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Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Re-Birth of The Cool

Mostly as an excuse to run this shot of Bird & Miles wailing (we assume; it might have been their crummiest gig ever)we refer you all to a not-entirely dull & pointless item in today's L. A. Times, concerning "hot" & "cool" in American culture & even politics.
Three-score years ago, or thereabouts, some cats named Miles, Dizzy and Charlie brought forth upon this continent (OK, actually it was the Three Deuces club in New York) a new musical style, conceived in heroin addiction and dedicated to the proposition that white people can't dance to fast rhythms. Bebop jazz was born, soon followed by its close cousin, beatnik culture. Together, they forged a new attitude that would define popular culture in the second half of the American Century. That attitude, of course, was cool, or "cool pose" as the sociologists call it, and it has come back to haunt us this season, though no longer decked out in goatee and Jean Genet beret.
Everything seems to be coming back to haunt us lately. Why is that? Are those chickens over there? We didn't know they could fly like that.
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3 comments:

  1. Larry Harmon15 October, 2008 09:50

    "Beatniks" never had any culture. It was just a word coined by Herb Caen to criticze tendencies in 50s youth that he didn't like. The Beats, on the other hand, did create culture, and I think you're right, they were profoundly influenced by bop.
    P.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Larry Harmon15 October, 2008 09:51

    P.S. I didn't know that the beatnik beret came from Genet!
    P.

    ReplyDelete
  3. M. Bouffant15 October, 2008 18:47

    Maynard G. Krebs Responds:

    Sheesh, no credit for being right or wrong about anything, we feel dumb enough not doing much other than linking to crap in the first place.

    But those "beats" were pretty amorphous. Merely the first "countercultural" thing to receive a media-unified identity at the dawn of unified mass media. (Telebision, we like to call it.)

    Personally, we like the whole concept of "beat," in the physically exhausted mode. It reflects our current experience.

    "Beret/Genet" probably used for rhyming purposes only. Which is why we want no credit for anything.

    (Would make a good David Bowie couplet.)

    ReplyDelete

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