hear it and I imagine a seductive life of normiedom I could never have, a world where Friends is the funniest show of all time and everyone's excited for the big game.

I have no idea of what's cool and what isn't, thus demonstrating my lack of cool from the off. Anyway my lowest-regarded favourites probably include:
- elaborately arranged, fiddly-diddly 70s prog like Gryphon, Kansas, Gentle Giant and Nektar. Also IQ and a bunch of operatic Italian prog (PFM, Le Orme, Osanna etc).
- the first two Europe albums.
- the first two Zebra albums.
- early Queen and Status Quo, because when you say you like them everyone thinks you mean the later, more popular records. Ditto Judas Priest and Genesis.
- Y&T.

I have some affection for the extremely uncool Greg Kihn, almost entirely because "The Breakup Song" was one of the first 45s I ever bought. I ended up having two or three of his albums, although not the one with Jeopardy on it. I know he eventually became a morning rock jock and is probably kind of a dickhead, but there are a couple of album cuts I would rep for.

i would say that Europe and Zebra are the two undeniably uncool ones and that you could find more than a few people who would say the rest are cool. i like early Y&T a bunch!

x-post

These three LPs I absolutely love have at different times severely reduced my cred with different friends

* Fairport Convention - "Babbacombe" Lee
* Captain Beefheart - Bluejeans & Moonbeams
* Bonzo Dog Band - Let's Make Up & Be Friendly

(Think if you are not a fan of these artists then these would most likely barely register as uncool, though I have had v negative reactions when playing Swarbrick-era Fairport to people)

I feel like if I broke down and listened to albums by The Romantics that I would probably like them. I think I have them all in the store.

Sorry but early Europe fucking rule and probably influenced Ghost into the bargain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mcv05PbZ5tA

Daniel_Rf – good post

Camaradarie's post above underscored for me how subjective (and varied) the concept of "cool" is. For me, it more or less means rock-critic-sanctioned, so seeing Fairport and Captain Beefheart was confusing. But for someone else, that may be the complete opposite of cool.

I mean Fairport and Beefheart and Bonzos fans generally hate those albums

Cairo might be considered uncool, even to prog fans? I've said it before but their singing reminds me of gillette adverts, maybe earnest and heroic in a power metal way? Easy to imagine them all with 80s mullets. "Angels And Rage" is one of my all-timers, just incredibly exciting and I like that sort of dense whirlwind quality they have sometimes.

Aren't all the swedish extreme metal bands into ABBA?

Late additions:

Magnum
Saga
Pavlov's Dog
Rhapsody of Fire
Uli Jon Roth & Electric Sun
Steve Hackett
Angel

(xpost) Okay, that makes sense--but I'll stick to "cool" being a subjective concept.

Unless we're talking about Michael Bolton, he's the sole exception.

that first Angel album rips so hard. its awesome.

i'm a big City Boy fan. i win. something. i win something.

i love the first Starz album more than any Kiss album ever made.

I enjoy some Sons of Champlain songs, but I wouldn’t even know of them if not for my dad. Horn rock!

Is union by Toni Childs uncool?

totally.

Returning to the topic of ABBA’s coolness in the ‘90s; just came across this Flying Nun tribute on social media (had never heard of it)

i looked at this on FB and realized that there are secret levels of whiteness that i am not privy to. other than richard thompson and the preservation hall band i had no idea who ANY of these people were. there are local festivals like this all the time around here. they aren't for young people. i should be the demographic. but unfortunately they just look really uncool to me. no offense to sir. richard. who i love. and who plays around here, like, 10 times a year.

https://scontent-bos5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/431883219_931582178343904_5510188593972983208_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5f2048&_nc_ohc=MK3PyoWjoJEAX-vDaFF&_nc_ht=scontent-bos5-1.xx&oh=00_AfC4SRlMc7HbMyR6lxpbBu_4TcXHe-Isn2-LMuJQ6dp3nQ&oe=65FBE60C

https://scontent-bos5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/432401269_931582175010571_632896888730513714_n.jpg?_nc_cat=102&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5f2048&_nc_ohc=AsDwIGvx32UAX-fCKR9&_nc_ht=scontent-bos5-1.xx&oh=00_AfCVG904LrGEChN-YXEFpcdG7BAsLRIB0VCAqKP4xHQB4w&oe=65FC5A6F

https://scontent-bos5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/432423551_931582191677236_4885266910016941552_n.jpg?_nc_cat=110&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5f2048&_nc_ohc=kvdnG8Z_K20AX9NdgUQ&_nc_ht=scontent-bos5-1.xx&oh=00_AfDzFatc1kxG45NKaPYwLTqIzUhLnRGPYy6KroBvJZZvFg&oe=65FC62B5

i know laura cantrell. or of her. didn't she have a radio show on WFMU?

peter blanchette is from here and he plays a crazy guitar. the "archguitar".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COzLdipNUe4

anyway, i don't dig nu-americana for the most part. too many hats.

alright if no one's gonna name anything TRULY uncool I'll just mention that I think both Moxy Fruvous and the Barenaked Ladies have written some excellent songs

I've recently come around to Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66, those records are fun! maybe they are cool now but they weren't for years

they are permanently cool. all the 70s records are as great as the 60s ones.

Back in 2019, I tried (and failed) to drum up sufficient enthusiasm around here to place a “Frozen II” outtake on the EOY poll.

man, my kid is obsessed with brazil thanks to spotify. his playlists are insanely hip. he's 18! you'd think he was a 50-something japanese sake bar owner.

Steve Harley died! he's not very cool now. but does anyone still listen to him?? maybe in the U.K. they never stopped.

@frogbs I said The Tea Party and I’m with you on BNL (but not Moxy)

Stuck in the 90s man

Buy a new Gameboy

For the fun and the fashion

No, I bought it for Tetris

Seeing as we're above the 49th, I genuinely love--I'm about to cross a line very few have--Glass Tiger's "Don't Forget Me (When I'm Gone)."

(The BNL's Bruce Cockburn cover is great, especially the video. Hated Moxy Fruvous--and talk about baggage...)

The Blow Monkeys are one of my favorite bands and sound objectively great to me.

This can't be cool.

I like everything Whiskeytown ever did, including the couple dozen unreleased tracks.

(Ryan Adam's solo gets patchy pretty quickly thereafter.)

Sergio Mendes could def be considered uncool from a bossa nova purist perspective, he's the dude who went off to become a big star in the US and do covers of Anglo songs. but then from a 90's and beyond lounge revivalist pov he becomes very cool indeed.

alright if no one's gonna name anything TRULY uncool I'll just mention that I think both Moxy Fruvous and the Barenaked Ladies have written some excellent songs

quite like Barenaked Ladies, I get that they're an early incarnation of epic bacon/reddit style humour but that stuff wasn't as omnipresent then, or perhaps I was younger and less discerning, anyway they strike me as fundamentally benign. got Brian Wilson to sing "Brian Wilson" on that live album, too.

I certainly despised Michael Bolton in my youth but "How Can We Be Lovers" works as well as the next AOR/power ballad banger.

I like that Bonzo Dog Band album Camaraderie posted

I also have a Blow Monkeys LP but tbh I don't like very much on it so maybe that doesn't count

I own the first Asia LP

I like lots of post-1980 punk stuff that was definitely not cool in the UK when I was growing up but appears to have been cool in the USA to some degree, and a lot of it seems to have been reappraised a bit in more recent times

main uncool music for me is probably lots of pre-Britpop UK indie music that is still roundly detested

The ABBA fan club includes Lester Bangs, John Lydon, Elvis Costello and Pete Townshend - they were always cool to ppl in the know, it's just they look very uncool to the squares.

Chris Carter of Throbbing Gristle ca. 1980.

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZKk0vXesqmA/X9zspXItOZI/AAAAAAAAKCU/j_lEhCqq2RAjhwNF12352KGx2mLFH6WZACLcBGAsYHQ/s500/abbachris.jpg

I saw the Abba Voyage show in London last year and I was the only cool person there.

Oh yes ABBA Voyage is not cool.

The CBGBs store they had at that New York airport also wasn't cool.

That uncool couple you sat next to? Used to be in Throbbing Gristle.

"main uncool music for me is probably lots of pre-Britpop UK indie music that is still roundly detested"

names please.

only one post on the revived steve harley thread. ouch.

xp reminds me that I've had an "in defense of Kingmaker" blog planned for quite a while now, must get it finished.

I unapologetically love “Cracked Rear View” by Hootie and the Blowfish. As a Brit, do I get bonus uncool points for embracing the sound of mid-90s middle America.

yes. yes you do. i can't imagine listening to the whole thing. but there must be a reason why it sold a zillion copies.

only one post on the revived steve harley thread. ouch

More on the obit thread. For the record, I don't think Steve Harley was ever considered particularly uncool - except when he did The Phantom of the Opera.

some of these bands I only like a few songs by and a lot of it is more for nostalgic reasons than thinking these bands were actually brilliant, but yes the late 80s/early 90s era bands like Carter USM/Ned's Atomic Dustbin/Senseless Things/Mega City 4/Pop Will Eat Itself/Inspiral Carpets/yes even Kingmaker had a couple of songs I could still listen to

I went to see Sultans of Ping last year (not UK obviously but same kind of thing)

I think Ocean Colour Scene might be the band with the biggest disconnect between how irredeemably uncool I find them (everything about their aesthetic and general vibe is so corny and off-putting) and how much I actually like all their big singles. There were all these britpop bands who were terrible but had one (1) quite good song and OCS were like that except they had five or six. Also, The Riverboat Song is better than Four Sticks.

I like a lot of Britpop stuff that most people would call uncool, I guess.
There's some hippy/festival crossover type stuff I enjoy like The Skints
Most of all, I'm pretty cool though

xp In my "introduce yourself" post 20 years ago, I said BNL was one of my favorite bands. They've fallen quite a bit in my band ranking but there's a good handful of songs I'll still stick up for. And their live album Rock Spectacle is one of the only live albums I love

I feel like a ton of music I loved in high school was uncool at the time (Enya, They Might Be Giants, Enigma, various synthpop groups), but nearly all those artists have been reevaluated and given some dues over the years. Hard to think of anything that has just stayed uncool

Has anyone said traditional Irish fiddling yet? Cuz fellas I love a reel.

Not uncool.

Traditional music in general isn't uncool.

reminds me that I've had an "in defense of Kingmaker" blog planned for quite a while

lol I love Kingmaker, definitely add them to my not-cool list. (They were very briefly cool when they first hit, NME lauded and all that, but they basically got middled out between Madchester and Britpop.)

I've even seen Kingmaker live, TWICE. (once an exceedingly rare U.S. performance)

the two albums by The Lucy Show are two of my favorite 80s rock records. I haven't stopped listening to them since 1985/1986. but i don't know if they are uncool or if its just that i am the only person who still remembers or plays them. there must be a difference between those things.

oh wait duh on the 80s thread i started or maybe the big music thread i just mentioned that i had been playing that first Easterhouse album. surely they aren't cool by anyone's standard. i still love that record though. U2 + Chameleons + Communism.

I owned manai at one point but couldnt get into it

mania

I have defended 311 a bunch, not to say I *love* them but I think they are underrated. FWIW they just did a Tiny Desk concert, which I'm curious to check out.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, March 14, 2024 12:30 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

you should, I enjoyed it a lot. Nick Hexum still has great hair

I think Billy Joel is still uncool at this point but I might be wrong, so him.
Seconding the Al DiMeola reference upthread as I dig all his stuff and it's dollar bin status supports his undesired status.
I also own and love a bunch of Herbie Mann records, including the ones that Sonny Sharrock isn't on.
I feel like it is tricky to gauge the coolness factor of metal bands, but I do listen to a lot of slam metal, which a significant number of metalheads turn their nose up at. I am currently wearing a Waking the Cadaver t-shirt, who might be the most shitted on and mocked band in the slam/deathcore/brutal death metal axis.

Keith Whitley is cool, right?

Jimmy Scott? 90s/00s Dee Dee Bridgewater?

Re ABBA, like everyone else I like the best of their singles. But they are pretty uncool for this:

https://www.investorschronicle.co.uk/education/2021/01/21/lessons-from-history-on-abba-and-shareholder-capitalism/

Back in 1982, exports of Swedish pop (read: Abba) were booming, but the local economy was recovering from a recession. The leftwing Social Democratic Party, seeking to overturn a weak coalition government in the upcoming election, had a new pitch for downtrodden workers.

Its proposal, pioneered by Swedish economist Rudolf Meidner, was to force Sweden’s leading firms to give a fifth of their “excess profits” to trade unions. The unions would in turn use this money to buy company shares, effectively handing part-ownership of the private sector to workers. Big business would supposedly be run less in the interests of outside investors, and more in the interests of the little man.

Abba certainly did not find this proposition funny. “It is ridiculous to think [the unions] could take care of the money better than us professionals,” the group’s manager, Stig Anderson, told The Christian Science Monitor magazine at the time. If Sweden elected the Social Democrats, he suggested, it would be akin to voting to go behind the Iron Curtain. An outdoor concert was organised in Stockholm to help finance the campaign against the alleged communist takeover and Björn Ulvaeus, one of Abba’s members and lead composers, turned his writing talents to penning pamphlets about the perils of the policy.

Was this a selfless devotion to the liberal cause? Abba, as chance would have it, had been building something of a business empire themselves.

ABBA are kind of a unique pick here I think, they're still very uncool (does anyone want to admit to liking Mama Mia!?) but they do often slot in as the one acceptable guilty pleasure

The movies or the song? I like the song.

I also feel like "superficially corny seeming thing is actually really great" is a well worn coolness trope (Sonic Youth on the Carpenters is an example) but frankly at this point ABBA doesn't even feel like that to me anymore, they're just a confirmed part of the canon.

“Mamma Mia” is one of my top 50 favorite songs of all time.

Seconding the Al DiMeola reference upthread as I dig all his stuff and it's dollar bin status supports his undesired status...I feel like it is tricky to gauge the coolness factor of metal bands, but I do listen to a lot of slam metal, which a significant number of metalheads turn their nose up at. I am currently wearing a Waking the Cadaver t-shirt, who might be the most shitted on and mocked band in the slam/deathcore/brutal death metal axis.

Oh fuck — someone else on ILX who listens to Al Di Meola and slam metal? Come sit here by me. I buy so many brutal death metal records, almost entirely based on cover art. Waking The Cadaver are awesome.

Once we pretend ABBA is still uncool we're a short ways away from claiming Burt Bacharach is uncool, ya know.

xposts

(xxp) I assume it was the film that was being referred to and, yes, I quite enjoyed it! In any case ABBA are definitely NOT very uncool!

Yeah I don't think Mamma Mia the movie or that ABBA vr thing impinge on their cool any more than that Richard Curtis film and the Cirque du Soleil show made the Beatles uncool (yes yes I know I'm leaving myself open to the obvious zing here).

ABBA aren't "uncool," I think the hang-up is whether they are or were ever actually "cool." I would say ABBA aren't cool themselves — in the way that, like, Debbie Harry is cool — but liking ABBA is cool, or cool enough to not qualify as uncool.

I feel like ABBA are mocked for being the height of 70s bad taste by people that don't remember the general standard of Eurovision entries from back then.

Oh fuck — someone else on ILX who listens to Al Di Meola and slam metal? Come sit here by me. I buy so many brutal death metal records, almost entirely based on cover art. Waking The Cadaver are awesome.

hell yeah, glad I'm not alone on bespectacled fusion wank/braindead breakdown island. I'd always dismissed WTC as a joke based off the old "Shredded Wheat" meme, but after moving to New Jersey a couple years ago, I was compelled to give the local boys a fair shake and now they're a legit fave of mine.

saw a jazz guitarist last night, Stéphane Wrembel, and he talked about his early playing days being a big Al Di Meola fan and then played a ripping cover, all fast runs, was good.

music I like that ain't cool

Kenny Loggins - "Meet Me Halfway"
Boy Meets Girl - "Waiting on a Star to Fall"
New Radicals - Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too
Michael Buble - It's Time (ok, laugh it up)
Josh Groban - Closer
Jack Wagner - "All I Need"
the Mickey Thomas Starship power ballads

Oh, Kenny Loggins — I had the 45 of "Don't Fight It" by him and Steve Perry, and I still like that song.

i still like the first counting crows album, that's pretty fucking uncool

New Radicals - Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too

is this considered uncool on ILX? feel like there might be a few people here who dig this album though I can see ILX absolutely hating it

Michael buble seems aight, tiers above Michael Bolton and that kind of ez thing. Buble goes for authentic Sinatra type vibes, yeah?

pretty much. the arrangements are lazy though. and he stole Nina Simone's version of "Feelin' Good"

I would go so far as to say "You Get What You Give" is one of the best pop songs of all time

I unapologetically love “Cracked Rear View” by Hootie and the Blowfish.

My son's new band does mostly originals, but one of the few covers they do is "Let her Cry," it's a fucking amazing song.

xpost amen!

I still carry a torch for very-briefly-hip-only-to-subsequently-become-loathsome-indefensible-punchline bands like ARE Weapons and Salem. Maybe The Streets fit here, too, though I don't think Skinner gets a fraction of the contempt those other artists do

I still like White Zombie and metal-era Cro-Mags, and the Ministry records nobody likes

To be clear, when I say I like this stuff, that doesn't mean I ever actually listen to any of it, just that I can be called upon to defend it if necessary

i feel the same way about Slipknot. i have watched live footage on Youtube and enjoyed it. and watched the videos. they are noisy though. i think that's what makes them more my thing. but, yeah, i don't own any slipknot. i think i bought Iowa when it came out. that's a fucked up album. they actually like rhythm and percussion. that also set them apart from, you know, the usual nu-metal suspects. that and their genuine heaviness.

i stan for KMFDM

KMFDM IS...A DRUG AGAINST WAR

The guitar riff in this is sick

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UebEtBB7GlA

I stan for chemlab

Boy Meets Girl - "Waiting on a Star to Fall"

this rules always and foever

it reminds me of a very specific year of summer camp. mostly coz I heard it on the radio there daily

i don't dig it necessarily but i get a thrill from not not enjoying creed songs. "higher" could be ok if it didn't have that flat and lifeless production. maybe the same phenomenon daniel_rf is referring to about listening to "breakfast at tiffany's" and wishing he could be normie, except for me it's imagining what it would be like to be a white straight conservative doofus who works for a car dealership, goes out to applebee's with his buds on saturday night and church on sundays, etc. i'd never want to be that person but we all need our taboos and thrills right.

xp i guy i like and respect stans for slipknot, i've been meaning to give em a go, i don't think i've even heard any.

i'm trying to get into polka

I like lots of post-1980 punk stuff that was definitely not cool in the UK when I was growing up but appears to have been cool in the USA to some degree, and a lot of it seems to have been reappraised a bit in more recent times

main uncool music for me is probably lots of pre-Britpop UK indie music that is still roundly detested

― Colonel Poo, Monday, March 18, 2024 10:32 AM (nine hours ago)

Would like to see examples.

Dire Straits. Bloody Great.

Mates flicking through my LPs to find their first 4 (I draw the line somewhere) "Why are these here?"

My bar is low for anything rockabilly, not just third-stringers from the 50s, but I'll go deep on the second string of 80s/90s revivalists, flamey shirts, betty page bangs and probably awful proto-MAGA/Brexit social opinions that they thankfully don't share in their music because it would be un-50s of them.

Mental As Anything - Live It Up

Goodbye Mr Mackenzie - The Rattler

Jon Secada - Just Another Day

Tasmin Archer - Sleeping Satellites

Judy Tzuke

Five Star - System Addict

god i love "just another day." is "kiss from a rose" uncool? oh well cuz it's perfect.

out of all the nonsense i listed, 'just another day' is a towering mountain of awesomeness afaic, so fucking great

crazy town - butterfly

my honest response to this thread proposition is that if you can give a heartfelt reason for why you like something, that's what's really cool 😎

Londonbeat - I've Been Thinking About You

In addition to my post upthread:

Yes (they may be cool in certain circles but none I’ve ever taken part in)
Blink 182 - Dude Ranch (the worst part is that I didn’t like this as an adolescent and got into in my late 20s at the incessant urging of someone I know who’s obsessed)
Counting Crows - Recovering the Satellites
Dave Matthews Band - Before These Crowded Streets, the Lillywhite Sessions, various live documents of this era
Pearl Jam - everything through Binaural
Bush - Sixteen Stone
Gin Blossoms - New Miserable Experience
All Guns N Roses before Chinese Democracy
Little Feat (I don’t know what consensus is on them but I always got clowned on from people I knew)

Probably way more 90s stuff that I’m not thinking of at the moment…that’s definitely my weak spot

bendy, great rockabilly post

Yeah, I liked that one too. I like lots of stuff in the rockabilly swing axis, most of which gets no love around here. Cherry Poppin’ Daddies might be the toughest one to justify.

I'm halfway ocd with the new Norah Jones album

-1980s/90s Yes, as well as Trevor Rabin's solo album from '89 (and his production work for Bonham's "The Disregard of Timekeeping")
-Brit rock bands derided as landfil indie, not just the "respectable" stuff like The Libertines or Futureheads, but bands who serve as ilx punchlines like the Fratellis
-KoRn's first 4 records
-Alice Longyu Gao, of whom I've never been able to play an entire song during a party without protest

catching up here, co-signing on Korn and Gin Blossoms

Jon Secada - Just Another Day

― Bernard Quidbins (NickB), Monday, March 18, 2024 5:38 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

never paid any attention to this song despite its ubiquity, listening to it again now as if for the first time, it really is magnificent

yeah I love that song

Pablo Cruise kinda rules

There isn't really anyone I have to be cool for, but I stick with my ten-year-old self in continuing to enjoy the first Edie Brickell & New Bohemians album. It's nice to remember not being aware of too many things.

Judy Tzuke

― Bernard Quidbins (NickB)

No way! she’s cool as a cucumber and so are her fans.

Jon Secada rules

we got any other fans of classic French-Canadian fiddling here? J.O. LaMadeline, Joseph Allard, Isidore Soucey... and don't even get me started on the Cape Breton fiddlers! Angus Chisolm?? Bill Lamey?? Get outta here.

90s Britrock also-rans: The Wildhearts, Senseless Things, Therapy?, Headswim, The Almighty. Definitely more on the Kerrang! side of things than e.g. your Neds, and definitley very uncool.

that Jon Secada song is GREAT

struggling to find a lot of this "uncool". maybe at some point, but people come back round to things like Therapy? and Bush.

and liking the odd song as an exception kind-of doesn't count. I hate RHCP but I admit to enjoying One Hot Minute. Still fucking hate them though.

anyone going to admit their unequivocal love for the back catalogues of Coldplay or The National (just reading names off the Glasto headliners here) or Mumford & Sons

Are Coldplay really that bad though? Mumford & Sons however...

I like lots of post-1980 punk stuff that was definitely not cool in the UK when I was growing up but appears to have been cool in the USA to some degree, and a lot of it seems to have been reappraised a bit in more recent times

main uncool music for me is probably lots of pre-Britpop UK indie music that is still roundly detested

― Colonel Poo, Monday, March 18, 2024 10:32 AM (nine hours ago)

Would like to see examples.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Monday, 18 March 2024 20:36 bookmarkflaglink

I gave lots of examples of the UK indie stuff. for the UK punk stuff, I guess I was thinking of what's now called "UK82" after the Exploited song, Discharge, GBH, Blitz etc, and anarcho-punk bands like Crass, Flux of Pink Indians etc - that stuff was always sneered at in the music press when I actually read the music press, which tbf is a long time ago

xp "Currently out of fashion/uncool" and "uncool for all time" are certainly different categories. Black Lace or Dollar are probably in the latter category (sorry Black Lace superfans), but 15yrs ago you would probably have put e.g. Slowdive in that category too. It's hard to think that there might be an Almighty revival, but I guess it could happen? Also "uncool for whom?" is a legitimate question, but you can only go on your perception of "music culture" as you see it when it comes to nebulous questiosn like this, and for me Therapy? seem fit that "uncool" category.

yeah I thought of shoegaze when I was listing my early 90s bands - if this was 20 years ago I would've listed Slowdive and Chapterhouse as well but not nowadays

Are Coldplay really that bad though? Mumford & Sons however...

― Tom D (the first British Asian ILXor) (Tom D.), Tuesday, March 19, 2024 10:55 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I mean... I don't think they're considered especially cool in this day and age unless I missed something

That's true but I certainly wouldn't be surprised to find someone on ILX who liked at least some of their music. I wouldn't listen to it but then I wouldn't listen to U2 either.

anyone going to admit their unequivocal love for the back catalogues of Coldplay or The National (just reading names off the Glasto headliners here) or Mumford & Sons

Will rep for first couple of Coldplay albums and unequivocally love The National, who seem like an odd choice for this thread. I even voted for their most recent album in 2023 EOY poll. Mumford & Sons can fuck off however.

Coldplay probably are due a renaissance in terms of reappriasal by zoomers and alphas who grew up with their music around the house, similar to Phil Collins in the late-90s/2000s

It's my theory that every band that people say they hate have at least one song that the hater admits is "okay to pretty good". As I say, my exception for RHCP is One Hot Minute (aka the album fans dislike because it doesn't sound really annoying). U2 is a toughie but I like that Batman song they did and the Chimes' version of "Still Haven't Found". There are moments on Coldplay's first album I cop to liking (especially 'Don't Panic').

we didn't have a melody maker or NME in the states and i assumed that what press existed kinda hated most punk in general in the early 80s. you had creem magazine and the village voice and the new york rocker and they probably reviewed current brit punk at the time but a big magazine like rolling stone mostly didn't. unless it was the clash. they ended up saying positive stuff about husker du/replacements/meat puppets/minutemen. those are the only ones i remember. i don't think i ever read a Discharge review in anything outside of Maximum R&R. and nobody liked metal. in print. or hardly anyone. until the big thrash bands started to get good reviews. don't know why metallica made such a difference. but mainstream critics latched on to them.
byron coley's column in spin was one of the few places where you could read about uglier music in the supermarket in the 80s. it was refreshing. or chuck eddy writing about scratch acid and die kreuzen. everyone wanted me to listen to green on red. a picture of swans or live skull in a magazine was huge.

x-post

You didn’t read Trouser Press, skot?

Or New York Rocker for that matter

This thread is a little backwards. A lot of critically acclaimed music is uncool, a lot of critically panned music is considered cool (or at least gets a pass). So it's a bit funny to see people mentioning U2 and Coldplay. As an imaginary litmus test, I'm trying to imagine the reaction of my younger colleagues to nerdy music... and I'm imagining a lot of blank and amused stares.

I brought up U2 because they aren't considered uncool while Coldplay are even though I don't hear that big a difference between them musically (latter day U2, that is).

who says your younger colleagues ate cool nabozo. do they drive bikes and have badass tattoos.

Yes, ate. Who says they ate cool.

It’s kind of fascinating to me how Billy Joel stubbornly resists coolness, even as his music cycles in and out of fashion.

Even back in the “Uptown Girl” days, I knew (as a kid) he wasn’t cool…

I still remember meeting a girl in my first year of University circa 2003 who was like "I'm big fan of U2 but I don't talk about them much among friends who are into cooler music like Coldplay".

lol

who says your younger colleagues ate cool nabozo. do they drive bikes and have badass tattoos.
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, March 19, 2024 2:18 PM (thirty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

They (two of them) hate their job, are pursuing PHDs, have a sense of style and just found a way to spend the weekend in Roatán. Two others are the definition of uncool but they also speak 15 languages between them and are super sweet and sincere. Admittedly, we rarely speak about music. I was also thinking of my partner's reaction to Björk and how nothing I hold sacred is spared.

anyone going to admit their unequivocal love for the back catalogues of Coldplay or The National (just reading names off the Glasto headliners here) or Mumford & Sons

I like the first three (maybe even the first four) Coldplay albums a lot. Saw them at Madison Square Garden in 2003 and they were great. Have never knowingly heard a song by the National or Mumford & Sons.

there is one Coldplay song I really like. I just Googled it because I remember the video having a bunch of elephant costumes in it. it's called "Paradise" and it has nearly 2 billion views

just out of curiosity, what do people on ILX actually consider uncool? like if someone on here was really into old polka records we'd all think that was dope as hell right?

I also like that song… I didn’t even know it was Coldplay until they performed it on the Super Bowl, IIRC.

I hate Coldplay but on the same ballpark: U2

They are deeply uncool (mostly Bono tbh) but there’s been several moments in their career where I can get behind them. Too ashamed to listen in anything other than headphones.

Hall & Oates were also considered very uncool weren’t they? I love them.

Swing revival (especially electroswing) and retro pastiche (Manhattan Transfer, Pink Martini, Puppini Sisters) have been pretty roundly dismissed here. xp

Hall and Oates are totally cool again. Same with ELO.

Great Big Sea

xp "Currently out of fashion/uncool" and "uncool for all time" are certainly different categories

strong agree

i feel like everything is so atomized at this point we have quantum coolness. you can know how fast opinion is changing but you don't whether it's cool right now. or you can now how cool or uncool it is, but not how fast or what direction it's going.

viva la vida is a great album. parachutes is too

I've been treating uncool by ILX metrics and to me that metric boils down to:

1) has the band/artist had a thread excoriating how bad they are (and has nobody revived it to say "omg u were nuts 20 years ago")
2) has this band/artist's music ever appeared in a rolling worst music thread
3) has Ned ever hyperbolically dissed the artist or their music

if u have answered yes to one of the above, u r uncool

Ned is Newtonian

just out of curiosity, what do people on ILX actually consider uncool?

I'd have said the Boomtown Rats were totally beyond the ilx pale, but there's an old thread with some positive comments so what do I know.

But if anyone wishes to profess admiration for Mumford & Sons this might be the place to do it...?

Particularly the banjo stylings of far right tosspot Winston Marshall.

xp that's a good one. I quite like the first Boomtown Rats album and the next 2 have their moments. I suppose it depends on your ability to separate the art from Bob Geldof

I dig the mighty mighty bosstones album “question the answers”

“jump through the hoops” could be by the replacements

will anyone admit to liking this sort of wholesome garbage? this is the pinnacle of uncool from a number of different angles. even "not repelled" would count as "liking"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8l5hnWRZYY

things that are uncool in that video

1) the hat
2) the dancing
3) bringing families into the video to lip sync to get as on the nose as possible
4) the vocal affectation that every male folksy pop singer has adopted since like 2007

but no, I am repelled by it sadly

There are pockets of UK hip hop I'd deem extremely uncool that people I know nevertheless seem to enjoy. Like, there's obviously loads of great stuff going on, but there's also a strand of really cringey overly-conscious, festival-oriented stuff that makes me feel sick - Dizraeli, Lowkey and Undercover Hippie among them

That "Family" song is just plain bad and corny. I'm not sure how that crosses over with "uncool"

oh no it's mega uncool, like....

like if you were playing this and dancing to it on the playground as a kid, people would point n laugh

Was it Q magazine or something that did a "50 Most Uncool Albums" list quite a few years ago now? I only remember "Love You" by the Beeach Boys being on it, which is pretty cool because it's a very cool uncool record

"You didn’t read Trouser Press, skot?" "Or New York Rocker for that matter"

yup, sometimes. when i could get them. but even those seemed like an older generation to me. like they were still into Stiff Records or David Johansen gig reviews. i was younger. and liked younger stuff. hardcore. i dunno. i felt like that generation had moved on from punk. like it was a relic from the 70s and i was just getting into it and the newer bands. it always felt like Rolling Stone was THE WORD on popular music. for worse and for worse. it was hardly ever for the better. though they had good critics writing reviews.

it should be noted that the very first serious sonic youth review was written by an IlxOr in the New York Rocker.

oh no it's mega uncool, like....

like if you were playing this and dancing to it on the playground as a kid, people would point n laugh

― CEO Greedwagon (Neanderthal), Tuesday, March 19, 2024 3:40 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

"Daaaaad PLEASE stop singing that song in the supermarket we're DYYYYING"

I'd say these days those ubiquitous rock bands that people had enough of years ago like Foo Fighters, Nickleback and Oasis are the hardest sell in terms of cool

"just out of curiosity, what do people on ILX actually consider uncool?"

"I'd have said the Boomtown Rats were totally beyond the ilx pale, but there's an old thread with some positive comments so what do I know."

easy answer. solo bob geldof. uncool! first 3 boomtown rats albums are fine though. tonic for the troops is classique pub punk.

i've never heard them but julian lennon has 7 studio albums and they are all very uncool.

random ilxor: "oh but i quite liked valotte..."

which is fine. but UNCOOL.

i bought the first coldplay album without hearing it because i read a review that compared them to talk talk! i am STILL mad at coldplay and that review. i think the same thing might have happened with the first elbow album. just don't compare things to talk talk. just don't. everyone will be happier.

Solo Geldof is indeed a good gambit!

i should start an uncool 80s listening thread. i go through so much of it at work. stuff that i am not even tempted to play and i'll play ALMOST anything! but i just get a whiff of that major label echo chamber production on the shiny aor/new wave and its hard to keep going. even in the name of science.

https://i.discogs.com/rNy9G_NfWxAE6CG7Mdg0-KSYbvs5AHtyHXBDTbrTkzQ/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTg2NTI0/My0xMzE5NjMwMTAz/LmpwZWc.jpeg

https://i.discogs.com/p3R5TB-yd6_nPu457w1IdV68ZI9bYqlGXpNx84diqlg/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTE1Njc4/MzItMTIzOTc4NjEz/MS5qcGVn.jpeg

"family" is interesting. i have a huge block when it comes to unquestioned family worship or celebration, for personal reasons, so i can't really enjoy it, in fact i'm repelled by it on a pretty visceral level. the hey ho stomp music thing has become such an underhanded shortcut for "we all belong together". it feels really cynical and calculated in this song, idk if it's always been that way to a degree, maybe even when it was the mid-2000s and arcade fire was doing it, but in this particular song it's just ideology all the way down. going on vacation on the credit card is an interesting line because it tips the hat towards current economic reality now while overall just willing you to sink into the soft disgusting pillow of consumption as a redemptive act. of course family love is equal opportunity and multiracial hence the highlife sounding guitars etc. just a collapse of difference and a strong tug on that powerful need to feel like we belong that we all have with a violent emptying out of particularity or context or history or thought or action. if strong and calculated propaganda is uncool then it's uncool i guess? maybe in 15 years it will be cool again because i'm sure it will date very poorly and just be jarring.

does anyone still listen to Doll By Doll? they had their fans. but NOT COOL.

col. poo is still waiting for the big Splodgenessabounds revival. or an adicts revival!

https://i.discogs.com/qXYMhn9Aul1LBXf178PDCzF5ftIO5rIk08VnQi6KCfo/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:420/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9BLTI1MjY1/MC0xNDMzODI1MDA4/LTU1NDUuanBlZw.jpeg

Scott Seward's post of Frozen Ghost just confirms that my idea of "uncool" basically boils down to "most CanCon".

UB40 is very uncool (everything after the first couple of albums), but I rather like a lot of the Promises & Lies album as it was my mum's favourite growing up, see also 'Stars' by Simply Red

One thing about that "Family" video is screenshot protagonist with the hat doing goofy dances on his own made me laugh because it felt like "yeah I wrote this song about family, I myself am isolated and know absolutely no one, but I dance to keep the tears from flowing". Sadly scrolling further I see he is eventually joined by his own family, thus ruining the only redeemable aspect of the video.

hahahaa

“The soft disgusting pillow of consumption” ❤️
Ty map

aor is definitely the final frontier of uncool.

https://gdmonline.info/

Don’t know how Doll by Dolll are regarded, but Jackie Leven is held in some esteem. There was a lot of positivity when they released a retrospective a couple of years ago and was fondly remembered here Jackie Leven.

Scott Seward's post of Frozen Ghost just confirms that my idea of "uncool" basically boils down to "most CanCon".

This would be a good side discussion: Has there ever been a cool Canadian band? There are plenty of good, even great Canadian bands, but are any of them cool? Rush are not cool. Voivod are not cool (for more or less the same reason — they're Giant Fucking Nerds). Cowboy Junkies might have been cool for a year or so, but are there any others?

The only reason I’m aware of “Family” is that the venue attached to my workplace had multiple sold out shows of this clown and his wife. One of my tables was agog that I had never heard of them and started singing at me “family! Cookin in the kitchen” and of course I still had no idea what they were talking about. Eventually I looked it up and it was even worse than I thought.

They even had a VIP meet & greet 🤮

i suspect that old man voice hat guys doing songs for commercials are not exactly well-liked by their families irl

oh ll that sounds trying lol

"family" is interesting. i have a huge block when it comes to unquestioned family worship or celebration, for personal reasons, so i can't really enjoy it, in fact i'm repelled by it on a pretty visceral level. the hey ho stomp music thing has become such an underhanded shortcut for "we all belong together". it feels really cynical and calculated in this song, idk if it's always been that way to a degree, maybe even when it was the mid-2000s and arcade fire was doing it, but in this particular song it's just ideology all the way down. going on vacation on the credit card is an interesting line because it tips the hat towards current economic reality now while overall just willing you to sink into the soft disgusting pillow of consumption as a redemptive act. of course family love is equal opportunity and multiracial hence the highlife sounding guitars etc. just a collapse of difference and a strong tug on that powerful need to feel like we belong that we all have with a violent emptying out of particularity or context or history or thought or action. if strong and calculated propaganda is uncool then it's uncool i guess? maybe in 15 years it will be cool again because i'm sure it will date very poorly and just be jarring.

― ꙮ (map), Tuesday, March 19, 2024 12:07 PM bookmarkflaglink

honestly pretty sympathetic to this take, especially with what you've gone through with your own family. It doesn't really speak to me either, and I had a mostly positive familial experience. it's cheesy, one note, and conceptually honestly seems to just exist to hit 'comfort food' beats with dude's existing audience, and some of the lyrics are cringe as well ("family - baptized in the water", "family, you can't choose em or lose em") - gtfo with both of those.

though refreshingly Drew Holcomb seems to be a BLM/MeToo supporting anti-Trump Christian, so he seems more like a dude that makes lame music than a "traditional familee valyooos" guy which I worried he was.

One thing about that "Family" video is screenshot protagonist with the hat doing goofy dances on his own made me laugh because it felt like "yeah I wrote this song about family, I myself am isolated and know absolutely no one, but I dance to keep the tears from flowing". Sadly scrolling further I see he is eventually joined by his own family, thus ruining the only redeemable aspect of the video.

― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, March 19, 2024 12:13 PM bookmarkflaglink

lmao

at mean at least add any semblance of the real family experience like

family - my stepdad's still an asshole
family - son's passed out on the lawn
family - my daughter wrecked my Jaguar
family - my wife's love for me is gone

i knew i'd heard this song before

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3OUaBcA-Fo

I'd like to think that only America could come up either something as cringily wholesome as 'Family', but I guarantee the Brits will top it somehow

Sean Lennon had some indie folk project called Tooth of a Black Bear or something, I dare any of you to listen to it

The Ghost Of A Saber Tooth Tiger, listening to it now! It's not too bad, although the promo video does seem to be v. bad so I'm listening and not watching.

I am dying laughing at the idea of someone being incredulous that another someone has not heard “Family.” I never had, is it that popular/well known? And then singing it to prompt your memory. Hopefully they did dance moves too! xp

I’ve never heard of it either…

I'm imagining them all thumping their fists on the table in unison

are there mosh pits during "Family"

This would be a good side discussion: Has there ever been a cool Canadian band? There are plenty of good, even great Canadian bands, but are any of them cool? Rush are not cool. Voivod are not cool (for more or less the same reason — they're Giant Fucking Nerds). Cowboy Junkies might have been cool for a year or so, but are there any others?

― Tahuti Watches L&O:SVU Reruns Without His Ape (unperson), Tuesday, March 19, 2024 9:17 AM (thirty-four minutes ago)

Sorry for taking the bait but most of these bands have been considered cool at some point of their career:

nomeansno
Godspeed You Black Emperor (& various sideprojects/affiliates)
Fucked Up
New Pornographers/Destroyer/Neko Case (does she count?)
Metz
Eric's Trip (& various sideprojects/affiliates)

NoMeansNo rules

post-COVID I entered a bubblegum/garage phase that's still going strong and there's some real gold in the "uncool" bubblegum archives... Tommy Roe, 1910 Fruitgum Company, Banana Splits, Tommy James, Sam Sham, etc. Feel like bubblegum is not very cool in this era?

But I don't think I'll ever be ready for another 50s revival ala Sha Na Na and Grease tbqh, too uncool for me.

Probably Dead & Company and Phish would be the most uncool music I like. Though I guess that depends where we currently are on the "are jambands hip or not" pendulum with the "cool" kids.

Ocean Colour Scene up there for me, just a desperately uncool band that I can't help but kind of like.

anything record collector-y isn’t “uncool”

Ocean Colour Scene and Coldplay remind me: I enjoy the bloated histrionics of the first Embrace album.

oh..is Rhapsody (of Fire) uncool? cos...first two albums....love

I guess I always figured power metal was one of the more uncool metal subgenres.

i just remember getting clowned for liking them once, by someone who said "this shit sounds like a pinball machine"

i think Phish is definitely uncool but i might take it one step further because the only Phish album i return to is Rift, which has their uncoolest sound to a degree, Phish as produced by Father Ted and Father Dougal during the same sessions that resulted in "My Lovely Horse". Not an insult imo.

Yeah Rhapsody aren't cool but they do rock

post-COVID I entered a bubblegum/garage phase that's still going strong and there's some real gold in the "uncool" bubblegum archives... Tommy Roe, 1910 Fruitgum Company, Banana Splits, Tommy James, Sam Sham, etc. Feel like bubblegum is not very cool in this era?

The artists themselves uncool and the songs often dorky as fuck but still undeniably a genre that it's cool to like - partially I think because being able to look past or even celebrate a surface corniness is a cool move.

Steve Shasta and bendy farther upthread are OTM when they cite 70s and 90s revivals of 50s styles as uncool ... personally I tolerate rockabilly pastiche pretty well, but Sha Na Na and Grease are especially uncool for biting cool old music in a winking, remember-when style that adds zero interest or energy while attaching a whiff of nasty nostalgic consumerism to the original music ... see also: swing revivals

Bubblegum is definitely not uncool.

does anyone here dig electro swing? it's deeply uncool right? that stuff is a firm hell no for me. i have at least one kinda friend who likes it, the weirdo.

swing revival.... i had a moment with that back in college...i owned that one Cherry Poppin' Daddies album. Royal Crown Revue, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. i never got into the scene or anything, i was just vacuuming up a lot of stuff from various corners of the music world at that time and it sounded a bit fresh and lively compared to some of the deadening post-grunge of the time. it's also when i started to get more heavily into techno/downtempo/drum n bass, for similar reasons. i'd say the swing revival is probably quite legitimately the uncoolest stuff from the '90s, even if it's not arguably the absolute worst.

map there was a recentish thread where we got pretty strong consensus that swingbeat is the devil, I certainly endorse this viewpoint

I think I kinda liked a song by the Squirrel Nut Zippers at one point

That swing revival thing was just nuts. Like I can't ever imagine something quite like that happening again. I mean, it was one thing to have that swing revival stuff all over the radio and MTV and stuff, but the fact that nearly every single bar in the college town I was in seemed to immediately set aside a dedicated weekly swing night (or two!). I'll admit, I would go now and again because I had some theater friends who were big into it and it was kind of novel, at the time, to go to a bar with people all dressed up and watch the actually talented kids do cool dances, even if I was content to just watch.

i bought the first coldplay album without hearing it because i read a review that compared them to talk talk! i am STILL mad at coldplay and that review. i think the same thing might have happened with the first elbow album. just don't compare things to talk talk. just don't. everyone will be happier.

― scott seward, Tuesday, March 19, 2024 11:52 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

like many ilxors I am an easy mark for Talk Talk comparisons and the only one I ever remember not being completely disappointing was that one Shearwater album, which may have been a little too on the nose in places but was quite enjoyable iirc

Yeah we’ve beaten that horse:

POLL: Which left a bigger shit-stain on the '90s? Swing or Ska

I’ve repped in some way for Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, Squirrel Nut Zippers and Caravan Palace. I win (lose.)

squirrel nut zippers were cooler than the others imo, kinda goth iirc

Was gonna say Squirrel Nut Zippers sort of the counterargument of swing revival being uncool.

But it was - and always will be - uncool for the most part.

I'm pretty surprised this revive has had such legs! I've been operating on the assumption for the last decade that streaming removed the sort of scarcity where listeners feel the need to exclude musics to define their identity, and I don't think there's much on this thread that I haven't heard discussed and admired on ILX. But clearly people still feel uncool for enjoying certain things. Continued insecurities seem to follow two patterns:

- stuff that is so mainstream and bombastic and industry-supported it feels uncool to be lumped with such anodyne populism (U2 and whoever plays at the dome thing in Las Vegas next, Coldplay, RHCP, Billy Joel)
- stuff that's associated with a self-satisfied subculture that is blissfully indifferent to how the outside world views them (jam rock, neckbeardy metal, etc)

This is outside or tangential to the old poptimist framework, cuz the stuff is either so big, or so isolated, or so long-lastingly un-ephemeral it doesn't fit the discourse.

as a very naive teenager i did not clock how disgusting the name 'cherry poppin daddies' was until i was much older. how does one sell swing to a 90s audience? have a sexual assault vibes band name!

uhh wiki says that the squirrel nut zippers toured with neil young lmao. they have two reunion albums since 2018. vibe is still squarely b roll tom waits.

Since this is ILM, when I think of "uncool" music I'm thinking mainly of music that is uncool with critics, which of course is not the same thing as music that is considered "uncool" by mainstream audiences. ABBA might be a good example of music that has a popular image of being a bit cheesy, but is catnip to most critics. Whereas someone like Billy Joel has a cool mainstream image but might seem a bit dodgy to critics. The ideal for this thread I guess would be to think of a band that both critics and mainstream audiences agree is uncool.

Are Indigo Girls considered cool? I think they don't get much critical love. Christgau's consumer guide only has grades for two of their releases: a C- and a bomb. But maybe that is changing? Anyway, I like them quite a bit. Their Retrospective greatest hits album is a pleasure.

I was surprised seeing hate for The National on here years ago, the few songs I heard by them were really good.

Rush and Voivod? Classic Rock magazine boasted on their cover that Rush were the uncoolest band of all time (which seems to suggest they are actually the coolest). Never heard this attitude to Voivod but I have noticed some metal fans saying metal is uncool because snide NME writers/readers said so and I guess being uncool is then worn as a badge of honor (thus that Rush cover). Despite metal being about all the coolest things (corpses, spikes, shouting, cloaks, castles, violence)

indigo girls were always cool just not in a way that the rock critical establishment would know or care about - xgau is not their audience

cool by definition can't be hegemonic or normative which is by far the most interesting thing about it - if people (especially outsidery subcultural types) mistake those things for coolness like it's an imposition they've got the wrong end of the stick

in that vein the most uncool stuff I like is probably the stuff that pretty much everyone likes

Yeah, the music that my family rags me about the most for sounding uncool and cheesy is usually stuff like Steely Dan, who are considered paragons of cool around here.

well your family must be wrong then, if ILX isn't cool then who is?? like what

Maybe something like an Elvis Presley gospel album is an example where the average contemporary listener and average rock critic achieve a mind-meld about its complete uncoolness, but which I still enjoy.

I think jobim being cool is fairly uncontroversial around here but the noise kids I played wave to once literally thought I was doing a bit

Once I was playing YMO and my sister looked kind of embarrassed and bemused and I was suprised but there's types of music I love wholeheartedly but in a certain context I might feel embarrassed about: once I entered a room of smiling people waiting at tables with a Beach Boys classic blasting, it was a song I love but I had to leave the room immediately because somehow I felt so embarrassed by the combination of that music and people grinning at me.
I said something upthread about playing christmas music in a trendy nightclub in the summer and locking the doors, I think that would drive people insane.

hell for me is being trapped at a listening party for the Mannheim Steamroller xmas albums, and i like christmas music too.

i was just checking out some Cherry Poppin' Daddies lyrics and wow, i guess i didn't clock all the sexual assault content back then was i was just a finger snappin and hip swingin daddy o

indigo girls are / were out queer artists in an era when that wasn't very uhh cool. now of course things are different. left is otm that discourse around cool resists hegemony (even though it's still very much tied to it), in many ways this is an impossible question and trying to approach it in an objective or "ideal" fashion won't get a person very far imho. it's more about slippery barthes-esque discourse around signs and how cultural pleasure works imho. which changes over time and contemporary cool vs past cool in the now are different beasts. just as an aside you know who strikes me as super uncool today is xgau, but i hate that obnoxious motherfucker so i'm biased.

xp there is definitely a wide swath of 80s electronic stuff that is considered cool by hipsters and uncool by most everyone else, though most everyone else thinks it's cool for contemporary pop artists to draw from the 80s and update the sound afaict.

(*back when i was just...) xp

I don't think "cool" is quite the word for ABBA. They'd be the first to be surprised?
Cool is an aesthetic (jazz rap, post-punk, noise rock) or an attitude (aloofness) or maybe it's a discourse (did someone say eulogizing?), but it can't be anything ILM likes.

i think tbh the uncoolest music i know nowadays is your basic "indie" rock because it's not indie as i knew it, but this sort of slurry of colorless mediocrity which tends to get propped up by the festival industrial complex and NPR's Morning Becomes Eclectic. i realize as a fan of U2 i have zero steady ground to say anything from ofc.

Although the Daddies had occasionally played shows with notable swing revival bands like Royal Crown Revue, they were not largely associated with the scene or subculture; when fans regularly began approaching the band's merchandise table asking which of their albums contained the most swing songs, the Daddies realized they lacked an album fully representing their swing side, prompting the band's manager to convince them to compile all of their swing songs onto one CD until they could afford to make a new album, using their available finances to record several bonus tracks for inclusion. The result, Zoot Suit Riot: The Swingin' Hits of the Cherry Poppin' Daddies, became an unexpectedly popular item as the band went on tour, reportedly selling as many as 4,000 copies a week through their Northwest distributors.

TIL that they weren't even really a "swing" band, they only did a handful of jokey "swing" songs on their ska albums until they broke out with an album that just compiled those jokey songs from all their earlier albums.

"...back when i was just a finger snappin and hip swingin daddy o"

Finger snappin'? More like snapper fingerin', amirite?

lol

I don't think "cool" is quite the word for ABBA. They'd be the first to be surprised?

They might not be cool but they're certainly not uncool either. I can't imagine too many people being sheepish about liking ABBA in 2024.

abba are definitely the coolest they've ever been at the moment, at least as long as i've been aware of them. were they cool in the 70s?

the bee gees on the other hand, i don't know, i don't see them having the same cache, but i come at this from djing in american gay bars so ymmv

(i much prefer the bee gees god bless em)

Thinking back over the music I got made fun of the most for listening to during my life by the alleged "cool" kids:

3rd-5th grade - Weird Al
6th-8th grade - Suicidal Tendencies, DRI
high school - Nine Inch Nails (though, to be clear, I went to high school in a shitty small town high school, so "cool" is very relative here, these guys thought Aerosmith was the be all end all in 1994, so... grain of salt and all)

Bee Gees are pretty cool. Hey, they had their own track-by-track listening thread on ILX! But then so did Billy Joel (I think) so ignore that.

The swing revival, well Swingers (the film), is notable to me because it pinpoints precisely when Echo Park/Silver Lake/Los Feliz neighborhoods became utterly intolerable to my young snobby self...

(but sidenote: the film also briefly shows how forward a service like Pink Dot (on-demand rapid retail delivery) was in the mid-90s that is completely omnipresent now... but I can save that for another thread, the death of mom&pop neighborhood retail if there is such a thread.)

I never got into the ska/swing revivals but I did dabble in Lounge/Exotica Revival (perhaps Jobim/Bossa revival might fold in to this category?): Cugat/Denny/Esquivel/Persuasive Percussion/Space-Age Bachelor/etc. I did see the High Llamas, Combustible Edison (ex-Christmas!) and Love Jones (ex-Squirrel Bait) at my station and out at clubs when they rolled through town.

it was weird to check out The Derby a few short years after Swingers and see how quickly that scene was memory holed, even back then. and now it's a bank.

i picked up a number of those lounge and exotica comps in the late '90s, so great. and i worked with a guy from Love Jones a number of years ago, really good dude.

And Martin Denny-style easy listening was far from cool until it wasn’t.

The Sergio Mendes talk upthread is wild to me because this is like probably in my top 100 songs ever, I threw it on so many mixtapes back in the day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuAql93bNzc

that "family" song reminds me of that "home" song that was all the rage among the americana hippie set.

which i kinda liked at first! i think i even started a thread for it. never heard another song by them.

i can't stand dreary americana and there is soooooooo much love for that around here. so many festivals. the big local festival in town here is nothing but that stuff and retro-americana-soul type stuff that i also don't dig. it doesn't seem very....COOL...to me.

i'm not big on nostalgia though. i like my old music to be old. i don't go see reunion tours.

seems a little more worldly this year though. maybe mdou moctar will come buy records at my store.

https://greenriverfestival.com/the-lineup/

the swing and exotica thing was funny. i opened my first store in philly in the mid-90s and i couldn't believe how much i was selling martin denny records for. now nobody wants them again. this guy skip heller used to come in my store all the time and tell me stories about hanging out with les baxter. it really seemed like a weird movement post-the industrial re/search chris & cosey fascination with everything 50s. indie garage love for crazy raw rockabilly. norton records. "raw" r&b. that sort of thing. it was all older hepcat indie people. and i always felt like people went straight from ska bands to swing bands to gypsy jazz bands. if you could play trombone you were golden from 1990 right up to the present day. though the wacky indie tuba band fever around here seems to be waning.

Fellow guys, confirm something for me.

I say Abba were not really gay icons in the U.S. until Priscilla Queen of the Desert made all the straight people think so. Is that correct?

How well did Erasure's ABBA-esque EP (from 1992) do?

i dunno. Abba were always fabulous. you would have to talk to oldhead drag queens and DJs though. they would know better. i feel like they were in the air here forever. i was totally gay for them in the 70s. they were awesome. my "SOS" 45 was huge on my DJ playlist as a little kid.

D.O.A. were another cool Canadian band. there were tons of cool punk bands up there! and BTO and the Guess Who will always be cool with me.

probably my fave cool canadian band though...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3CDN6znSAI

the hard rockers though...i hate to say it but i never thought Triumph were very cool. i do like Max Webster a lot but cool? maybe not that cool. Nash the Slash was kinda cool...

the stampeders weren't very cool but they had a good look. like the glam cast of a 70s Bonanza reboot.

https://i.discogs.com/ANYLtEASsH7vw8NYM9RBcdqjeGUarBcb8JWzkSEN-wA/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:402/w:500/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9BLTUxNTg2/Mi0xNTI3MDQ3OTE0/LTg4MDIuanBlZw.jpeg

Rush are beyond cool and uncool though. and Voi Vod were totally cool! they were nuts. and don't even get me started on death metal. Gorguts alone! Departure Chandelier are my fave right now.

For you few rockabilly fans, I loved Ray Condo.

Dire Straits seconded btw and I'd include "Brothers in Arms" & "On Every Street" (title track particularly)

I'm into some stuff my dad got me into as a kid that I don't think has ever been cool to anybody

Cafe Jacques (favorite song is "Meaningless" which is on YT)
Passport (particularly Earthborn)
Alan Parsons Project (mainly I Robot and The Turn of a Friendly Card)

something I've just always loved since I first played the game is Stewart Copeland's "Spyro the Dragon" (video game OST)

There are also few really embarrassing 80s Christian rock albums that would send me into a deep and probably horrible nostalgia that I have to admit to liking to on some level. That's so far beyond uncool that it might be a different thread topic.. "deeply ashamed off.." or something.

I got into that Passport myself... I bought the cassette somewhere for a few dollars having recognized the bands name from his collection (earlier work I guess) and brought it home thinking I had scored something awesome and he was really repulsed by the music on it, but I liked it.

i love cafe jacques and APP. i don't know if i LOVE passport but i dig their albums.

Canadians? Intersystems ftw. Dude had the most Canadian accent I've ever heard.

https://www.popmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Intersystems.jpeg

https://lastfm.freetls.fastly.net/i/u/770x0/6876dc9d30ef38c9e0367d217b5dff9f.jpg#6876dc9d30ef38c9e0367d217b5dff9f

i've mentioned this before but in the 70s my dad would play michael franks records - as a jazz fan his only concessions to rock/pop were steely dan and michael franks and maybe a few others - and i would cringe SO HARD when he put those records on. popsicle toes? ugh. my dad also loved mark murphy and stuff like that. anyway, i got older and totally fell for michael franks and his fakeass bossa and calypso and the like. it was a totally guilty pleasure and i didn't know anyone who listened to him until i opened my store in philly and the only other big fans i ever met were super cool black hip-hop DJs! who knew? he was really chill though. still don't think most people would find him "cool". the internet has blessed bobby caldwell with coolness thanks to all those reaction videos. but bobby was always pretty damn cool.

heh, michael franks! he's very milquetoast, but also very genuine. wears one down after a while. he's got a few jams.

i've said this before -but not in here i don't think- not only do i not find john klemmer uncool, i firmly recommend a lot of his 70s material. he was doing some of the most polite free jazz ever on impulse. his later uber-smooth r+b attempts are pure saccharine. i think of them with the same sort of campy retro lens that my predecessors thought of those worthless martin denny albums.

sry, meant to put that in quotes there: "worthless"

i also went through a martin denny phase, so obvs not worthless to me...

I got into that Passport myself...

don't know a lot of doldinger's stuff but 'ataraxia' is a super record imo

For you few rockabilly fans, I loved Ray Condo.

Klemmer’s Barefoot Ballet is absolute all time for me. I’ve played it countless times. Lol but that’s not what you’re referencing. xp

forget smooth jazz. i can listen to any smooth jazz all day long. well, maybe not kenny g style. but more in the swanky bob james mode. john klemmer is okay by me. i will listen to all the earl klugh.

BUT does anyone listen to Wynton? i don't know anyone who does. he's impossible to sell in the store. for someone so famous he doesn't have a lot of vinyl fans.

Wasn’t a Ray Condo track used in an early 00s car commercial to signify being stuck in a car with a weirdo playing uncool music? During the “Pink Moon” wave Volkswagen ads?

he doesn't have a lot of vinyl fans.

this somehow seems right on brand for wm.

and yes, great call re:earl klugh!

+on that note -good smooth jazz that may be seen as uncool- joe sample's carmel is pretty alltime.

so much dollar 80s smooth stuff is a pleasure to listen to.

i heart...

https://i.discogs.com/8x55anzBTLcofS2gd_c7c1SgL-hgoC4f7JBbkQ74tUs/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:277/w:240/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9MLTEwNzEt/MTQwNTU5Mjg4MC0y/MDE4LmpwZWc.jpeg

I can’t pinpoint why Klemmer works for me and Kenny G. totally does not, but I know it when I hear it.

I listen to Wynton a lot, but on CD. I have 5 volumes of Standard Time. Volume 3 with his dad is beautiful.

its the sap factor. or a taste factor. john klemmer was a real deal jazzer.

x-post

Is Al Jarreau uncool?

BUT does anyone listen to Wynton? i don't know anyone who does. he's impossible to sell in the store. for someone so famous he doesn't have a lot of vinyl fans.

I have a few favorite Wynton Marsalis albums. I wrote about Black Codes (From the Underground) and about the Standard Time series and if he ever accepts my request for an interview I'll be happy as hell.

al jarreau should be in the world genius hall of fame for L Is For Lover alone. best album!

"uncool" is a very subjective and context sensitive label hah. In college this would have been Autechre for me.

i look at this thread as fun. i don't think most people here think too much about cool and uncool at this point in life. or at least its fun for me to make snap cool/uncool judgements. Prism uncool! Crack The Sky cool!

al jarreau has a forever W in his corner for his bill withers cover album.

I had his album Jarreau back in the 80s. It was corny as hell but I loved it. I think he would have been regarded as something of a sellout at that point in his career.

i think uncool is half my regular playlist these days

bon jovi
richard marx
air supply
meatloaf
elvis

Elvis is the apotheosis of cool.

yeah, maybe "old folks music" but coolness never in question ime.

also xpost jimb re:80s aj+the bw connection-
(+a general q to all)
what about bill's lone 80s album, watching you, watching me? it's, uhh ... not up to his previous standards.

... but it's still bill?

(idk, album's okay i guess? def pretty anonymous/forgettable mor 80s vibe.)

Al Jarreau should get some cool points for getting hammered at the "We Are The World" session.

Mark Murphy’s cover of “stolen moments” is swangin

Everybody hates DJ Spooky right? I love love love his riddim warfare album, superb turn of the millennium urban paranoia, don’t know why more ppl don’t ride for it

Re smooth jazz I have tried and failed multiple times to get into the first album by Fourplay

I am willing to wager I listen to more surf instrumentals than anyone on this board.

I will defend "Baker Street", "Year Of the Cat" and other singer-songwritery stuff of that persuasion to the death! I think they're magical.

I remember once when I was working at a music store my coworker chastised me for mocking Kenny Loggins’ nude wedding and claimed that the Pooh Corner albums were actually really good. There’s a lot to unpack there but my point is that Kenny Loggins, to me, is perpetually uncool. And this guy was all in on Pooh Corner. 100% ready to fight me about it.

And this morning I realized that an innocuous thing makes Kenny Loggina uncool to me — smiling. Smiling while singing creates a superhighway to uncool that I can’t explain but somehow have fully invested in. If you’re smiling (not smirking but full on smiling) you’ve missed the boat on cool.

i think uncool is half my regular playlist these days

bon jovi
richard marx
air supply
meatloaf
elvis

― werewolves of laudanum (VegemiteGrrl), miércoles 20 de marzo de 2024 01:19 AM (twelve hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Elvis is the apotheosis of cool.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), miércoles 20 de marzo de 2024 01:21 AM (twelve hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah what up! I don’t think Elvis has even been uncool. Even at his most Vegas tacky and morbidly obese he still oozed cool.

I don’t think that was the perception at the time though? Was anyone reviewing 70s Elvis records or concerts the way they were Zep or Floyd or Marvin Gaye?

I was 19 when Elvis died and he definitely wasn’t what my peers and I thought was cool then.

Well yeah overexposure, fading star, tabloids, a new era and all… but was he uncool?

At that stage in his career he was terminally uncool.

had social media existed in Elvis's waning years, he would have been eviscerated by meme culture

even my father, who was a big Elvis fan, had a chance to see him a year or so before he died and said "at this stage, hell no, I don't wanna see that trainwreck"

Ok ok yeah he was a sweaty blob has-been at that stage. The op question is very open though. Was Elvis uncool at some point of his life? Yeah. But is his music (and persona) considered generally uncool?

When I think of liking uncool music I think of idk, Barry Manilow… not freaking Elvis.

I need to add that there’s nothing wrong with smiling while singing on its own — the bias is something I picked up along the way via why are you so f’ing happy brainworms.? Idk

nah you're definitely onto something with that. been racking my brain for a cool "smiling singer" since you posted and i'm having hard time.

I really enjoy listening to a lot of 80s fusion-adjacent stuff like Pat Metheny, Jean Luc Ponty, stuff that sounds like it ought to be in the background of an 80s recruitment video for health and safety auditors. Is that cool?

can you ever be cool if there is even a trace in your mind of "trying to be cool"? because i've always assumed that if "being cool" is anywhere in your psyche or subpsyche, you are off cool-island, possibly forever. it's part of the boomer obsession with authenticity which they betrayed so so well. felt like genx tried to reclaim authenticity, with predictable results.

xp never heard that "family" song, it has no cool, but i don't think it was trying to do- even the derpy hat thing!, and so it is at least authentic. it is therefore cool-eligible by that standard. but it is not cool imo. it is a-cool.

the persons who are objectionable are those who would promote it as "cool"--that would be "uncool." the song may however be presented as corny, or fun, and other things, like annoying or cliche or sentimental. which is to say, coolness has nothing to do with that.

I need to add that there’s nothing wrong with smiling while singing on its own — the bias is something I picked up along the way via why are you so f’ing happy brainworms.? Idk

I always remember a clip of Dee Snider of Twisted Sister describing his hatred of Jon Bon Jovi, when they were on the same NY/NJ club circuit — "There's no smiling in metal!"

Jonathan Richman smiles when he sings! Although he's kind of deliberately anti-cool, if we define 'cool' as the Lou Reed model of unsmiling dark glasses moody crap.

can you ever be cool if there is even a trace in your mind of "trying to be cool"? because i've always assumed that if "being cool" is anywhere in your psyche or subpsyche, you are off cool-island, possibly forever. it's part of the boomer obsession with authenticity which they betrayed so so well. felt like genx tried to reclaim authenticity, with predictable results.

― schrodingers cat was always cool (Hunt3r), miércoles 20 de marzo de 2024 04:25 PM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Agree with this notion. If you have to ask if you got it you aint got it.

Sometimes I feel like listening to music is itself uncool, a shameful neurosis. Like if I were properly balanced I would only need to listen to the frogs in the pond next door like Fred Frith does. I'd rather that a stranger thought I didn't listen to music at all than that they were humbled by my taste, or thought I was a snob.

is Tommy James and the Shondells cool TODAY? i know they were cool then.

xp yeah richman seems extreemely authentic-- so, still cool-eligible. richman is inherently and v deeply "doing his thing," and his thing is often great and often cool.

so i think richman artist has inherent coolness, though some of his works do not. but those are not uncool works, they are just a-cool works of the cool. they are still authentic and sincere, but somehow a-cool. i will have to consider this more.

he may be the exception to the ll rule about smiling in performance. i would have to check to see if he smiles during his actual "cool works," or only his a-cool ones.

can you be insincere and cool? and how? because i think you can be sincerely ironic, which is not insincerity.

so deeply ironic, still authentic, still cool-eligible.
but expressing corny or cliche'd nonsense, i guess still authentic if you really are that corny or chiche'd? cool eligible, but really cool? i think this is where the carpenters come in, they seemed to kinda believe. barry manilow? i doubt it, he's a consumate showman and wrote jingles. i don't think he could be actually cool, ever.

you can still like copacabana and wear a diamond if you like, but it is not cool.

there used to be a choir judge at county competitions who, if you were singing a jubilant song and weren't sufficiently toothy, he'd ask the same stupid question:

"why do you look so unhappy to be performing this song?"

(cue someone saying "I'm happy!")

"have you NOTIFIED YOUR FACE?"

(laughs at own joke)

to look cool while singing, you have to be emotionally invested, but not melodramatic.
appear confident, but not cocky
movement should be deliberate, but organic
They're gonna be staring at your face. So walk real fast, but you don't run.
Don't look nobody directly in the eye, hut don't look away either.
They're gonna be scared of you, believe me, so don't worry about nothing.

even my father, who was a big Elvis fan, had a chance to see him a year or so before he died and said "at this stage, hell no, I don't wanna see that trainwreck"

― CEO Greedwagon (Neanderthal), Wednesday, March 20, 2024 10:37 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

he missed out. those shows freaking ruled

I'm sure he did!

is Tommy James and the Shondells cool TODAY? i know they were cool then.

I really enjoy listening to a lot of 80s fusion-adjacent stuff like Pat Metheny, Jean Luc Ponty, stuff that sounds like it ought to be in the background of an 80s recruitment video for health and safety auditors. Is that cool?

Really enjoying the Arcadia album again at the moment. Give me this over any Duran Duran thing they released.

how low are you willing to go...

https://i.discogs.com/mh-qQ5w9JRnNerKz5dCKxSfJHD_YVfG7EesKJdsMb8U/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:592/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTEwNDMw/MzktMTI1MDk0ODQ3/NC5qcGVn.jpeg

No, thank you.

Lol he looks so much like a friend I have.

Minus the ethnic garments

He was involved with organized crime, wasn’t he? I guess that’s “cool”…

Very much not by choice!

Andy Taylor looks like someone left Jon Bon Jovi on the dashboard on a hot summer day...

Enough guesswork, let's hear from the man himself

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5dg-C0TR_I

i remember watching an MTV news years thing and he came on either right before or right after midnight and he did stuff from his solo album with long rock star guitar solos and it was so boring and i couldn't understand why they had him on right when everyone just wanted to jam to the eurogliders or something. someone had to have paid someone for that. so dreadful. can't remember if he did a power station song. he must have done SOMETHING that people actually knew.

a little crunchier/heftier and "take it easy" could be a Poison song.

he wrote it with 80s U.K. hard rock superstar Steve Jones.

I quite like 'the promise' off that arcadia album, even though its one of those 80s songs where sting randomly turns up for the chorus to do his sting backing vocals thing and then fucks off again

Maybe the police is my real actual answer to this thread

ACAB

All Cop(eland)s are bastards.

It seems that way.

i think the police are a wee bit cooler now than they were 10 years ago. could be an algorithm thing. the clash are definitely not cool to young people. nobody under 50 has ever asked me if i had any clash records.

one of the members of the Police, when asked about relations within the band, snarkily said something like "you know what they say, never raise your voice in the Third Reich" or something...was trying to look up who said it but "police sting third reich" doesn't return the results i expected

(interview was in Guitar Magazine in the 90s)

“i’m the pigeon- and baby you’re the stool…”

“beg pardon? no amount of coke teased hair or guitar can fix that you know”

i brought a bunch of CDs to the record show and this...14/15? year old girl came up and she freaked out when she saw all the Saint Etienne CDs i had. that surprised me for some reason. i figured oldhead 90s people would want them. otherwise the youngs were all over anything 80s.

(it makes me think that i should definitely bring a bunch of belle & sebastian CDs next time...)

Yeah, it does seem like The Clash has slipped a bit in recent years, they used to feel like one of those perennial "cool" bands* but they feel kind of squeezed out.

As an example, we've been watching some early episodes of The O.C. and London Calling is the one record that is prominently visible in one character's vinyl collection.

the radical disjuncture in the time-tune continuum made by internet and social streaming is alarming to the olds. i live it

I saw The Police on their reunion tour and I was surprised how many young people were there. When I was growing up Sting was the least cool guy on the planet, next to Phil Collins maybe. Collins' image I think has been rehabilitated over the years (and rightfully so) but not Sting's.

I thought sting was pretty cool when he saved bart from that well but I have no idea what his reputation was at the time

he seems to have a better reputation in hip hop circles for some reason (much like phil collins)

the clash backlash is very weird, it feels like it happened gradually and I have definitely been part of it, I used to love them but now they just seem a bit stodgy

something about them is a bit cringe (sorry) now I guess. even though their messy and contradictory politics is a lot like the left today there is something earnest and innocent about them that seems embarrassing in the era of irony poisoning. they'll probably come back at some point

to look cool while singing, you have to be emotionally invested, but not melodramatic.
appear confident, but not cocky
movement should be deliberate, but organic
They're gonna be staring at your face. So walk real fast, but you don't run.
Don't look nobody directly in the eye, hut don't look away either.
They're gonna be scared of you, believe me, so don't worry about nothing.

― CEO Greedwagon (Neanderthal)

This is just a description of this video

I thought the MIA sample would give The Clash a bump with millennials but apparently not.

Re: smiling, I was thinking of someone like Carly Rae Jepsen, who smiles a lot and is beloved for it. She seems pretty cool to me, effortlessly happy. But I would/could never smile that much or project that much happiness if my life depended on it.

I think the Clash might have suffered from the curse of “music ur parents like” curse. Otherwise idk. The young ppl I know who are into music are all over the place — last thing that surprised me was them being into Sam Prekop solo records. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I've cooled on some of the Clash's catalog, but oddly really grown into a huge fan of Sandinista and I'm anxiously awaiting the 33 1/3 book on it to show up.

I grew up thinking Sting was actually an actor because of Dune and Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Found out he was the singer from The Police until my mid 20s.

i think i came up with the least cool listening thread idea. if i'm counting correctly, he has TWELVE solo albums. (!!!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihsp_OATJwY

I love the album London Calling with no reservations forever and ever amen. And a lot of those singles, of course. And that fake live albums that came out in the late 90s.

I guess it's not too strange that The Clash aren't cool anymore, ultimately their legacy is bands like Rancid and 311

I haven't listened to The Jam in a long time. they were kinda my Clash when I was a kid. their strident nature might make me cringe now. but i loved a lot of those songs. always felt like they were less cool than the Clash forever. but maybe they are cooler now! i don't even know.