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 :-)

[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

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

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

[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!!

Re: haha THAT REMINDS ME

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

the"bobble" = holly plus berries made of felt

[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.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

But those were the years I LIKED it!

[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]

It emerged from my DEEP THORT about 1968 pop when on teh beach!

[hoshuteki.livejournal.com]

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

[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.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

skronk = pop obv ;)

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

see, PURE ROCKISM!!!

you can't have a binary like this without relatively stable definitions can you?

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Does cool = down with the kidz on the bus?

Cool at the moment therefore is Ne-Yo!

[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")

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Hrm, I dunno, why not?

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

ray j

stability surely unnecessary for meaning

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

cf more vs less

cool and naff may be intensifiers/distinctors of qualities that are purely contextual

haha LOOK!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

cool-A = "ahead of curve"
cool-B= "indifferent to curvitude"

change is built into defn A; non-change built into defn.B --- YET B becomes A when others join in!