Nick Lowe really IS the Jesus of Cool

In 1978, at the Sam Goody record store on Chestnut St (just down the block from what would be The East Side Club), it was likely just another afternoon when I accompanied my grandmother to one of her zillion appointments at Wills Eye Hospital. We'd stop at Goody's and I'd buy a single. Every week, Goody's had whatever singles the majors put out, even if it didn't chart. This store kept me in hard to find domestic singles for years (Buzzcocks, Monochrome Set, Slits) at lower prices than the comprehensive but expensive Third St Jazz.

I bought Nick Lowe's "So It Goes" for 99 cents, then the going rate for a domestic 45. And it fucking floored me as hard as any record did back then. Kindly recall what a violently fetile peiod this was.

"So It Goes" had a hook you could hang a Buick on, and Nick was the most engaging fella of his era (alienation was much more popular). The album from which the single was pulled, Pure Pop For Now People, was purchased for $5.59 + tax at Keller's House of Music at the Westmont Plaza. It was every bit as good as the single promised it would be, and you can't often say that.

PPFNP took its place beside Aereo Plain and Songs In The Key of Life as an epiphany, and it was because of Nick that I started buying imported records. Nick had some singles and an EP on Stiff, and that stuff wasn't going to be available anytime soon as domestic product. Nick was on Columbia here in the states, a label not really noted for non-LP B-sides and the like. My record habit exapnded to include Stiff as a label to which I was addicted, hardcore. More on that later.

Nick followed up with Labour of Lust, which included "Cruel To be Kind", and his star was sealed. Shortly after, his erstwhile partner, Dave Edmunds, got signed to Columbia, and the band they led, Rockpile, released an okay album, Seconds of Pleasure.

I wandered off to other pastures and so did Nick. I'd hear stuff from him now and again, but what he wanted to make and what I wanted to hear were two different concepts.

So fast forward to about 1997 or so, and Katy Moffatt is playing me some songs she's keen on. One was "What Lack Of Love Has Done", which was staggering. I asked if she'd written it. Nope. It was from Nick's then latest, Dig My Mood.

(Here's a sweet version of Katy playing it with Andy Hardin. Good as he is, I prefer her alone. She's the most complete solo peformer I know.)



Dig My Mood was a revelation for me. It answered thr question MUST WE ROCK? with a resounding NO.

Shortly after, I went through a period that focussed less on songs per se and more on jazz and composing.

So, it's summer 2007, and I'm dating this girl in Philadelphia. I'm having my coffee and listening to the radio in her kitchen, keeping her 3 year old son entertained while she gets dressed. Morning radio in Philadelphia for a great many people is WXPN, which is much like KCRW. As my friend Mike Villers calls the format, "cappucino music for yuppie checkwriters". Generally, what they play can only serve to counteract the coffee (these are the heartless f--kers that gave us Madeline Peyroux). The usual morning blandishments click by in the background.

Then I hear a familiar voice sing, "Do you see the way she lights up/When I walk in the room?/That's good", and i was riveted. Raymond Chandler said that art becomes art because it is posessed of sufficient intensity to burn by its own glow. This was that. I forget what was played before or after , but I damn well remember sitting there and holding my breath til that song was over.



I excused myself from the table, and immediately took the subway to the nearest good record store, and bought At My Age. The whole album killed me. Most of my favorite songwriters had been breaking my heart, and here was an old friend, who'd come back better than ever, better than anyone else I could name.

But it kinda gave me the courage I needed to finally put down the electric guitar and go back to acoustic guitars, songs, and maybe even allowing my age to figure into the songs I write. I had been struggling with that set of questions, and between Frank London's making me relearn a lot of basic stuff (for which I shall give eternal thanks) and hearing "I Trained Her To Love Me", I got excited about music again during what for me was a real wilderness period. I had about another year to go in Philadelphia, and this got me back on the path to songs the way I'd learn to love them.

And so it goes.