The Naff

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

What is the relationship between coolness and naffness in pop history.

A version of it wd describe pop history as essentially a story of a thread of coolness constantly besieged by naffness. This seems deeply unsatisfactory to me.

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Welcome back Tom! The interweb has missed you :-)

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

yes, welcome back

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

i wouldn't like the converse either!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

oh pah i have IMPORTANT WRITING to finish this morning! instead i have already written and scrubbed three answers to this key question

the dynamic of "cool" seems to be "it's good until a critical mass of applause is reached, then it becomes bad" -- ie "cool" has the same apparent qualities as NEW and DIFFERENT but less absolute; so that a non-tiny group of people can imbibe over time before the goodness goes

so can a better map be drawn up by pushing the claim out to an extreme?: "a thread of DIFFERENCE constantly besieged by SAMENESS" (i don't mean this is correct -- it isn't -- i mean, what's obviously absurd about this statement is also absurd in the cool-naff version, even though it's a less strong claim

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

two different (apparently contradictory) types of cool: "being ahead of the curve" vs "being indifferent to the existence of the curve" -- except the latter of course becomes the former when others start to mimic it

i want to suggest other categories, though, and make it "non-binary" (sorry)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Cool = being played in "trendy" nightclubs??

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

cool will become an unholy mess if you try to analyse any meaning, surely

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

ie nightclubs where ppl go to be seen, not to listen to music

haha THAT REMINDS ME

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

in mare street yesterday, in the hot june midday sun, i saw the following:

a tidily dressed dressed gentleman, black, grey-bearded, in his mid-60s and quiet in demeanour, wearing a felt bobblehat with a brim that stated it was a maltesers product, and fashioned in the shape of a CHRISTMAS PUDDING!!

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Pop was naff from 1989-1997, until the girl/boy bands suddenly became bigger than everything else again.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

[mouth opens, closes, no noise emanates]

please re-phrase that sentence using your age instead of the years innit.

hello tom, this is a nice thing to greet us with on yr return :)

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

ALSO, also, isn't the cool/naff binary just totally rockism in disguise? given that "cool" was invented by jazz [hem hem] and jazz is the most rockist of all the musics.

[hoshuteki.livejournal.com]

God, does this mean I have to like, I dunno, Jamie Cullum to be a jazz-poptimist?

[hoshuteki.livejournal.com]

Gosh. I think you could spend a long time debating what "coolness" is and never get anywhere near a satisfactory definition. To me, pop history seems more about the naffness as a constant, with "cool" a roaming tag being applied to different bands/artists during different eras (both historical and personal).

And welcome back!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yes, v.important not to get hung up on definition of "coolness" - you could replace it with "artistic worth" or "lastingness" or "innovation" or any number of things really. I picked "coolness" because a lot of (public) enthusiasm about pop seems to be in quest of it, and also because it's such a vague notion.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Does cool = down with the kidz on the bus?

Cool at the moment therefore is Ne-Yo!

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

ray j

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

the word for "naff" in jazz-lingo = CORNY!

but "cool" as originally used -- it was explored on that VICTORIA COREN prog -- meant sumfin a bit like "botherd", and didn't reference artists so much as those left unruffled by the rush of life

(in john miller chernoff's tremendous book on african drumming., he describes being in a club at a bar listening to african pop, and his toe is twitching to the music, and someone sees this and shouts with glee that this is the COOLEST DANCE EVER SEEN -- ie in west africa at the time, controlled elegant minimalism is a value

(re this anecdote: i can't remember if the word is actually "cool" though, or an african word meaning "cool")

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

those left unruffled by the rush of life

= those full of smack?

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

quest for cool = fear of / defence against naff? But this is transparently 'naff', so cool = not caring about being 'cool'. But this is not true either. The Simpsons explored this problem: (paraphrased) Marge 'by not caring about being cool or not I become cool' Bart and Lisa 'no it doesn't work like that'.

Dunno, mate.

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

To adapt an old idiom: lady, if you have to care...

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

hidden question = who gets to judge?

my xmas-pudding bobblehat man = VERY cool in the sense of looks weird and argualby silly but carries it well (esp.on such a hot day)

does this become actually really cool if an arbiter imitates (cf "i'll have a babycham!")? NO! it is already cool -- the arbiter is merely acknowledging an extant fact

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I have been using the word 'naff' a lot recently, I observed to Adrian at lunch yesterday. For example I have described cow parade as 'naff': in fact I mostly use it to describe feigned artistic sophistication (often populist in intent) which fails on aesthetic grounds. Describing something as naff establishes a distance and a hierarchy between my taste and other people's taste, and instances my critical judgement.

AND ANYWAY 'naff' might not be the opposite of 'cool', or the relationship between the two might not be symmetrical.

[plumsbitch.livejournal.com]

yup. The whole easy listening revival thing in the 90s takes naff and makes it cool. Or maybe takes cool and makes it naff?

Arbiters

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

The notion of implied arbiters seems crucial for 'cool' but not 'naff'. If I pronounce something naff I am saying 'I am an arbiter', but to claim that something is cool is a bit naff in itself.