What's more, Lowe himself was aware of this situation and seemingly didn't care. Two tracks on the album directly comment on the then-current state of the music industry. In "Shake And Pop" (re-recorded and retitled "They Called It Rock" for the U.S. release), he describes a variety of label reactions to a one-hit-wonder's second release. "Arista say they love it, but the kids can't dance to it," one line in the chorus goes, amusingly nailing the plight of a score of fledgling power-poppers. (By way of historical context, garageiste poppers Blondie wouldn't make the U.S. charts until they cut the discoid "Heart of Glass" for their third album back in '78.) What mainly mattered was cranking out a string of addictively hooky pop-rock tracks, if only for Lowe's own amusement.

Thirty years on, and the man's celebration of shake 'n' pop is getting the deluxe CD treatment it deserves. Presented under its UK title, the disc follows the British version's original sequencing and track selection (as with the Clash's first release, the American version contained slightly different tracks) with the original Pure Pop cuts (the studio version of "Heart of the City," "Rollers Show" and "They Called It Rock") included in the disc's bonus ten tracks. Cleverly packaged - the case folds out into a crucifix! - the set once more brings this unjustly neglected collection of pop power and cheesy glory into the light. Even cooler for those of who've long been making do with the '89 import Demon Records release of Cool, Yep Roc's disc contains a swell set of liner notes by former pub-rocker Will (Kursaal Flyers, Records) Birch, which attempts to sift through the period's drunken haze to tell who actually performed on each track.

Because the original two versions were pointedly mum on musicians' credits, many fans concluded that most of the musical chores were handled by Lowe’s chums in Rockpile (as they would later be in Labour of Lust), but, aside from the U.K. version's live performance of "Heart of the City" and the U.S. release's re-titled "They Called It Rock," the albums' tracks were created with a more piecemeal lineup. Several members of Graham Parker's then-backing band, the Rumour, show up on more than a few tracks, as do members of Elvis Costello's Attractions; Dave Edmunds appears in a few cuts, most memorably providing rhythm guitar and backing vocals to "Little Hitler." Doing production work for all these guys, Lowe had his pick of a cadre of gifted rockers.

The results are engagingly messy and endlessly replayable. Though Lowe would go on to release more sonically and thematically consistent discs (the currently out-of-print Rockpile-driven Lust provides a good example), Cool's eclecticism provides much of the fun. Lowe and his studio chums were capable of tackling hard rock (both plodding and sped-up), rootsy rock-'n'-roll (the American "They Called It Rock"), sweetly harmonic pop croons ("Tonight," "No Reason"), surreal folk-pop (Jim Ford's decidedly strange "36 Inches High") and McCartney-esque cut-and-paste ("Nutted by Reality"). In an era characterized by excessive musical homogeneity, Lowe had produced the seventies equivalent to The Who Sell Out.