Album: Various artists, Nowhere Boy (Sony)

“You know what rock’n’roll means?” John Lennon’s mother asks her son in Sam Taylor-Wood’s imminent biopic. “Sex.”

And here’s why: over 25 of the tracks that got one young Liverpudlian and then the world a-movin’ and agroovin’ (with not a Cliff doody in sight). Some stand up better than others, but the songs that shook, rattled and rolled then have, if anything, got dirtier over the years. The selection is more rockabillyrevival than buy-it-foryour- dad safe. And it’s all the better for it.