As her catalogue is reissued, the Chicago club kid dishes on why Windy City’s DIY scene outshone NYC, and how she hit out against Reagan and hustled for the spotlight
When a record label contacted her wanting to reissue her 35-year-old debut single, Kate Fagan thought it was a prank call. She had released the track, I Don’t Wanna Be Too Cool, on her friends’ DIY imprint; it had made the rounds in the underground clubs and bars of Chicago’s punk scene before fading into obscurity. Now, Fagan is based in New Orleans, where she still performs and plays shows – but she says that nobody knew who she was when she got the call in 2016. “The call stunned me, it tickled me,” she laughs. “Who knew that all these years later that song would still mean something to people?”
The song was written in response to the “hipster culture” she had come of age around in New York; over a skippy drum machine and a jangly bassline, Fagan tears apart the materialism and commercialism she had seen in the late 1970s. It became an anthem for those disillusioned with the scene. “I felt Studio 54 was based on status, money, being able to get on to the list, things like that,” she says, describing the “cocaine glamour” and designer clothes that were in vogue. “I didn’t wanna wear a logo on my shirt, I didn’t wanna wear Calvin Klein on the back of my jeans.”
