"Uncool" music you dig. Out with it!

i'm a big City Boy fan. i win. something. i win something.

i love the first Starz album more than any Kiss album ever made.

I enjoy some Sons of Champlain songs, but I wouldn’t even know of them if not for my dad. Horn rock!

Is union by Toni Childs uncool?

totally.

Returning to the topic of ABBA’s coolness in the ‘90s; just came across this Flying Nun tribute on social media (had never heard of it)

i looked at this on FB and realized that there are secret levels of whiteness that i am not privy to. other than richard thompson and the preservation hall band i had no idea who ANY of these people were. there are local festivals like this all the time around here. they aren't for young people. i should be the demographic. but unfortunately they just look really uncool to me. no offense to sir. richard. who i love. and who plays around here, like, 10 times a year.

https://scontent-bos5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/431883219_931582178343904_5510188593972983208_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5f2048&_nc_ohc=MK3PyoWjoJEAX-vDaFF&_nc_ht=scontent-bos5-1.xx&oh=00_AfC4SRlMc7HbMyR6lxpbBu_4TcXHe-Isn2-LMuJQ6dp3nQ&oe=65FBE60C

https://scontent-bos5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/432401269_931582175010571_632896888730513714_n.jpg?_nc_cat=102&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5f2048&_nc_ohc=AsDwIGvx32UAX-fCKR9&_nc_ht=scontent-bos5-1.xx&oh=00_AfCVG904LrGEChN-YXEFpcdG7BAsLRIB0VCAqKP4xHQB4w&oe=65FC5A6F

https://scontent-bos5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/432423551_931582191677236_4885266910016941552_n.jpg?_nc_cat=110&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5f2048&_nc_ohc=kvdnG8Z_K20AX9NdgUQ&_nc_ht=scontent-bos5-1.xx&oh=00_AfDzFatc1kxG45NKaPYwLTqIzUhLnRGPYy6KroBvJZZvFg&oe=65FC62B5

i know laura cantrell. or of her. didn't she have a radio show on WFMU?

peter blanchette is from here and he plays a crazy guitar. the "archguitar".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COzLdipNUe4

anyway, i don't dig nu-americana for the most part. too many hats.

alright if no one's gonna name anything TRULY uncool I'll just mention that I think both Moxy Fruvous and the Barenaked Ladies have written some excellent songs

I've recently come around to Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66, those records are fun! maybe they are cool now but they weren't for years

they are permanently cool. all the 70s records are as great as the 60s ones.

Back in 2019, I tried (and failed) to drum up sufficient enthusiasm around here to place a “Frozen II” outtake on the EOY poll.

man, my kid is obsessed with brazil thanks to spotify. his playlists are insanely hip. he's 18! you'd think he was a 50-something japanese sake bar owner.

Steve Harley died! he's not very cool now. but does anyone still listen to him?? maybe in the U.K. they never stopped.

@frogbs I said The Tea Party and I’m with you on BNL (but not Moxy)

Stuck in the 90s man

Buy a new Gameboy

For the fun and the fashion

No, I bought it for Tetris

Seeing as we're above the 49th, I genuinely love--I'm about to cross a line very few have--Glass Tiger's "Don't Forget Me (When I'm Gone)."

(The BNL's Bruce Cockburn cover is great, especially the video. Hated Moxy Fruvous--and talk about baggage...)

The Blow Monkeys are one of my favorite bands and sound objectively great to me.

This can't be cool.

I like everything Whiskeytown ever did, including the couple dozen unreleased tracks.

(Ryan Adam's solo gets patchy pretty quickly thereafter.)

Sergio Mendes could def be considered uncool from a bossa nova purist perspective, he's the dude who went off to become a big star in the US and do covers of Anglo songs. but then from a 90's and beyond lounge revivalist pov he becomes very cool indeed.

alright if no one's gonna name anything TRULY uncool I'll just mention that I think both Moxy Fruvous and the Barenaked Ladies have written some excellent songs

quite like Barenaked Ladies, I get that they're an early incarnation of epic bacon/reddit style humour but that stuff wasn't as omnipresent then, or perhaps I was younger and less discerning, anyway they strike me as fundamentally benign. got Brian Wilson to sing "Brian Wilson" on that live album, too.

I certainly despised Michael Bolton in my youth but "How Can We Be Lovers" works as well as the next AOR/power ballad banger.

I like that Bonzo Dog Band album Camaraderie posted

I also have a Blow Monkeys LP but tbh I don't like very much on it so maybe that doesn't count

I own the first Asia LP

I like lots of post-1980 punk stuff that was definitely not cool in the UK when I was growing up but appears to have been cool in the USA to some degree, and a lot of it seems to have been reappraised a bit in more recent times

main uncool music for me is probably lots of pre-Britpop UK indie music that is still roundly detested

The ABBA fan club includes Lester Bangs, John Lydon, Elvis Costello and Pete Townshend - they were always cool to ppl in the know, it's just they look very uncool to the squares.

Chris Carter of Throbbing Gristle ca. 1980.

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZKk0vXesqmA/X9zspXItOZI/AAAAAAAAKCU/j_lEhCqq2RAjhwNF12352KGx2mLFH6WZACLcBGAsYHQ/s500/abbachris.jpg

I saw the Abba Voyage show in London last year and I was the only cool person there.

Oh yes ABBA Voyage is not cool.

The CBGBs store they had at that New York airport also wasn't cool.

That uncool couple you sat next to? Used to be in Throbbing Gristle.

"main uncool music for me is probably lots of pre-Britpop UK indie music that is still roundly detested"

names please.

only one post on the revived steve harley thread. ouch.

xp reminds me that I've had an "in defense of Kingmaker" blog planned for quite a while now, must get it finished.

I unapologetically love “Cracked Rear View” by Hootie and the Blowfish. As a Brit, do I get bonus uncool points for embracing the sound of mid-90s middle America.

yes. yes you do. i can't imagine listening to the whole thing. but there must be a reason why it sold a zillion copies.

only one post on the revived steve harley thread. ouch

More on the obit thread. For the record, I don't think Steve Harley was ever considered particularly uncool - except when he did The Phantom of the Opera.

some of these bands I only like a few songs by and a lot of it is more for nostalgic reasons than thinking these bands were actually brilliant, but yes the late 80s/early 90s era bands like Carter USM/Ned's Atomic Dustbin/Senseless Things/Mega City 4/Pop Will Eat Itself/Inspiral Carpets/yes even Kingmaker had a couple of songs I could still listen to

I went to see Sultans of Ping last year (not UK obviously but same kind of thing)

I think Ocean Colour Scene might be the band with the biggest disconnect between how irredeemably uncool I find them (everything about their aesthetic and general vibe is so corny and off-putting) and how much I actually like all their big singles. There were all these britpop bands who were terrible but had one (1) quite good song and OCS were like that except they had five or six. Also, The Riverboat Song is better than Four Sticks.

I like a lot of Britpop stuff that most people would call uncool, I guess.
There's some hippy/festival crossover type stuff I enjoy like The Skints
Most of all, I'm pretty cool though

xp In my "introduce yourself" post 20 years ago, I said BNL was one of my favorite bands. They've fallen quite a bit in my band ranking but there's a good handful of songs I'll still stick up for. And their live album Rock Spectacle is one of the only live albums I love

I feel like a ton of music I loved in high school was uncool at the time (Enya, They Might Be Giants, Enigma, various synthpop groups), but nearly all those artists have been reevaluated and given some dues over the years. Hard to think of anything that has just stayed uncool

Has anyone said traditional Irish fiddling yet? Cuz fellas I love a reel.

Not uncool.

Traditional music in general isn't uncool.

reminds me that I've had an "in defense of Kingmaker" blog planned for quite a while

lol I love Kingmaker, definitely add them to my not-cool list. (They were very briefly cool when they first hit, NME lauded and all that, but they basically got middled out between Madchester and Britpop.)

I've even seen Kingmaker live, TWICE. (once an exceedingly rare U.S. performance)

the two albums by The Lucy Show are two of my favorite 80s rock records. I haven't stopped listening to them since 1985/1986. but i don't know if they are uncool or if its just that i am the only person who still remembers or plays them. there must be a difference between those things.

oh wait duh on the 80s thread i started or maybe the big music thread i just mentioned that i had been playing that first Easterhouse album. surely they aren't cool by anyone's standard. i still love that record though. U2 + Chameleons + Communism.

I owned manai at one point but couldnt get into it

mania

I have defended 311 a bunch, not to say I *love* them but I think they are underrated. FWIW they just did a Tiny Desk concert, which I'm curious to check out.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, March 14, 2024 12:30 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

you should, I enjoyed it a lot. Nick Hexum still has great hair

I think Billy Joel is still uncool at this point but I might be wrong, so him.
Seconding the Al DiMeola reference upthread as I dig all his stuff and it's dollar bin status supports his undesired status.
I also own and love a bunch of Herbie Mann records, including the ones that Sonny Sharrock isn't on.
I feel like it is tricky to gauge the coolness factor of metal bands, but I do listen to a lot of slam metal, which a significant number of metalheads turn their nose up at. I am currently wearing a Waking the Cadaver t-shirt, who might be the most shitted on and mocked band in the slam/deathcore/brutal death metal axis.

Keith Whitley is cool, right?

Jimmy Scott? 90s/00s Dee Dee Bridgewater?