Dubber’s Box of Cool

Andrew Dubber has been posting free ideas on his website, and the latest one is a real cracker. It’s A Box Of Cool. A subscription service that sends you something undeniably cool every month. And when he says “cool” he’s talking about

its original colloquial usage – particularly by beatniks and New York intellectuals. It’s an urbane aesthetic, an attitude and an approach to life that is at once detached and engaged. It’s smart, politically active, exploratory, self-composed, improvisational, unhurried, interested in expanded horizons, and emphasises an appreciation of both quality and authenticity – as indefinable as those things may be.

That’s quite a fun idea in itself, but the next bit made me laugh, then think, then chuckle quietly and stare out of the window for ages. One person deciding what to send each month won’t work. Everyone has an agenda. Everyone’s promoting something, even if it’s just their name. So…

However, the trick to it being actually cool – rather than merely marketing cool is to have a different guest editor every month. Someone smart, interesting and culturally curious, who epitomises some element of cool – and not in a GQ suit-wearing, cigar-smoking sort of way – but in an ‘in-touch with the zeitgeist – but aware of far more interesting stuff’ sort of way.

Good is better than funny?

You should read the rest of Andrew’s post. It’s very interesting. He goes on to talk about the value of physical objects and how people will always pay for cool:

It’s because the digital age favours good product design and desirable objects. Popular is not as good as cool anymore.

I agree that cool is better than popular. I’m also convinced that funny is better than good. It’s interesting to figure out how that all fits together. A cool object is better than a popular object, but a funny (ie. entertaining, not necessarily comedy) performance is better than a good (ie. perfectly performed) performance. So maybe the ideal recording would be an entertaining performance packaged as a cool object. Or maybe the performance needs to be cool too – a cool event, or a performance with a backstory that makes it cool.

Is stuff actually cool?

I think I find Andrew’s post so interesting because I don’t tend to think in terms of objects. I have a few bits of tasty vinyl and the odd hipster Penguin edition of Orwell or Camus, but each of those purchases were part of a much larger learning experience and they act as a trigger for my memories of endless days spent researching band histories or flicking through record shops.

The records that I wouldn’t let go are almost all live performances or remind me of some special performance. The double vinyl Truck Stop Café Little Feat bootleg, the Dr John plays Mac Rebenack solo piano album, The Stooges’ Metallic KO – these are cool to me because they are gateways to an event, a place, a time, a performance. I find that pretty cool.

I didn't tag this post.

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