At long last, I'm through being cool.

Apparently, I'm becoming a parent at just the right time. There's finally some decent music to listen to...

In case you're not hip to what the under-seven set is listening to, that's Nicole, lead vocalist for Dev2.0, perhaps the greatest pop music creation in the history of recorded music. As the name implies, Dev2.0 is the brand-new incarnation of Devo, one of the favorite bands of my misspent youth. As a teen in the early-to-mid '80s, I was a big fan of the boys from Akron (being from nearby Niles myself), and owned several of their albums -- on vinyl, yet. ARE WE NOT MEN, FREEDOM OF CHOICE, NEW TRADITIONALISTS and other Devo LPs got frequent spins on my cheapo record player, and I still consider Devo one of the most original and important bands of the modern musical era. I mean, decades before geek chic existed, Devo delivered postmodern tunes that, incidentally, were as catchy as hell.

And now, as performed by the fresh-scrubbed kids of Dev2.0, those songs still sound great, even given radio-friendly makeovers and stripped of their most subversive content (more on that later). The big question, of course, is this: Is this nothing but a crass sell-out effort aimed at selling kid-friendly discs to aging Devo fans (like yours truly). The answer, of course, is this: Who cares?

Oh, maybe I would've cared, back in my college or post-college days, when I mistook obscurity for integrity. Truth of the matter is sometimes the good stuff sells, and sometimes it doesn't, but lack of sales -- or the illusion of apathy about sales -- doesn't mean you've attained artistic purity. The Sex Pistols, one of the more rebellious groups in not-so-recent memory, had a No. 1 single with "God Save the Queen," you know -- even if the British charts wouldn't print the name of the tune. And their red-white-and-blue counterparts, the Ramones, desperately wanted to be popular hitmakers, but somehow never connected with the public. That doesn't mean songs like "Blitzkreig Bop," "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker" or "I Wanna Be Sedated" are too edgy or "outside" to be popular. It just means the American public, as usual, is made up of taste-challenged morons. The Ramones weren't just punk -- they were also the greatest bubblegum band the world had ever seen, right up there with the 1910 Fruitgum Company, the Ohio Express and Sweet. Want proof? They all dressed alike, they used fake names and their songs were as catchy as the ebola virus. The fact that all that great music -- whether from Devo or the Ramones or any other great pop band -- came wrapped in imaginative artifice only makes it more enjoyable.

But isn't artifice wrong, you ask? Don't plastic hair and flower pot hats (or, for that matter, stupid glasses and old timey marching band uniforms) detract from the purity of the artistic expression. Sure. So what? It's pop music, kids. It's supposed to be fake. Grown men writing about teen emotions is what pop is all about, god bless it. Which, by the way, brings us back to Devo and, more importantly, Dev2.0. These songs are all at least 20 years old, which means Nicole and her fellow bandmates weren't around when they were first recorded. Again, I'll repeat the refrain: Who cares? I've been listening to the goddam Beatles on the radio since I can remember, and they were out of business about the time I was out of diapers. I'll take anything besides yet another spin of "The Long and Winding Road" on my radio, even it's a kid-remade version of "Jerkin' Back and Forth."

And, I'll admit, I've got an ulterior motive in introducing my lil' girl to Dev2.0: I hope she'll drive me crazy with repeated playings of "Whip It" and "Uncontrollable Urge" instead of Barney or the Wiggles. (And, yes, I realize that tot trends being what they are, by the time my daughter is old enough to demand her own music choices, Dev2.0 will have run its course, and been replaced by something awful.) True, the robotic arrangements and distinctive vocals have been replaced by something a little more kid-friendly, but the songs are still great fun, even with the altered lyrics.

Ah yes, the lyrics. I suppose it only makes sense that the "pleasure burn" reference is removed from "Girl U Want" (which is now "Boy U Want," cause, you know, it's sung by a girl) and the big twist is removed from "Beautiful World" (the song no longer ends with the singer proclaiming "It's not for me.") And, of course, Devo classics like "Love Without Anger" are conspicuously absent. But you know what? That's okay. In fact, as the band (years before Martha Stewart) said, "It's a good thing." If the worst crime a band commits is cleaning up the sexual references and dark themes of the songs they're aiming at children, that's fine with me. Kids have enough to worry about. There's no reason their music can't be innocent and fun -- and, incidentally, still have a beat you can dance too. Plus, there are lessons to be learned, even in these versions. The sooner my daughter can be through being cool and snap the trap of going with the flow, the better.

Right now, though, I'm just looking forward to the sight of my little girl bopping around the living room to Dev2.0's rendition of "Freedom of Choice." When she gets older, she can listen to some band I can't stand. In fact, I hope she does.

Because forget everything else I said: Annoying your parents? That's what pop music is really all about.