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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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!"
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.
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. :(
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:
(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSo_lknGwafeo0XqnLaGEgmsl6KuLHtmqdMFrZjEiQYJ_nkV5j2)
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:
(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSo_lknGwafeo0XqnLaGEgmsl6KuLHtmqdMFrZjEiQYJ_nkV5j2)
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."
Bowie and Marc Bolan.
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.
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
Joe f**king Perry.
T'Pau. There. I said it.
I can't believe nobody's mentioned Hollywood Beyond!
As a youngster I was a massive fan of Adam and the Ants, and then ANTHRAX came on the scene. Despite them dressing like Surfer dudes, I thought they were cool as Fuck. How wrong I was, but they wrote some quality tunes.
Cheers
Quote from: blackmocco on 01 May, 2014, 02:26:20 AM
T'Pau. There. I said it.
I am saddened to inform you that you are hereby banned from holding any opinions from now on.
I was another 'Ant Person'. Thought Adam Ant was the coolest fucker on the planet. I'm very, very ashamed to say that when rumours arose that he might be gay, I ripped his poster off my bedroom wall in a petulant rage about something I didn't even fully understand. Silly little 13 year old me wasn't very enlightened I'm afraid. I'd like to go back in time and tell myself not to be so daft.
A few years later and the Beastie Boys and RUN DMC were the epitome of cool to me. Still are to be fair.
Quote from: blackmocco on 01 May, 2014, 02:26:20 AM
T'Pau. There. I said it.
I seem to remember you had quite a thing for the singer, Mick.
Lots of people here listing bands that they probably still think are cool (and some are). But are they really the first pop stars that struck you? I can't believe that no naive child on the board thought that Black Lace or Toni Basil were where it was at.
Quote from: JamesC on 01 May, 2014, 12:44:09 PM
Lots of people here listing bands that they probably still think are cool (and some are). But are they really the first pop stars that struck you? I can't believe that no naive child on the board thought that Black Lace or Toni Basil were where it was at.
Hang on! Choreographer for Bowie in the 70s; video director for Talking Heads in the 80s; boozing with Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson when she was in Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces; massive, singalong, worldwide hit single? If Toni Basil isn't cool then nobody on Earth is.
Can't really remember being unwisely struck by the coolness of anyone until the dark teenage goth days. I vaguely remember thinking Toyah was pretty awesome though and I'll swap your Kim Wilde for an uncomfortable sexual awakening at the hands of Bellshill's finest, Sheena Easton. For Your Eyes Only (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP4xXjW97ko) indeed!
If you just want to hear about naff things that I thought were cool then I can submit Sigue Sigue Sputnik (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk30a0qsVIk). Although, to be fair, I still find that pretty entertaining.
Never knew all that about Toni Basil. You learn something new every day!
And Love Missile F1-11 is cool and Ferris Bueller will back me up!
Quote from: The Cosh on 01 May, 2014, 01:31:31 PM
I'll swap your Kim Wilde for an uncomfortable sexual awakening at the hands of Bellshill's finest, Sheena Easton
If the stories I've heard are to be believed, that statement should be read literally. Hey Mickey (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW7VnHnX3LQ) still comes within my definition of cool, but I consider Say You'll Be There (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skel3w_3amo) to be an overlooked example of Dre production and the g-funk era, so I'm probably not to be trusted in these matters. Love Missile F1-11 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk30a0qsVIk) is exactly as annoying and gimmicky as a 10 year old boy needs it to be, and everything I drew for months afterwards had outsize mohawks and red crosshairs all over it.
Continuing the hijacking of this thread and repurposing as a reminiscence for folk who became self and culturally aware in the mid-to-late eighties, how about Westworld (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dooa7uzRjEI) and Silver Bullet (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0InSlbNakOs)?
I was one of those kids who hated anything that was cool and loved things that were uncool. I spent a lot of the early 90s listening to Cutty Ranks and Helloween
My lad's 36 and the early to mid '90s was certainly loud in our house! Don't know what you youngsters think but he was heavily into Nirvana, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Pearl Jam, Sound Garden, and James, to name but a few. Now, tell an old sod, were they "cool" or not?
Nirvana were: the rest were only cardboard soldiers! Z
Quote from: ZenArcade on 01 May, 2014, 02:43:33 PM
Nirvana were: the rest were only cardboard soldiers! Z
I hated Nirvana, they were lame commercialised angst.
I think he went to see most of them live, before they were famous, would they have toured England in the early to mid '90s or have I got that wrong? Pretty sure he saw some of them at the Cambridge Corn Exchange. He definitely saw Oasis before they made it big, they were a warm up group for someone else, but I can't for the life of me remember who. All I do recall is that I clocked up some serious mileage taking him and his mates all over the place to see these bands I'd never even heard of!! (Of course, I was just their taxi service, they wouldn't let me go in with them, that's definitely not "cool").
Skulmo, yeah well you know, that's just like your opinion man... Z :-\
Quote from: ZenArcade on 01 May, 2014, 03:14:22 PM
Skulmo, yeah well you know, that's just like your opinion man... Z :-\
Seconded. :cool:
As a wee kid I had no concept of singers or bands as "cool". It was only when I became a teenager and started to find my own identity that "coolness" became a factor in whether I liked something or not. Firstly with Kurt Cobain/Nirvana and then with Richey Edwards/Manic Street Preachers... whom I love to this day no matter how old and Radio 2-centric they become.
Nirvana definitely played Norwich Arts Centre so probably Cambridge Corn Exchange too.
Manic Street Preachers also played NAC - site of the famous '4 REAL' incident.
Really??? So the things I think are my opinion?
well . . . I never knew that!
Eyes opened . . .
Enlightenment here I come!
Quote from: Skullmo on 01 May, 2014, 03:42:31 PM
Really??? So the things I think are my opinion?
well . . . I never knew that!
Eyes opened . . .
Enlightenment here I come!
Get off your high cat Skullmo, the feller didn't mean any harm. He was quoting from The Big Lebowski.
I think Nirvana are completely over-rated too.
Quote from: Spaceghost on 01 May, 2014, 03:51:31 PM
Quote from: Skullmo on 01 May, 2014, 03:42:31 PM
Really??? So the things I think are my opinion?
well . . . I never knew that!
Eyes opened . . .
Enlightenment here I come!
Get off your high cat Skullmo, the feller didn't mean any harm. He was quoting from The Big Lebowski.
I think Nirvana are completely over-rated too.
I was joking! I never get upset with the forum!
I have a disclaimer at the end of my posts to cover my opinions as well!
Skulmo, it was an attempt at a joke...sorry if it irked you. The thread is a fairly light hearted thing, nothing to fall out over. Z
Quote from: JamesC on 01 May, 2014, 03:42:03 PM
Nirvana definitely played Norwich Arts Centre so probably Cambridge Corn Exchange too.
Manic Street Preachers also played NAC - site of the famous '4 REAL' incident.
Thanks for that. I got curious so had to WhatsApp the lad to confirm things. 1994 - Oasis was supporting Ride and Jesus and Mary Chain in London; he saw the Verve supporting Smashing Pumpkins in 1993 in Cambridge; Keane(?) he saw them in a small pub in Nottingham; oh! and apparently I was with him in a tiny pub in Leicester in 1998 when a band called Coldplay took to the stage (did anything come of them?!!)
Quote from: Old Tankie on 01 May, 2014, 05:30:33 PM
apparently I was with him in a tiny pub in Leicester in 1998 when a band called Coldplay took to the stage (did anything come of them?!!)
Nothing good.
:)
Quote from: JamesC on 30 April, 2014, 06:16:48 PM
I 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.
In the spirit of bringing some much needed levity to the topic (and since JamesC mentioned it first) my first pop crushes were Vix (the lead singer from Fuzzbox) http://youtu.be/B_72Y9L7DAk (http://youtu.be/B_72Y9L7DAk), Tiffany http://youtu.be/w6Q3mHyzn78 (http://youtu.be/w6Q3mHyzn78) and Vanessa Paradis http://youtu.be/pwKn6fhtxtQ (http://youtu.be/pwKn6fhtxtQ).
Back in the late 70s/early 80s I thought Madness were so bluddy cool. Still are. I wish I suited a pork pie hat.
Nirvana clone here. I relapse every so often, pop in In Utero and stop washing my hair for a a couple of days. What's left of it, that is.