  One
of the most difficult to categorize musicians in rock,
R. Stevie Moore is a true original. Bypassing the
traditional recording industry more thoroughly than
just about any internationally known singer/songwriter
ever has, Moore has self-released literally thousands
of songs through The R. Stevie Moore Cassette Club
(now online at www.rsteviemoore.com), an ongoing mail-order
operation which has hundreds of individually dubbed
cassettes and CD-Rs in its catalog. The handful of
traditional LPs and CDs Moore has released since 1975
are primarily collections of some of the best songs
from those cassettes. Moore's music, a blend of classic
pop influences, arty experimentalism, idiosyncratic
lyrics, wild stylistic left turns, and homemade rough
edges, is one of a kind, but entire generations of
lo-fi enthusiasts and indie trailblazers, from Guided
By Voices to the Apples in Stereo, owe much to Moore's
pioneering in the field.
The son of legendary Music City session musician
Bob Moore (not Elvis guitarist Scotty Moore, as many
articles mistakenly claim) and the older brother of
Linda Moore, singer/bassist for '80s country-pop band
Calamity Jane, Robert Steven Moore was born January
18, 1952, in Nashville, TN. Growing up in a musical
environment, Moore mastered several instruments as
a child, including guitar, piano, bass, and drums.
He formed his first band, the Marlborough, at the
age of 15; armed with inspiration from the first two
Mothers of Invention albums and an inexpensive four-track
recorder he received for his 16th birthday, Moore
began recording Marlborough performances, bizarre
spoken word pieces, comedic skits, and one-man band
songs. This all-over-the-map D.I.Y. aesthetic would
remain Moore's calling throughout his career.
After graduating from high school and dropping out
of Vanderbilt University, Moore became a session musician
and the president of his father's music publishing
company, but did not excel at either. Moore's eccentric
personal style and non-country musical influences,
including Zappa, the Beatles, Brian Wilson, Todd Rundgren,
and the Move, were determinedly out of step with Nashville's
prevailing musical culture during the early '70s.
Although Moore and his high school friends gigged
around town under a variety of band names, most of
his time was spent writing and recording by himself,
slowly developing an idiosyncratic but increasingly
poppy personal style. Encouraged by his uncle Harry
Palmer, who at the time was president of Atco Records,
Moore pieced together his 1975 debut album, Phonography,
from two years' worth of home recording sessions.
Palmer issued Phonography and its two follow-ups,
Stance and Delicate Tension, on his own HP Music label.
Encouraged by the response his records were receiving
in the nascent New York punk and new wave scene -
Ira Robbins' Trouser Press magazine was particularly
fulsome in its praise - Moore moved to northern New
Jersey in early 1978.
Aside from periodic bouts of gigging around New York,
often backed by friends like Chris Butler and the
Smithereens' Dennis Diken, Moore has remained a home-recording
loner, creating new songs on an almost weekly basis
in styles ranging all the way from hip-hop to Windham
Hill-style piano instrumentals. A mid-'80s association
with the French New Rose label resulted in his best-known
albums, the two-disc retrospective Everything You
Always Wanted to Know About R. Stevie Moore but Were
Afraid to Ask and the fruit of a rare session in a
real recording studio, Teenage Spectacular. Other
albums and CDs, including an expanded digital reissue
of Phonography and a well-chosen but unfortunately
named career overview called Greatesttits, have come
out on a variety of tiny American and European indies.
Probably too quirky and challenging to ever break
through beyond his devoted and slowly growing cult
following, R. Stevie Moore has remained true to his
fiercely independent vision. - Stewart Mason,
All Music Guide Biography
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