My Secret To Being A Cool Music Writer? Don’t Be!

Very few people would associate the word “cool” with me. Can you blame them? Sexegenerian, glasses-wearing East Indian, who often wears buttoned-up shirts. We don’t have to imagine that. It’s my MetalTalk photo.

That said (and seen), I am very much everything you see in that guy in that iconic Maxell ad from the ’80s. I got there by not giving a fuck what people thought was cool or uncool when it came to listening to music and, by association, then writing about it.

Take the very unpopular opinion that the Sammy Hagar era of Van Halen produced some great albums. Love Walks In,  in my opinion, is one of the greatest songs by that band. Unfortunately, the immediate disqualification of this being cool comes from the fact that it is a ‘Van Hagar’ song, and it is a cheesy, keyboard-driven song at that. It is a love song, dammit!

So not cool. Well, if you have confused me with someone who gives a fuck.

“Contact is all that it takes. To change your life, to lose your place in time”
 
The opening lyrics communicate the essence of both the simplicity and complexity of love.

Remember, ridiculing this song means you are ridiculing Eddie Van Halen. Think about that. Take as long as you want. One of the greatest guitarists ever had the stones to write a song that went in a completely different direction than the David Lee Roth-led one.

Obviously, Eddie went to the David Bowie school of being an artist.

“Never play to the gallery…”

Hey, but I was listening to uncool shit way before 1986. My first two music purchases as a teenager in the late ’70s were by Styx–Grand Illusion and Cornerstone. Yup. I was cranking Babe on my cheap little boombox back in 1979. Yup. Nothing more badass than a crooning Denis DeYoung blasting you with a syrupy ballad through a $25 tape deck. Maybe there was another 15-year-old in the world listening to Motorhead’s Overkill.

Nope. That was not me.

Styx was not a phase. I still listen to them with affection. Maybe even more so today. Sure, a sizable chunk of the reason is nostalgia, but most of it simply has to do with the fact that I still love so many of their songs.

Today.

Tommy Shaw just absolutely sings and plays with a soul that still resonates with me today.

My uncoolness has no bottom. I still listen to The Partridge Family.

And yes, I still love so many songs from the Disco era.

For me, having these songs sit warmly and comfortably in my music wheelhouse is what amplifies the opposite end of the spectrum.

Not that you cannot attach any more badassness to Swamp Devil by the Southern dirtbags (a word used most affectionately) Artimus Pyledriver (an ode to the legendary Lynyrd Skynyrd drummer Artimus Pyle). But having the luxury of travelling across a wide spectrum of music, sometimes contradictory and controversial, only makes the filthiness of this song feel even filthier.

Listening consistently to squeaky clean music that could border on campy at times, just gives you all the reason and curiosity to hunt out the baddest shit that is out there.

20 years later, still finding more of that.

And, of course, after getting my head bludgeoned by some of the heaviest music out there, I find a happy retreat in the lighter, less obviously cool songs.

Hard to believe, but this Dutch band has been going strong for almost 20 years, churning out addictive “raw psychedelic charm” (as written on their website).

Listening to heavy music is what has helped give me the elasticity to keep listening to music that is far from that and open to it being branded cheesy and uncool.

The song below flows in the vein of all things DeWolff. Owen Stewart is the talented drummer for Ruby The Hatchet, often sharing vocals with the incomparable Jillian Taylor. He often sits behind his kit sporting cool retro shirts of Black Sabbath.

Just listening to this song once provides you with your daily intake of righteous soul.

Even if I wanted to, I was never going to be cool. Especially in the scene I am so immersed and invested in–stoner/desert/doom.

Demographically atypical, a polite way of saying ‘not white,’ and sporting zero tattoos. 

And yet, upon final audit of all this, I am the guy sitting alone in the chair in the Maxell ad getting blown away by music. All kinds of music. Yesterday’s and today’s. Gooey soft and skull-crackin’ hard.

That’s how you become cool. By not caring about if you are. At RippleFest in Austin in 2024, I wore buttoned collared shirts one day.

I am going to leave you with some timeless cool that cannot be argued or debated. Joe Walsh wore cool, sang cool, and played guitar cool. He also wrote that beautiful piano song Inner Tube, which sounds like music for being in an embryo.

But, the coolest ever, keeping with the ‘conflicting’ ideas of cool, has to be Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy.

Nobody ever was cooler than Phil. He wore the conventional cool of looking like the leader of a gang, but he also wrote tender love songs for both his daughters.

He also, at the height of his cool, did a video with a 70-year-old woman playing keyboards on one of my favourite Lizzy songs.

In my book, the band’s cool currency only went up with that move. So adorable that she wanted a kiss from Phil. Love and tenderness is cool, folks.

In this day and age, where it seems like everyone has a podcast, some good and some bad, the competition for being cool with regard to heavy music just gets ratcheted up. Eddie Trunk, who I have happily crapped on a few times here, is the caricature of wanting to be cool and just cannot be.

The more he tries to not be a dork, the more he becomes one. It is like he is a walking Chinese finger trap of trying to be cool. The more he tries, the less he becomes.

He is the JD Vance of hard rock music critics. Memo to him and anyone else. Listen to what you love and love what you write, and stretch both ends of the musical spectrum. Not just one.

Get blown away by it all. Have no guilty pleasures. Now, that’s cool. Pfft. Don’t listen to me. Listen to someone who has been our generation’s ambassador for all things heavy and edgy. He helped introduce Kyuss to the world back in 1992.