Cool Kids by Echosmith's has a very Susan Vega feel to it and I like it. A lot. More than is appropriate for a 41 year old man. Not just for the Susan Vega-ish wispy music and beat, a comforting combination of steady beat and up notes, horns or whatever, over laid with the cool, edging on dispassionate, vocals, but for the feelings and memories that it brings up in me.
I was not a cool kid. I know everyone says that, especially the fucking kids that were cool, but when I say that I mean it. The group I was in was called The Nerd Herd or just The Herd. All of us were jokers, artists, intellectuals and geeks that refused to completely grow up. We refused to play their game all the while sitting on the sidelines hurling verbal frag grenades. Eyes full of desire for what they had. With two notable exceptions we were all lower middle class, if not white trash. We wanted so much more but some of us were already learning that we just were not going to get it. We were full of rage and hate. We weren't the bottom rug, someone always has it worse than you, but we were close and we knew it. I guess that's one reason we stuck together. Of course there was in fighting but if an outsider fucked with one you fucked with all of us and you only did it once.
I was not a cool kid. I know everyone says that, especially the fucking kids that were cool, but when I say that I mean it. The group I was in was called The Nerd Herd or just The Herd. All of us were jokers, artists, intellectuals and geeks that refused to completely grow up. We refused to play their game all the while sitting on the sidelines hurling verbal frag grenades. Eyes full of desire for what they had. With two notable exceptions we were all lower middle class, if not white trash. We wanted so much more but some of us were already learning that we just were not going to get it. We were full of rage and hate. We weren't the bottom rug, someone always has it worse than you, but we were close and we knew it. I guess that's one reason we stuck together. Of course there was in fighting but if an outsider fucked with one you fucked with all of us and you only did it once.
You couldn't pay me enough money to relive high school again. Not that my 20s were that great but at least I had access to alcohol and alcohol numbs the pain oh so well. In that way I can definitely relate to the lyrics, but that's minor. It reminds of summer vacation. It reminds me of reading well into the afternoon, the only light in the loft coming from the windows. Outside the green white and black oak treetops shimmered in the sun, framing the barn at Kimler's ranch, and Susan Vega's 'Tom's Dinner' was playing on my boom box. I would spend entire days in the woods most summers. I'd take my BB gun, a book, and my Walkman and be gone until dinner, then back out until dark. I developed a lot of skills that I know helped me, and continue to help me to this day, out in the foothills with just my dogs. And sometimes Susan Vega.
