STUNNING 2008 reissue and remaster! Definitive - and gorgeous! Can not be under-stated what a shot across the bow this record was for pop fans upon its release! For me, I picked it up in the Bowery at an import shop down the street from CBGB`s. I was 15 and immersed in the punk scenes of Boston and New York City, as well as London but a pure popper and I was floored by the perfection on Jesus Cool, which was an import only for some time back then until it came out as "Pure Pop For Now People" a year later. Anyway, The album is a literal compendium of 25 years of pop music history. Here, the sweet melodies of pre-Beatles pop, the energy of the British Invasion, the excess of glam and elements of ska and new wave don t blend but stand side by side on the field of battle, each one willing to lay down his life for the other. Jesus is the crossroads where pop music and pop culture collide, self-aware for the first time, fusing into a white hot chunk of rock n roll energy. Here, on this 30th anniversary edition of the album, the original and U.S. versions of the album are combined to include all material ever available on either release. In addition, seven bonus cuts are included making this the definitive version of this undisputed pop masterpiece. 21 track total! You got to be kidding - yeah! A rare 5 star review in AMG! "For his first solo album, Pure Pop for Now People, Nick Lowe completely abandoned the rootsy underpinnings of his work with Brinsley Schwarz and refashioned himself as a pop craftsman -- or, as the original British title put it, the Jesus of Cool. Lowe tries anything and everything on the record, from the sweet pop of "Tonight" to the blinding rock of "Heart of the City." It`s a veritable tour de force of his songwriting talent, as well as his wit. Not only does he turn in a set of wildly eclectic pop songs, he writes lyrics that slyly and gleefully subvert and pervert rock & roll tradition. Pure Pop for Now People sounds like `60s pop from an alternate universe, where hit singles are about actresses who are eaten by their pet dogs, castrating Castro, and grown men who write odes to teen idols. He also writes about the sleaziness of the music business itself with unrestrained joy. If Lowe`s sense of humor wasn`t so sharp and his melodies weren`t so catchy, the amalgam of pop music and pop culture wouldn`t have been so successful. However, he not only can write pop songs, he knows how to record them -- each song sounds like an individual single, and the cheap production means that the album sounds like it`s coming out of tinny radio speakers. And that also means that it doesn`t matter what sequence these songs are put in -- the album is like a jukebox, where different musical styles can follow each other and all make perfect sense."
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