The Coolness

Describing their sound as "disco beats, Casio keyboards, KISS-meets-'90s rave music," the members of The Coolness bring a fusion of rock and dance music to their performances. The guys bonded over a "love of Oasis, Jimi Hendrix, dance music and the Stone Roses." Originally from Portsmouth, England, the band now resides in London, and the band's vocalist, Chaz John Ross, and drummer, Eddie Lyons, talked to Spinner before heading to SXSW.

Describe your sound in your own words.

Chaz: Disco beats, Casio keyboards, KISS-meets-'90s rave music.

Eddie: Loud guitar, four crazy guys ripping up the rock 'n' roll telephone directory.

How did your band form?

Chaz and Eddie: We originate from Portsmouth, a.k.a. Pompey, which is a small island off the south coast of England, next to the Isle Wight Festival. It was once the most densely populated city in Europe and houses the world's largest Council Estate, Leigh Park. We all met at South Downs Art College more ten years ago. We now live in Methnal Green, a trendy part of East London.
What are your musical influences?

Chaz: Guns 'n' Roses vs. the Stone Roses.

Eddie: ... but playing keytars and drum machines.

How did you come up with your band's name?

Chaz: A girl from Los Angeles called Sisely came up with it. It's an American thing.

Eddie: She used to sing and dance with us, but got snapped up by another band called Shiny Toy Guns.

What's your biggest vice?

Chaz: I have some relationship troubles. I tend to go for fiery, very violent Latin types. I'm pretty weak and too skinny to defend myself.

Eddie: Kinder Eggs ... Chocadoobie. I love sexy surprises.

What's your musical guilty pleasure?

Chaz: Probably my own, The Coolness, as we are the Shoreditch Spinal Tap. I also dig Coldplay, X-Factor and Britney.

Eddie: Aerosmith, ZZ Top, Level 42 or slap bass music, anything rocking, really.

Beatles or Stones?

Chaz: Beatles. I'm clean cut, and 'Imagine' was UK number one the day I was born.

Eddie: Stones.

What's the craziest thing you've seen or experienced while on tour?

Chaz: Our van crashed into the river Thames on the way to a gig with Hollywood girl group The Millionaires. When we finally arrived at the venue six hours late, the Millionaires had cancelled due to food poisoning. We blame Ken's Kebabs!!

Eddie: Our manager Bert was once so (drunk) that he tried to seduce a life-sized poster of Kate Moss. We have video evidence of this on YouTube. We filmed an orgy that's on YouTube, too.

If you could bring anyone onstage to perform with you, who would it be?

Chaz: Lady Gaga. I'd love her to perform on me ... all over.

Eddie: Tay Zunday. To make us appear more urban.

What would you say or do if the 'Twilight' film creators asked you to feature one of your songs on the movie's soundtrack?

Chaz: I've never seen this film as I only have a VHS player, so I'd say a big 'Yes.'

Eddie: I saw a pirate copy on Betamax. We'd be happy to work with anyone with big bucks, except Ronald McDonald.
- Spinner

Guitar-Rave Hackney Party band 'The Coolness'!
Photos by Billa
You can always count on electro-rock sensation 'The Coolness' for a good ware party with all the best bands, costumes, hair, sunglasses and moustaches in East London. We bump into front man Chaz John Ross at Club Uncool one time. .



LB: Your parties are a clever piece of self-promotion and self-showcasing. Is this the intention behind them?
CC: We've learnt what makes a good party and we’re a party band! We always try and pay and showcase all the other bands we have here¦ We've had Charli XCX, Dead Kids¦ Micachu and other bands who are up and coming. So we've put on a lot of bands who we like and who have then gone on to become big. A lot of promoters are in it to be fashionable and in style or they're doing it to make money but The Coolness is fundamentally a rock band and we're more similar to those 60s and 70s bands¦ you know Hendrix and Kiss where it's just all about the party and everyone together and sex. We're not trying to be clever or cool we just do it because we feel like we have to do it. There's no one else doing anything like Club Cool.

LB: ART/WARE Raves have massively taken off lately with the whole Nu Rave scene.. What did you make of MTV's ART/WARE party, sponsored by Nestle that you played at?
CC: I'm not sure if they were cashing in on this warehouse scene I think they just want to be considered trendy. It was like Club Cool in that they had the visuals and the interactive stuff and were trying to bring people together. The crowd were very difficult. They didn't move very much unless we were doing Karate jumps the whole set and cartwheels and guitar solos. But although they didn't move that much I think they really appreciated our performance and I mean it was nice that the event was organised.

LB: Do you have any plans to get mainstream and rise up from the underground any time?
CC: It's not really something we want to do but I feel like maybe we have to do it in order to survive. We're very cautious about making music for specifically commercial reasons but we do want to be professional and I mean the bottom line is, we need some money. If we're gonna get paid to do it on a bigger scale and then if we have to be more professional and more commercial then I suppose that's what we'll do. After the single 'Take it Off/Set me free' is released then we may start playing the more commercial gigs and talking to the more commercial magazines.



CLUB COOL!


LB: Would you describe yourself as a local band?
CC: I think we are a fun band and Shoreditch is a fun place but we are ridiculing it as much as we are championing it because I suppose we find it quite false. I mean we started wearing a lot of white because all the other bands were wearing loads of black so you know..Yeah, we got an electro sound and Shoreditch has got a lot of electro music going on. We're only famous in the East End!

LB: You're Hackney celebs! What do you think of the East End getting so developed and commercial? All the old authentic bars have been gutted and made posh! Is it the end of the East End?
CC: That's not good...that's not good a good thing but I think it's still an exciting place but the coolest most interesting places are now not in Brick Lane and Old Street but further out in Dalston, Hackney. In a way the only reason it got good in the first place was because we got the Olympic Games bid in 2000-2002. In a way that's when it started kicking cos the money started coming in. So you can't really complain as the only reason it picked up in the first place was because of the development here.



LB: Who would you most like to have at Club Cool?
CC: Jimmy Hendrix or The Beatles and Daft Punk. The Coolness other wise it wouldn't exist so we'd have to have us playing¦ and just bands I've never heard before. Young bands. It's a good atmosphere for them. We want everyone to play here as long as they're fun and original and not boring. LB!






CLUB COOL! - Photo by Alan Davies - La Bouche Zine

http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=121942307&albumID=2337205&imageID=36163129 - Male Fashion Confidence

Crazy, energised performances from up n coming bands, strippers, art n psychadelia - what more do you want on a Saturday night?



Psychadelia!


Club Cool, is the ultimate 'anti-cool' night and has been proving for a whole year that raw, exciting live music and vibes can still be delivered in the marshland of trendidom that has become Hackney. The club night celebrated its first birthday the other weekend, 14th March, by throwing a big secret rave in East End location 'The Resistance gallery'. Kindle n party organisers and underground electro sensation The Coolness played whilst VJs cast rainbows and Dead Kids got on the decks.

We asked Party Organiser and The Coolness front man Chaz John Ross why they think they are so damm uncool, "We are uncool for being cool, cool is a state of mind", he told us "We are the most ridiculous promoters in east london, we only put on own our own party cos no one else will have us"


Just check out the entertainment.. Very uncool..





The Coolness!

If you're fed up with Shoreditch silliness and are looking for something a bit more raw and way more fun then you should get down to the next anti cool club night - La Bouche Zine

There was a party going on in London E5; a house party in one of the Victorian terraces that line the streets in this modest area of east London. There had been parties on the street before, only on this particular Friday evening two months ago, guests wore Ray-Bans, deep-cut v-neck T-shirts and skinny jeans. They were also, according to one partisan report, in possession of "a sound system louder than the big bang". Quite an event, yet not everyone in the street appreciated the loud music and louder fashions.

"I only put 'hate' in the title of the blog," explains annoyed neighbour and anonymous author of Hackney Hipster Hate photo-blog, "because, on the night I wrote it, I was watching floods of hipsters arrive in the early hours at a terrace house and having an Ibiza-style party. It drove me insane."

The partying, which lasted until 4am on Saturday morning was, in the blogger's opinion, symptomatic "of new arrivals not really getting the measure of where they were living, having no idea about the community there and deciding to have a festival in a back garden at dawn, while people were trying to sleep, because Hackney's supposedly the centre of cool for the next five minutes."

Though it began in a moment of sleep-deprived abhorrence, Hackney Hipster Hate now posts images of fashionable east Londoners accompanied by a scornful commentary. The site has become one of an increasing number dedicated to vilifying fashionable twits who appear to care more about the next big thing than the welfare of their fellow man. Got slimline jeans, tattoos, a headband and a fixed-wheel bike? Then perhaps turn away now.
Distressed hipsters Distressed hipsters: from hackneyhipsterhate.tumblr.com

American comedian Joe Mande began his photo-blog, Look At This Fucking Hipster in April 2009. The site also captions shots of the young and pretentious with lines such as: "Hold on, let me check to see if Topshop sells any iPhone purses." A paperback collection of the best posts was published in March 2010.

In July 2009 US writers and editors Brenna Ehrlich and Andrea Bartz began Stuff Hipsters Hate. They've also published a paperback collection of posts.

The Unhappy Hipsters photo-blog was inaugurated in January 2010. It satirises the smug, modernist home-owners often seen in the pages of US interiors magazine Dwell.

Hipster Hitler web comic was launched in August 2010. It re-imagines the führer as a cardigan-wearing know-it-all, fond of bicycles, organic cashews and typewriters. Fans can buy American Apparel T-shirts bearing such slogans as "Eva 4 Eva" and "Death Camp For Cutie".

Early this September, TheGrandSpectacular posted its debut pop video, Being a Dickhead's Cool, on YouTube. While lacking that crucial H word, the song brutally teases London's poseurs and the video animates shots taken from Hackney Hipster Hate and latfh.com, among other sources. Since its upload on 8 September, the original clip has had around 3,275,000 views.

In autumn/winter 2010, if there's one thing more fashionable than being a hipster, it's laughing at hipsters.

Of course, ridiculing young poseurs isn't an especially new thing to do. The Guardian's Charlie Brooker created the character of Nathan Barley, a vacuous media playboy, back in 1999, around the same time the east London fanzine The Shoreditch Twat began published its first edition. Plenty of the jokes in 80s sitcom The Young Ones, or even the 70s comedy Butterflies were at the expense of similarly youthful pretentions.Though these newer, online baiters pick similar targets, it isn't clear that the term hipster, in its modern usage, is sharply defined enough for truly cutting satire. While all these sites appear to know what they're talking about, none of them offers a working definition of a hipster.

The OED isn't much help; it traces the word back to the 1940s and offers "hepcat" as its rough equivalent. Norman Mailer's 1957 essay The White Negro was subtitled Superficial Reflections on the Hipster and describes an American existentialist who adopts the jazzier trappings of African-American life to free himself (and it usually is a he) from "the squares". Yet "hipsters" was also used during the 1960s to describe trousers that flared from the hip. Perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise to find that in August the New York Times has advised its journalists against using the word, citing doubts over "how precise a meaning it conveys"; meanwhile, a public debate held at the University of California, Los Angeles, recently failed to offer a useful description of this latter-day bogeyman.

Nevertheless, from London to Lima, Sydney to Mexico City, detractors might not know exactly what a hipster is, but they do know what they don't like: a tiresome sort of trendy, ostentatious in their perceived rebellion, yet strangely conformist; meticulous in their tastes, yet also strangely limited. Squatting somewhere between MGMT, The Inbetweeners and Derek Zoolander, this modern incarnation is all mouth and skinny trousers.

Perhaps the most comprehensive examination of this contemporary manifestation is being published in a traditional print format this week. What Was the Hipster? is a 200-page collection of American essays and discussions, which assesses the significance of these turn-of-the-century poseurs.
Fashionable hipster Fashionable hipster: from hackneyhipsterhate.tumblr.com

Put together by n+1, a twice-yearly Brooklyn journal of politics, literature and culture, the book offers three definitions of the type in question. The first is white, urban, cool dudes in Manhattan's Lower East Side circa 1999. This summation begins with a string of keywords: "trucker hats; undershirts called 'wifebeaters' worn as outerwear; the aesthetic of basement rec-room pornography, flash-lit Polaroids, fake wood panelling; Pabst Blue Ribbon; 'porno' or 'paedophile' moustaches; aviator glasses; Americana T-shirts for church socials, etc; tube socks; the late albums of Johnny Cash produced by Rick Rubin; and tattoos."

The second definition highlights followers of a certain hipster culture, which revels in a childlike naivety; the films of Wes Anderson, the early books of Dave Eggers, and the twee indie pop of Belle and Sebastian are all mentioned.

The third is the "hip consumer": the smart shopper who understands that some consumer purchases, such as the right vintage T-shirt, might even be regarded as a form of art. They even split the term, drawing a distinction between the trucker-cap-wearing New Yorkers of 1999-2003, and a more recent type of cool kid, keen on such low-tech status symbols as typewriters, fixed-wheel bikes, and the kind of outdated instrumentation used on records by Arcade Fire, Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear.

Mark Greif, a New York English professor and one of the book's chief editors traces this hipster's recent history back to the post-punk DIY movement of the 80s.

"Back then there was this insistence on something like an alternative to capitalism," says Greif, "an opposition to major labels and pop; you could make your album on a small unknown label and it would only be sold for cheap. Youth culture had this quite hopeful notion that it was possible to make your own art and distribute it, in order to evade this wider commercial sphere." By the early 90s, these ideals had foundered; grunge bands signed to major labels and Kurt Cobain had killed himself.

"What is meaningful about the hipster moment, 1999 and after," says Greif from his office in New York, "is that it seems to be an effort to live a life that retains the coolness in believing that you belong to a counter-culture, where the substance of the rebellion has become pro-commerce."

Instead of "doing art" the cool kids were now, in Greif's words "doing products".

"In the 50s and 60s, there are five people at the centre working very hard, miserably trying to write a book and around them there are 95 people more or less having fun," Greif explains. "In the hipster culture the people at that centre aren't necessarily producing art, they're actually working in advertising, marketing and product placement. These were once embarrassing jobs. Now it's meaningful in this world to say that you sell sneakers, at a high level."

The book settles on 1999 as New York's hipster year zero. This was when American Apparel opened, the Canadian hipster magazine Vice moved to New York, and the sneaker boutique and branding agency Alife established itself on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

"There was this crucial bar, Welcome to the Johnsons," Greif recalls, "it opened in 1999. It was only the lower east side, but it was made to look as if you were sitting in a living room in Middle America."

Early hipsters' adoption of these and other suburban signifiers, such as trucker caps and BMX bikes, as they sauntered around urban areas is significant. The White Negro had fetishised blackness; these newer arrivals glorified lower-middle-class whites. This is partially why Greif and co, in a line that sounds very much like it may stray into Pseuds Corner, see these early hipsters as neoliberal.

"It seemed to revolve around the desire to reproduce as rebellion these things that had formerly been part of the mainstream market," says Greif, citing the art-gallery porn by the likes of Richard Kern and the conspicuous consumption of meat while in the company of vegetarians as two examples. "There's this idea that they are the agents of change, the true revolutionaries, where the revolutionary change is to . . . make exclusive the pleasures that had potentially belonged to anyone in the past, to celebrate the upwards redistribution of wealth."
Musical hipster Musical hipster: from hackneyhipsterhate.tumblr.com

Not all hipsters arrive in the big cities flush with cash, but they almost always possess some cultural capital, usually a university degree and refined upbringing. They can use this to prevent themselves from ending up on the bottom of the pile, even if their only means of upward mobility are snarky putdowns and a working knowledge of the Smiths.

"It becomes a defence mechanism, if you're 'declassed' in a city, to stop yourself from winding up at the bottom," Greif argues. "It's about social positioning, how to mark yourself out as different or exclusive in a democratic society, where it's quite easy to buy the consumer trappings of success."

A more withering assessment of youth culture is hard to imagine. And yet, in a neat flourish in the n+1 book, US writer Rob Horing asks whether the hipster hatred doesn't raise deeper questions in the detractors.

"The hipster," Horing suggests, "is the bogeyman who keeps us from becoming too settled in our identity, keeps us moving forward into new fashions, keep us consuming more 'creatively' and discovering new things that haven't become lame and hipster. We keep consuming more, and more cravenly, yet this always seems to us to be the hipster's fault, not our own."

Horing also raises an even less-palatable notion: '"If you are concerned enough about the phenomenon to analyse it and discuss it, you are already somewhere on the continuum of hipsterism and are in the process of trying to rid yourself of its 'taint'."

Is this view from the heights of Manhattan academia shared on the streets of Hackney? Not entirely.

What does our anonymous blogger think? "The argument of 'you're probably just a failing or self-hating hipster'? Heard that one before. I honestly count myself out of that argument on the basis I barely socialise. My skin is translucent from not leaving the house. When I take photos on [London hipster enclave] Broadway Market, I'm not noticed because they take one look at me and look away. My blandness is an insult to their eyes."

Could Hackney's hipster-baiter ever concede that east London's trendies might, in the words of one n+1 contributor, remind us of "youth and daring and style, that we don't have any more or perhaps never did?"

Apparently not. "There's nothing daring about wearing Ray-Bans with colourful frames. Every single idiot is doing it." - The Guardian

This week's column is beamed live from Austin, Texas, where I am dizzily trying to chart a worthwhile course among the 2,000 or so bands who have descended for the city's annual South by South West music festival.

In the UK, where the (occasionally) green and pleasant Glastonbury is the benchmark experience for seeing a head-melting number of musicians in a short period of time, a city event on the scale of SXSW would be impossible. Around 80 clubs and bars within a few blocks of each other all put on continuous shows from midday to the small hours for four days solid. It's the Camden Crawl times a million.

Though established names are present this weekend — Motörhead, Billy Bragg and Scissor Sisters are all here, Muse are doing a not-so-secret show tonight at the biggest outdoor venue, Stubb's, and Smokey Robinson is giving a keynote speech — it's all about discovering the next big thing. That's why the world's music industry almost outnumbers the fans along the hectic 360 degrees of noise that is Austin's 6th Street and its tributaries.

The suits are here to sign up the bands who will dominate the second half of 2010, in the indie scene at least. The White Stripes and Fleet Foxes were introduced to the world at SXSWs past, and now everyone is avidly seeking the next MGMT or Animal Collective.

Future British success stories are present, too. The UK music business spends plenty of money generating an unavoidable presence here, with its own “embassy” in a temporarily converted pub and some 150 acts in tow — the second biggest showing after the Americans. It is claimed Amy Winehouse and James Blunt owe their international success to early appearances here.

Their successors are in this barbecue-smelling haystack somewhere — but where? Straight off the plane early Wednesday evening, I begin the search and quickly hone the ruthlessly short attention span required to survive. Hands are stamped, snap judgments are made and it's on to the next gig.

Local act The Strange Boys could be the Texan Zutons, with their rock 'n' roll boogie and female sax player. They're great fun and their home crowd loves them. I regret passing through a room containing the inane Australians Goons of Doom (one of a long list of attention-grabbing names that also includes Das Rascist and Gay Witch Abortion) and The Coolness, a group of ridiculously attired Londoners who mistakenly think we're in need of a new Darkness.

Scenting a rare opportunity to see someone who's been in this game longer than 10 minutes, I watch 72-year-old rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson singing while obscured by a post in a bar that sells cowboy boots on the merchandise stall. She teases her young admirers (“What's that, honey, a hat or a hairdo?”) and is no doubt as bemused as the rest of us by her presence.

The arty jangle of hyped quintet Here We Go Magic, Brooklyn's billionth band, washes over me a little but I love Chew Lips, a London synthpop trio who perform five times this weekend. The surname-free singer Tigs, so striking that she doesn't quite look real, is a surefire star in waiting. With the help of two gangly men on keyboards, she fires out numerous crisp, sexy tunes that deserve to find a place alongside those, like La Roux and Ellie Goulding, who have already achieved leftfield pop success.

The night is closed in soothing fashion by The Middle East, seven Australians swapping instruments beneath the fairy lights and mini cliff-face of beautiful outdoor venue Club deVille. Playing accordion, flute, banjo and harmonica among other things, their layered acoustic sound will mesmerise when they inevitably graduate to theatre venues.

With a touch of Arcade Fire about the rousing climax of their song Blood, and a dash of Fleet Foxes in their sweet vocal harmonies, they tick enough boxes to start a serious chequebook battle.
Though it is pleasing to head to bed with a sense of valuable discoveries made, I also feel as if the surface has hardly been scratched. There's a lot of exciting ground to cover before Sunday. When are Gay Witch Abortion playing again? - Eveing Starnard

This week's column is beamed live from Austin, Texas, where I am dizzily trying to chart a worthwhile course among the 2,000 or so bands who have descended for the city's annual South by South West music festival.

In the UK, where the (occasionally) green and pleasant Glastonbury is the benchmark experience for seeing a head-melting number of musicians in a short period of time, a city event on the scale of SXSW would be impossible. Around 80 clubs and bars within a few blocks of each other all put on continuous shows from midday to the small hours for four days solid. It's the Camden Crawl times a million.

Though established names are present this weekend — Motörhead, Billy Bragg and Scissor Sisters are all here, Muse are doing a not-so-secret show tonight at the biggest outdoor venue, Stubb's, and Smokey Robinson is giving a keynote speech — it's all about discovering the next big thing. That's why the world's music industry almost outnumbers the fans along the hectic 360 degrees of noise that is Austin's 6th Street and its tributaries.

The suits are here to sign up the bands who will dominate the second half of 2010, in the indie scene at least. The White Stripes and Fleet Foxes were introduced to the world at SXSWs past, and now everyone is avidly seeking the next MGMT or Animal Collective.

Future British success stories are present, too. The UK music business spends plenty of money generating an unavoidable presence here, with its own “embassy” in a temporarily converted pub and some 150 acts in tow — the second biggest showing after the Americans. It is claimed Amy Winehouse and James Blunt owe their international success to early appearances here.

Their successors are in this barbecue-smelling haystack somewhere — but where? Straight off the plane early Wednesday evening, I begin the search and quickly hone the ruthlessly short attention span required to survive. Hands are stamped, snap judgments are made and it's on to the next gig.

Local act The Strange Boys could be the Texan Zutons, with their rock 'n' roll boogie and female sax player. They're great fun and their home crowd loves them. I regret passing through a room containing the inane Australians Goons of Doom (one of a long list of attention-grabbing names that also includes Das Rascist and Gay Witch Abortion) and The Coolness, a group of ridiculously attired Londoners who mistakenly think we're in need of a new Darkness.

Scenting a rare opportunity to see someone who's been in this game longer than 10 minutes, I watch 72-year-old rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson singing while obscured by a post in a bar that sells cowboy boots on the merchandise stall. She teases her young admirers (“What's that, honey, a hat or a hairdo?”) and is no doubt as bemused as the rest of us by her presence.

The arty jangle of hyped quintet Here We Go Magic, Brooklyn's billionth band, washes over me a little but I love Chew Lips, a London synthpop trio who perform five times this weekend. The surname-free singer Tigs, so striking that she doesn't quite look real, is a surefire star in waiting. With the help of two gangly men on keyboards, she fires out numerous crisp, sexy tunes that deserve to find a place alongside those, like La Roux and Ellie Goulding, who have already achieved leftfield pop success.

The night is closed in soothing fashion by The Middle East, seven Australians swapping instruments beneath the fairy lights and mini cliff-face of beautiful outdoor venue Club deVille. Playing accordion, flute, banjo and harmonica among other things, their layered acoustic sound will mesmerise when they inevitably graduate to theatre venues.

With a touch of Arcade Fire about the rousing climax of their song Blood, and a dash of Fleet Foxes in their sweet vocal harmonies, they tick enough boxes to start a serious chequebook battle.
Though it is pleasing to head to bed with a sense of valuable discoveries made, I also feel as if the surface has hardly been scratched. There's a lot of exciting ground to cover before Sunday. When are Gay Witch Abortion playing again? - Eveing Starnard

The music of London's The Coolness has been percolating around our office for a little while now. Our soft spot for Solid Gold and glam used to find its fix with Fischerspooner and MGMT, but the Coolness (despite what we imagine must be an intentionally ridiculous name) has made its way to the top of our iTunes most-played list. Their singles “Trouser Arouser” (LOL) and “Set Me Free” are catchy bursts of synthetic dance, yet fail to capture how over-the-top these guys are really like in person.
The coolness

When we met Chaz, Eddie, Jayson and Vinny at SXSW, we were bowled over by how ridiculous they looked. Capes, tights, robes, and T-shirts with dinosaurs are not what you would find in the average person’s wardrobe. Combining the primary-colored, garish, comic-book look of Peelander-Z with the we-are-fine-with-this-because-we-are-a-GANG mentality of the Ramones/Notorious MSG, the Coolness were larger than life, absurd, shouting to be heard, and hilarious. Unfortunately, we still have yet to go to one of their Bacchanal live shows, but we’ve watched the promos for them on the group’s YouTube page, and each invitation looks like a wrestler challenge. Chaz, what happened to the foxy ladies? Plus, how many bands these days offer their entire discography for free download? You can get everything from their Facebook page. Crazy! - MTV

See Link - NME

The Coolness are true to the name...

IT'S A GOOD LOOK! Bands that make fashion sense THE COOLNESS Chaz John Ross is the flamboyant frontman of The Coolness, a guitar-led band he started up three years ago that has since evolved into a "psychedelic party band". "We're people that play live music and try to be fun and original at the same time."

Their goodtime sounds and sensibilities stretch into how they like to look on stage. "We're kind of anti-fashion. In the street I wear one or two things from my stage outfit, whereas on stage I might wear all the ridiculous clothes that I have in my wardrobe. But a lot of stuff we just find or are given from grandmas and other family members. And I seem to look good in ex-girlfriends tracksuit bottoms!"

Take It Off!2

They also dip into East End shop I Dream Of Wires on Cheshire Street and online pop-up punk store Charlesoflondon.co.uk. The Coolness attract a care-free crowd of fashionistas and a hard-core group of liberated followers often known to strip off when their infamous track 'Take It Off' is played.

The Coolness release new material in October and will be performing at SE1 on Saturday 5th September. - DJ Mag