the dearth of cool

Music may indeed soothe the savage beast, but what it does best is separate the cool from the dorks. We judge humans first on their clothing and their hair; our costumes provide a map for what we do, where we live, how much money we make and what we value. But nothing tells us whether someone has that ineffable waft of hip or that damning fug of square like the music we choose.

The problem is, of course, that as Maxïmo Park tells us, the coastline is always changing. (This sentence was, of course, a multi-part test, like one of those grade school standardized reading comprehension exams. If you know who Maxïmo Park is, you sail past bubble A; if you don’t, you’re screwed. Bubble B then tests how you understand Maxïmo Park. Being British and marginally on trend with post-punk music, you’ll feel one way; being similarly American, you’ll feel another. If you love, love, love Maxïmo Park, you’ll see me as a kindred cool spirit; if you hate, hate, hate Maxïmo Park, you’ll see me as a tarnished poseur. And even if you don’t know the band at all just their gratuitous use of umlauts could make you see me as a reborn idiot.) Where you are along the musical vista makes you hear the song differently. It’s a Pavlovian Doppler effect, but with rhythm and harmony and bass. Or, you know, if you’re listening to ambient, not.

Two things happened last week to make me consider this kaleidoscopic trait of music. First, I put up a Tweet asking for people’s recommendations for new gym songs. I got only two replies, one from a music buddy who has high confidence in his tastes and the other from a friend who lowered her virtual voice to confess that she listens to Bel Biv Devoe, Justin Timberlake’s “Damn Girl,” or Hole when she works out. The other thing that occurred is that I went to see the ‘80s hair band musical Rock of Ages. (Here is my algebraic review of Rock of ages: (The Wedding Singer + Pippin – Our Town)(American Idol) ÷ (Guitar Hero) = Rock of Ages.) It may not be readily apparent, but the common denominator of both workout music and Rock of Ages is shame. Music, in addition to bringing up feelings, thoughts, and memories  also causes one of two ancillary reactions: pride or shame.

When I scroll through my iTunes, and I have about 9,000 songs, my life passes before my eyes. I see “Lovin’ You,” and I remember being twelve and buying shoes with my grandmother in Thom McAnn, hearing the song for the first time, and feeling both like this was the stupidest song I’d ever heard, and that in its stupidity, it might just be brilliant. The Eagles’ “The Best of My Love” causes me to recall in sensorama-like detail slow-dancing with Glen Yandow in seventh grade. Anything by Boston forces me to look for the nearest keg. Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me” makes me look for the closest pole. Big blocks of songs bring to mind various boyfriends and my acquiring their music like their t-shirts. Other blocks make me remember break-ups and my applying the Tom Tom Club’s “Man with the 4-Way Hips” like a soothing unguent. And still others don’t bring much of an association at all. These tend to be the songs I listen to like I look at wallpaper: without much thought or attachment.

There is a secondary layer to my iTunes musings, of course. There is the flesh-crinkle of shame and the leaping solar lord of pride. When I consider various people looking at my iTunes library, I feel solid. Substantial. As if I stride the earth as a colossus. But when I imagine others, people whose musical tastes I respect, musicians, critics, or just those people who invariably wear the best shoes ever, I die a little inside. I would not want them knowing that I own three full discs by Sean Hayes, or that Kelly Clarkson’s “Miss Independent” is my fifth-most played song. I fear the judgment.

The thing is that it’s ok to like lame music ironically. It is, as Chuck Klosterman points out in his excellent Fargo Rock City, totally fine to assume the ironic position (which I think involves some kind of hip cock) to enjoy the oeuvre of, say, Warrant or Poison. You can like all kinds of stuff if you like it disingenuously. But only when someone bigger, badder and cooler than you comes out and asserts his or her love of, say, late ‘80s Tina Turner do you feel permission to avow your sincere passion. Music is singular in its ability to inspire as much mortification as pleasure. Sometimes at the same time.

Which is what is strange about both the gym and Rock of Ages (and RoA’s musical ilk: Jersey Boys, Xanadu, Mamma Mia, and the aforementioned The Wedding Singer. I shudder when I consider the eventual musical comprised of all ‘70s era punk; I just can’t tell if I shudder in revulsion or delight). These are two spaces where it’s not only acceptable but actually encouraged to enjoy the worst music known to human.

Gyms require a release of consciousness or else you’re fully aware that you’re doing something absolutely stupid. It’s not just the bobbing iPod nation that is the gym, either. Gym classes play horrible, horrible, delicious, cheesy music. What we spend in fat-and-sugar calories we make up in sweet, greasy musical delight. The body must go on autopilot, and there’s no gas like crap music. The mélange musical, however, operates on the concept of camaraderie. Everyone who is there knows what they’re going to get, and they want it. They want to hear Quiet Riot’s “We’re Not Going to Take It” repurposed as a political anthem. They want to hear Starship’s “We Built This City” as an argument for urban planning. They want to hear Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is” as an expression of muffed dating cues. They do, they really, really do. They do because this musical celebrates and contextualizes the now-shameful music of its audience’s past.

I can remember the doozie-of-an-outfit runway of my life’s clothing, and I don’t flinch. I can recall a long battalion of just awful men I pined over, and I find nothing cringeworthy. I can look at any number of terrible decisions I’ve made, and I remain blank as a slate. But if I allow myself to recollect that I once subjected my family to an entire Captain and Tenille album at dinner, I suffer the unmistakable crawl of the horrorsloth. It’s mortifying, really, and I was maybe eleven at the time.

Our choice of music represents who we are to ourselves. Sure, other things do too (Mets/Yankees; Treetorns/Chuck Taylors; Wii/Xbox; iPhone/Blackberry), but nothing quite so much as music. And that’s because music is like the Proustian Madeline of the identity. Nothing shows us who we were, what we loved and loved passionately, and how much we changed than listening to a song and realizing you’ve grown out of a band. And nothing shows others who we are, and how cool we are, like the music we love. Music makes bleating herds of us all. Few are the intrepid enough to hold onto their Falco, their Led Zeppelin Presence, their Olivia Newton John “Have You Never Been Mellow,” their Kris Kross, their Milli Vanilli, their Jessica Simpson, their—gasp—Nickleback—and aver their love. I myself am one of the gutless.

Don’t judge me. Please. Let me just play you this other tune that I know you’d really dig.

(The first photo is uncredited, the second is Minnie Ripperton's album and the third is Mötley Crüe by E.J. Camp via ABC News.)