Kate Fagan – I Don’t Wanna Be Too Cool (Expanded Edition) – New LP Record 2023 Captured Tracks Milky Clear Vinyl – New Wave / Post Punk Secretly Canadian

Kate Fagan took the Chicago punk rock scene by storm in the early 80’s with her self-released single “I Don’t Wanna Be Too Cool, ” which became the best-selling single ever by a local artist at the legendary Wax Trax! Records. Today, Captured Tracks is thrilled to present an expanded, re-mastered edition of I Don’t Wanna Be Too Cool as a full-length vinyl album, featuring four unreleased, ahead-of-their-time tracks.

Fagan wrote “I Don’t Wanna Be Too Cool” after moving to Chicago from New York in the late 70’s. The track is a critique of the emergent “hipster” attitude of the disco crowd and the posturing she was witnessing among her peers in New York. “The idea of ‘cool’ seemed shallow to me, cheap, store-bought, and manipulated. My song responded with a whoop, plucky bass line and a heavy backbeat,” Fagan explains. “The lyrics are meant to poke fun at elements of what was becoming hip in the celebutante era.”

She found the authenticity she was searching for in Chicago’s punk scene. Fagan dove in headfirst; opening for The Ramones as the frontwomen of punk group BB Spin and organizing a series of “Rock Against Racism” concerts. It was here that she’d meet the artists with whom she would form the Disturbing Records label, which released the “I Don’t Wanna Be Too Cool” single and dozens of notable new wave and punk records.