There was a time when Nick "Basher" Lowe should've taken over the world of pop music. An active producer (among his credits: Elvis Costello and Graham Parker’s early albums) and songwriter, the former Brinsley Schwartz bassist was a core figure in the London-based maverick music label, Stiff Records.

His 1976 "Heart of the City/So It Goes" single was the first to bear the Stiff imprimatur - and a great start for the label it was, too. The one-chord-wonderfulness of "Heart" and powered-up Steely Dan updating of "So It Goes" were definitely something to hear: hookier than punk (note Lowe's production presence on the first Damned singles) but also punchy as hell. In America, it went nowhere, though three years later "Goes" would show up in Alan Arkush's drive-in punk rock tribute, Rock 'N' Roll High School.

To pop-nerds keeping an ear on the late seventies D.I.Y. scene, Lowe was a ubiquitous presence: his singles and EP (Bowi, named after the Thin White Duke released his Low album) received a lot of coverage in more forward looking pop-rock mags like Bomp! and Trouser Press. When Lowe's first solo album, Jesus of Cool (retitled Pure Pop for Now People in the states by a skittish Columbia Records), was released in March 1978, those of us who'd been scouring the import bins for smaller samples of the man's work eagerly grabbed the long-player and waited for the rest of the country to catch up.

Unfortunately, '78 was the year of the Bee Gees' disco dominance, and the highest Pure Pop would make it on the Billboard charts was #127. The only time Lowe would dent the Top Forty in this country was with "Cruel to Be Kind" (#12) from his follow-up release, Labour of Lust.

In retrospect, it's not difficult to see why Cool/Pop stiffed in the states. As amusingly repped by its cover (Lowe holding a series of guitars in a variety of musical costumes: bearded folky, grinning hippie, glam rocker, rockabilly singer, etc.), the album is all over the place. A smorgasbord of pop-rock styles, united by Lowe's voice and witty lyrical sense, the disc celebrated pop diversity in a way that neither the disco enslaved nor the punk enthralled could accept. Submitted into evidence: Pure Pop's agreeably kitschy tribute to the then-fading Bay City Rollers, "Rollers Show," with its chorus echoes of "Chapel of Love." Girl groups and the Bay City Rollers? Not even early Blondie would have dreamed of taking it that far.

Many of the more "serious" rock critics of the day managed to miss the mark, too, focusing instead on the more willfully difficult Elvis Costello, whose Lowe-produced debut came out in '77. I remember one PC-minded critic of the day, in fact, reviewing a Stiff Records sampler that contained both "Heart of the City" and a Costello track, unfavorably comparing the former to the latter and condemning Lowe for perceived lyrical sexism. Sexism in rock - who'd have thunk it? (For the record, "Heart" illuminates its young boys' sexism rather than endorsing it.) Clearly, the man was too musically facile to be taken seriously.