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The Coolest

Started by JamesC, 30 April, 2014, 06:16:48 PM

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JamesC

Inspired by the First Single/Album thread I'd be interested to know who people thought were the coolest pop stars when they were kids.

When I was about five or six I thought that Shakin' Stevens and Adam Ant were the coolest guys I'd ever seen. It took a bit longer before I thought any female pop stars were cool, because of course when I was a kid I didn't like girls. Kim Wilde made me feel funny though - as did Wendy James a few years later.
I remember knowing that I was supposed to think Annie Lennox was cool because I got a Eurythmics sticker in a packet of Weetabix - but I didn't like her because she had a boys haircut.

CrazyFoxMachine

When we were all 10 I had literally NO CONCEPT about anything - we were all supposed to pick a Spice Girl to fancy and I picked Baby Spice. Not sure why but I feel it was because I must have known she'd make the most compelling (relatively speaking) pop singles in her post Spice Girls career. There was nothing interesting about the charts in the late 90s at all. The pop we were fed was so sanitized and worthless it made barely any impression on us - it was all gelled hair and sleeveless shirts and combat trousers and nothing.

Then nu-metal and charty pop-punk came along and we were all supposed to like whining douchebags - but by then I was musically in a far hairier place where the riffs were huge and the coolest people were the ones who let you know the loudest that you weren't alone. Sigh.

Frank

Quote from: JamesC on 30 April, 2014, 06:16:48 PM
(I didn't think) any female pop stars were cool, because of course when I was a kid I didn't like girls. Kim Wilde made me feel funny though - as did Wendy James a few years later. I remember knowing that I was supposed to think Annie Lennox was cool because I got a Eurythmics sticker in a packet of Weetabix - but I didn't like her because she had a boys haircut

Any man over thirty fancies Kim Wilde rotten. Similar base urges were involved in my appreciation of Debbie Harry, but she is also the personification of everything that cool entails. She looked fantastic whatever she was wearing or however she cut her hair, she acted like she couldn't give a shit about what anyone thought of her, and her band were tight. Plus, she was in Videodrome, which I couldn't make head nor tail of until I was a teenager, but I knew it was fucking cool. Kathleen Hanna from Bikini Kill and Le Tigre and being married to Ad-Rock was impossibly cool too.


Greg M.

Quote from: JamesC on 30 April, 2014, 06:16:48 PM
When I was about five or six I thought that Shakin' Stevens and Adam Ant were the coolest guys I'd ever seen.

Adam Ant for me, without question. As a child, I was convinced he was unutterably cool. And of course, I was absolutely right - he bloody is.

JOE SOAP

#4


Ian Dury- first single I owned was Hit Me with your Rhythm Stick (b-side: There Ain't Half Been Some Clever Bastards) so a drummer ridden with polio was what I thought was cool- what ever that meant to me. It was years of assorted metal and indie after that (and Kate Bush).



Definitely Not Mister Pops

Metallica

Loved that band when I first heard them, now I can barely stand to listen to anything after Cliff Burton went to the Great Gig in the Sky. I wasn't impressed by either Load or Reload, but the rot really set in for me when they sued Napster. This from a band that always claimed to not care about album sales. The last straw was when I went to see them play in Dublin, and they seemed genuinely bored. They did a call and answer bit during Enter Sandman, and it felt more like sitting in mass. Mass with guitars.

By the time they released their docudrama, Some Kinda Monster, my response to their crying and whinging was a Nelson Munz style "HAW-HAH!"
You may quote me on that.

Frank


Danny Baker points out that there's nothing more pointless or overvalued than the quality of being cool. It's impossible not to envy the kind of bastard who fills out a pair of jeans and a leather jacket in the right way or who can make taking a drag on a fag look like the best thing in the world, but those are empty signifiers which ultimately lead nowhere.

Jimi Hendrix, Sid Vicious, and Kurt Cobain were all effortlessly and instinctively cool, but they were also hopelessly inadequate and couldn't be trusted to leave the house by themselves without fucking up in ways that brought misery down around them and anyone foolish enough to care for them. Look how smart and funny The Beatles were when they just couldn't believe their luck they didn't have proper jobs, and look what petty and insufferable arseholes they turned into once they realised they were supposed to be cool. To be fair, Paul was probably always a cunt.


8-Ball

Sauchie is gonna hate this but when I was 12 Kurt Cobain was simply the coolest thing ever. Even more so for the fact that I used to get pelters for being into Nirvana when all my peers liked dance music. Sad but true. :(

Whatever happened to Rico, Dolman and Cadet Paris? I'm sooo out of the loop.

Frank

Quote from: Eightball on 30 April, 2014, 08:34:44 PM
Sauchie is gonna hate this but when I was 12 Kurt Cobain was simply the coolest thing ever. Even more so for the fact that I used to get pelters for being into Nirvana when all my peers liked dance music. Sad but true

I was massively into Nirvana as a teenager and thought Cobain was the coolest bastard on the planet. If that had been the case, this fat wee fucker would still have a daddy:


8-Ball

Quote from: sauchie on 30 April, 2014, 08:55:19 PM
Quote from: Eightball on 30 April, 2014, 08:34:44 PM
Sauchie is gonna hate this but when I was 12 Kurt Cobain was simply the coolest thing ever. Even more so for the fact that I used to get pelters for being into Nirvana when all my peers liked dance music. Sad but true

I was massively into Nirvana as a teenager and thought Cobain was the coolest bastard on the planet. If that had been the case, this fat wee fucker would still have a daddy:



That is very true. He just didn't seem to give a fuck and that was very exciting to a skinny spotty kid from Bannockburn. Like our American brethren have the habit of saying, "I could relate."
Whatever happened to Rico, Dolman and Cadet Paris? I'm sooo out of the loop.

Old Tankie

Bowie and Marc Bolan.

Spikes

Chas Smash from Madness, was the coolest guy in the best band, so doubly cool for me.

But for a deep down, and long lasting effect, it has to be the triumvirate of John, Joe, and Jerry*
For the vision and the politics, the tunes, and the sartorial splendor (More Jerry, that last one...)






* That's Rotten, Strummer, and Dammers, btw.




ZenArcade

Bryan Ferry doing that cover of the VU's 'what goes on' on TOTP in the mid 70's is simply it in terms of utter cool: microphone hugging, slit eyed/tom cat on heat brillance.
Bowie circa 77 'heroes'; Nirvana on that Johathan Ross show on channel 4 doing 'Territorial Pissings' and just blowing everything away and Suede on Later doing 'My Insatiable One' were also pretty cool. Z
Ed is dead, baby Ed is...Ed is dead

DaveGYNWA

Peas sell. But who's Brian?

blackmocco

T'Pau. There. I said it.
"...and it was here in this blighted place, he learned to live again."

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