You can't really put your finger on or define cool.  Perhaps it doesn't stand up under scrutiny, nor as a commodity.  It's just there.  It's the aura, it's the feeling, it's the persona, it's amorphous, a charisma, a confidence.  I think often times, that which is the coolest will fly under the radar.  It doesn't have to be blatant.  I mean, when I hear the Cool School jazz, I do kind of feel like that's the sound of the idea of cool.  So, I guess I bought into that one. 

But in a modern context, when I look around me, cool is very dead.  Nothing is cool.  "Cool" is relegated to a flippant remark.

Last edited by Worried Man (2014-05-31 08:26:27)

Charlie Watts is cool - in the proper sense - Mick Jagger isn't. Ferry /Bowie is cool - Elton John / Rod Stewart  isnt. Closer to FNB home - David Reeves is cool - Gianni Cerutti of the vintage ties saga isn't.

Bond was Brit cool. Perhaps still is. Steed?

Crocodile Dundee

I played music with a guy a few years back.  He was a bit older than me.  I think this guy may have actually been cool.  He was an undeniably brilliant musician, and he was utterly aloof.  He was tall and somewhat gangly, a little awkward, and handsome, but not overtly.  He usually wore dark levis and a white t-shirt.  His hair was always slightly tussled.  He was one of those people that was sort of nondescript in a way, and in no way exuberant.  Yet when he walked in a room he would just command it.  All the girls were drawn to him, and plenty of guys too, particularly musicians.  He had some crazy inexplicable sex appeal.  When he was performing brilliant ideas would just flow out of him.  He was usually on some other plain relative to those playing with him.  Sounds cliche to say this, but he just had some "thing", a magnetism, an attitude. But nothing he did was affected, or planned.  He wasn't trying to be something.  He didn't have rock star cockiness or any of that nonsense.  There was nothing ridiculous about the guy.  He was just a complete individual.  He could recognize a phony in a heartbeat and he'd only let a few people get really close.  The guy was genuinely cool, IMO.  Perhaps one of the few people I've come across like that.  His whole persona just worked.  If I had to make a really stupid comparison, I'd probably say he was like a modern-day white Jimi Hendrix.  But, the guy kind of flipped and dropped off the face of the earth.

Heppie, I only ever think of Bond as Moore.

But that's not the mainstream accepted wisdom. Glad there's another outsider like me. Cool?