Definitely not hip.
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The essence of “hip”
by Phil Houseal
May 20, 2009
Writing about music, the arts, and entertainment, I have learned something: I am not, nor ever will be, hip.
The state of “hipness” came to my awareness while watching a video of the Bee Gees performing. If ever a group of guys should be uncool it would be Maurice, Barry, and Robin. Gawky, big-nosed, balding Australians singing falsetto does not raise the needle on the cool meter. Yet I submit the Brothers Gibb are cool.
When I try to analyze what creates the concept of coolness, I keep coming up with paradoxes like the BeeGees. Appearance is not a factor. After all, Barry Manilow sports a big beak; he is not cool. Baldness doesn’t do it for Phil Collins. Singing falsetto didn’t make Tiny Tim hip (though it kind of worked for Slim Whitman). Yet the Gibb boys pull it off.
But there is something to being so uncool that you become cool. Think of Don Walser, old time country singer who became revered by the Austin alternative and punk crowd, ultimate arbiters of what is hip. Or the afore-mentioned Slim Whitman, who was so retro uncool he saved the world from aliens in Mars Attacks.
So who is hip?
The Stones are hip. Bing Crosby is hip. So are Bonnie Raitt, Delbert McClinton, and George Jones. Mikhail Baryshnikov is uber-hip. Dylan was, but now he seems to be trying too hard to be “Dylan.”
That’s a factor. Anyone who “tries” to be hip can never be hip. People who are hip are totally comfortable with who they are. They have no pretense. People who are truly hip put no effort into it. They probably couldn’t identify it themselves, and probably don’t even think of themselves as hip.
Nor is hipness about hair, or clothes, or piercings. Wearing Hollister or American Eagle or Levi’s or Abercrombie won’t do it. Tattoos don’t work. It can’t be learned, it can’t be taught (though my older sisters tried). It can’t be passed down in families. I am convinced it is something you are born with, like knowing how to accessorize an outfit, or where to place the divan. Or even using the word “divan.”
You don’t need to be an artist or musician to be hip. As a lad I worked for three brothers who farmed together in Iowa. They were over 60, wore overalls and CASE gimme caps and always had a chaw in their cheeks, but they were cool, and never failed to have us high school boys falling off the hay wagon with their wry observations of hippies, musicians, politics, and the world beyond the back 40.
So I don’t know what “hip” is, but I know I never had it and never will be cool, hep or “suh-weet.” Forever in my mind I will be my high school graduation picture, framed and still hanging proudly in mom’s green-carpeted living room, staring out at the world from an ill-fitting suit in all my matted-haired, acne-riddled, black-rimmed glasses glory (I know, I know... wearing black-rimmed glasses didn’t stop Buddy Holly).
So here’s to the un-hip. Let’s raise our Shirley Temples in a toast to our brotherhood of bland, and take comfort in knowing we will always outnumber the cool guys.
And we can always play air guitar to “Jive Talkin’.”