Coolness like politics has it’s very own greasy pole. You , your friends and everyone else “know” where they are in relation to each other in the coolness spectrum. In public in our own heads we are cool “whitened sepulchres” ( a classical education will out) – at home a charnel pit of contradictory likes “that none must ever discover”. If we value our cool status we edit our public actions. For example to combine two public actions driving a top down car (yes, yes a mid life crisis, sorry all) blaring a lovingly chosen playlist provides great danger or opportunity for your position on the greasy pole. A few killer tracks move you to DILF status, whereas the stench of an uncool tracks hang around like a fart in a spaceship. Strange to say the coolness quotient is unspoken for the most part – a bit like knowing Jimmy Savile was a “wrong-un” just from watching 1970’s TV.

My “road to Damascus” moment came as follows. On a recent road-trip to Devon I made a playlist of 52 songs for the trip. It was amazing. I  didn’t fast forward once. On the road there or  back. I’m listening to it now. However , listening to the self-same playlist , car roof down , in the recent sunshine I have been skipping like a deranged child. Why? Why, the Tyranny of Cool of course.

As an aside – if anyone wants to start using Tyranny as the collective noun for the endless hipsters swarming ironically through life at the moment…feel free.

Tracks by Morrissey, BRMC,Queens of the Stone Age, Green Day, Camera Obscura, The Vaccines ,Vampire Weekend, Ian McCulloch, Lily Allen and Noah and the Whale, fine, fine, fine. And, of course by listing those ones I hope to establish my generic coolness.

Tracks by Kelis (not Milkshake obvs), Blu Cantrell, The Petshop Boys,Kubb and Gabriella Cilmi …not so much.

So maybe there are some rules there:-

Can we derive rules – Rock IS cooler than Pop (except  Rush,  Status Quo or Rainbow are definite fart category-  vice versa The Undertones, The Buzzcocks or The Lightnings seeds have never seen the inside of a spacesuit?).

Male singers are cooler than women (except, using the same format as above – Sting, Sammy Hagar or Fred Durst – prepare to hold your nose – vice versa Debbie Harry, Amy Winehouse or Billie Holiday are veritable po-pourris of coolness)?

So to summarise , rules.

So how am I deciding skippers versus turn the volume up in public bands?

I certainly wasn’t a cool child, my first ever single bought using my own money was “Billy Don’t be a Hero” by Paper Lace.

Paper Lace

I almost certainly debated internally other similarly dreadful tracks by the likes of Smokie, The Rubettes

Holy Crap the Rubettes

, Mud and Terry Jacks……you get the picture?

My first ever album was the The Best of Showaddywaddy (a teddy boy / 50s revival band)

– now only remembered as a Hugh Dennis line he has had to retire following the Jimmy Savile revelations.

Young people, YouTube them all, but only play the first 30 seconds or otherwise I will not be held responsibility for the onset of narcolepsy. People my age – hang your heads in shame.

But then I lucked out. I was at my Aunties and read a Sunday supplement that described the new(ish) punk movement in London. I decided this was the music for me.So based on an article not on actually listening to any of the music – I was a punk – and for the first time considered myself cool.

Next Blog – The Tyranny of Cool 2 – how a self obsessed but unaware teenage idiot came to define cool first for himself and then for a generation….erm not so much the last bit.