Is it possible to be a dad, and still be “cool”?

Most of us, on the joyous day we greet our first child, suddenly lose the ability to dance, start telling awful jokes, begin to appreciate the practicality of the cardigan and develop issues with any music where you can’t hear the lyrics. Most tragically, this new behaviour is often shrouded in cognitive dissonance, so the message that one is no longer the hippest cat at the disco is not permitted to modify the self image, which is why not only do dads lose their cool, they have the tendency to be embarrassing with it. There are sound genetic reasons for this – dads have to adopt this state in order to give their children something to rebel against in their teens. The dad effect is the only thing keeping our culture fresh.

But Nick Cave begs to differ. Nick Cave, proto-punk scream artist turned literary balladeer, lives near us. We often see him around with his kids. Last weekend we saw him at a local village fair, which he attends every year with his son’s tae kwon-do group. No-one who attends this particular village fair has the slightest idea who he is, apart from us, as we are probably the only two, of the eight adults under-50 there, who have ever listened to anything more challenging than Meatloaf. Tempting though it is to photograph him queuing for the cake stall, and sending it to Popbitch, I never have and probably never will, and I’m not going to post the name of the event here either for fear it will be overrun with goths this time next year.

But if I did take such a photograph, I could use it to illustrate the counter-argument; that Nick Cave, even while politely enjoying the Newhaven Marching Band (officially the most miserable marching band in the UK), is still cool.

Why is this? What can we learn from him?

Of course it helps if you are an internationally famous rock star, rather than working in IT, but I have a theory. I don’t think becoming a dad automatically saps all of your native cool; instead you just have to donate a sizeable chunk to your offspring. If you are blessed with an excess of cool, if you ooze it from your pores, if you, say, have dueted with PJ Harvey and Johnny Cash, this is no problem, you can afford to spare a little of your store and have plenty left over. But if your original supply was a little more sparse, you may find yourself sucked dry.

It is accepted that junior is now going to be the one getting all the new clothes, haircuts, friends, attention etc, so they are inevitably going to be the cool one in the family from now on. To maintain any self respect you have to deal with this and not pretend otherwise. If you are in any doubt as to how much cool you have remaining, simply count the number of U2 tracks on your iPod – if it is more than zero you aren’t cool any more I’m afraid. (If you don’t have an iPod, you don’t really need to be asking the question)

Please note: It is not acceptable, under any circumstances, to attempt to start a proto-punk noise band with the hope of international stardom and a chance to sing with Kylie, at any point after you have purchased your first people carrier. This shall henceforth be known as the inverse-cave-conjecture.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 16th, 2007 at 11:41 pm and is filed under culture, fatherhood, introspection, music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.