Right, lots to cover here… well, R. Stevie Moore is by far my favourite multi-talented, progressive popster/composer of all time. As far as one-man music machines go, he’s Frank Zappa with a flair for pop. The very, very true definition of Mr. All-round, home-recordist, best-kept-secret, prodigious prodigy man.
Now reach into your mind, pick a genre of music. Got one? Well RSM has done it, and better than you or I could ever hope to.

Imagine if the Beatles had arrived a decade late, through a freak radioactive laboratory explosion all inhabited the same body, and as a result of their horrific appearance never made it big. They’d still find a release for that geyser of creative talent by any means possible, right? What’s the alternative?
D.I.Y. RECORDING - play all the parts yourself, produce yourself, record yourself, mix yourself… In your living room. Not a pastime that was as universally accessible as it is nowadays by a long shot, but come the 70’s you certainly had the means. This aggregate mutant-Beatle would probably need to settle on a name too…

Robert Steven Moore started out in Nashville, TN, on a reel-to-reel tape machine that his session musician father used to lay down demos. Bob Moore Sr. was not just any session man but a Nashville fixture who played on many a country standard, as well as being Elvis Presley’s touring bassist for many years. And thus Bob Jr. was born and raised around legendary musicians rehearsing in his childhood home; he appropriated the primitive equipment they left behind after heading off to the studio, made it his own and has been hunched over tape decks ever since.


This isn’t just about just my rabid fanaticism, either. RSM is generally regarded as the grandfather of ‘lo-fi’ or low-fidelity music - a title originally given to a wave of indie bands in the 90’s, who used tape noise and the side effects of simple four-track recording techniques to enhance a certain quality in their music. But this hack-conceived pigeonhole did not exist in the decades before Pavement, Beat Happening and Guided By Voices, and innovators like RSM got a comparatively microscopic amount of credit for their work…

…Which is tragic, because whilst the aforementioned popular groups’ early work was characterised by the chic fuzz that draped a veil of mysterious intimacy over some great songs, RSM accomplished so much more, turning his home studio into a factory for boundless, childlike creativity - where anything and everything (except high fidelity) was possible.
The ‘lo-fi aesthetic’ seems to have arisen primarily from poverty and a desire to avoid the creative limitations of others; whilst being constantly manipulated or just pushed to absolute breaking point with techniques like track bouncing. True, Moore cultivated a love for and mastery over cheap equipment, but it never defined his work.
By the 1980’s the recording quality had improved, and with the advent of the digital recording era RSM eventually caved in and moved on from magnetic tape to cleaner pastures, but the rampant unpredictability of the music has not suffered in the slightest.

What makes this man’s obscurity all the more depressing is that from 1974 onwards, he was creating accessible-to-your-grandma pop classics, whilst staying true to all the tenets of art rock, doing just about everything in between and maintaining his passion for instrumental music, absurdism, improvisation and the avant-garde. RSM even anticipated New Wave by a good 4 years, fer chrissakes. And what do we have to show for it? - just over 7000 listeners on Last.fm, which doesn’t even nearly match the listener count of spiritual offspring Ween, near-contemporaries Half Japanese, or 21st century pupils like Ariel Pink and John Maus.



Well despite the tireless support of New Jersey public access, radio stations such as WFMU, many a frenzied podcast and the demi-god worship of a thin but far-reaching and dedicated fanbase (I’ve personally talked to fans from several continents, apparently he’s big with the Bogota art fraternity!), Mr. Moore seems to be destined to toil in relative obscurity. Exasperated by a lack of progress, he even called the music thing quits for a few years in the late 80’s only to return in 1991. The intervening period was spent exploring a booming medium: home video. The fruits of this era and beyond are archived on Youtube in their hundreds, and are forever growing in number.

Blimey, did I forget to mention he’s self-released all his material via a home-delivery service since the late 60’s? Why yes I did. Once known as the R. Stevie Moore Tape Club, now the CD-R Club, he’s put out over 400 tapes and is still going full tilt. I personally own about 20 of them, many from the ‘golden period’ of the mid-70’s to mid-80’s, but truth be told he never really disappoints, no matter the decade. Understand that these ‘tapes’ (hereon in I’ll use this term to refer to the CD-Rs) do not constitute his official discography of independent label albums, which are all instant classics and essentially distilled compilations of his material.

The more fans this guy can get, the better, and hopefully in tandem with the inevitable documentary, RSM will one day get the mainstream recognition he deserves.


R. Stevie Moore’s stylistic range is vast, but if you appreciate musiks and in particular any of the following: the first 5 years of Zappa, the Beatles and their legacy, 10cc, XTC, Talking Heads, Ween, prog rock, Eno soundscapes, the avant-garde, or any number of post-punk and lo-fi artists… you would do well to check this guy out.

Where to start, you ask? UK label Cherry Red recently put out the perfect introduction, and a follow-up compilation is imminent.
Or you could just cop one of these mixes I knocked up for the occasion:

RSM Intro Mix 01 (90mb)
RSM Intro Mix 02 (88mb)

They incorporate the ‘hits’ along with all manner of general oddity from the last 35 years, and are packed to the rim with curiosity-fulfilling aural gourmet… Or something.