The Man with 400 Albums

(Image credit: Flickr user UT Connewitz Photo Crew)

Neatorama is proud to bring you a post by David Buck, courtesy of Ernie Smith of Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail. In another life, he ran ShortFormBlog.

The tale of R. Stevie Moore, perhaps the most prolific musician that the world has ever seen. So why haven’t you heard of him?

Many great artists exist outside the mainstream. All it takes is a keen ear, an open mind and taste for variety to find a few unique artists or songs one would never hear on the radio or otherwise be exposed to. One of my favorite musicians of all time is Robert Steven Moore, whom I have had the great fortune to not only hear (and own) his wonderful music, but also to have spoken with him—albeit briefly—on several occasions. Some people may feel overwhelmed at the sheer quantity of his work and at a loss for a starting point. Fortunately, I’m here to help.

The First Album

100 vinyl copies of R. Stevie Moore’s first official album, Phonography, were originally distributed in 1976. One of those copies was rumored to have been owned by Frank Zappa, a noted champion of outsider artists who helped to bring The Shaggs, Wildman Fischer and other musicians to popular attention. This is, of course, apocryphal, but it’s a neat idea and—given Zappa’s musical interests—makes perfect sense. While Zappa’s own unique brand of composition spread over 60 albums during his lifetime and over 100 albums posthumously, that number is dwarfed by Moore’s catalog in sheer quantity. Moore has released more than 400 albums—either by himself or through a label—over the past 50 years.

Who is R. Stevie Moore (and Why Isn’t Anybody Talking About Him?)

“You know a lot about my career,” Moore told me during a conversation we had recently.

We were discussing the various record labels his “official” albums have been on: Cordelia Records, New Rose, HP Records, Hamster, etc.… and I suppose that’s true; it’s my inner music nerd rising to the surface. If we put that in the context of my youth spent listening to as many episodes of The Dr. Demento Show as possible and meticulously curating a collection of comedy, novelty, and outsider albums, it makes sense.

(YouTube link)

I first heard about Moore via The Dr. Demento Show. I don’t think I would’ve discovered his music otherwise. Sure, I sometimes come across great artists by happy accident—for instance, I discovered Jonathan Coulton from an old YouTube video—but Dr. D was truly the catalyst for my decision to seek out Moore’s work.

R. Stevie Moore was born on January 18, 1952. He grew up in Madison, TN. His father, Bob Moore, was the bass player for established acts such as Cowboy Copa, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, and Elvis Presley. Moore eventually became interested in music and began making his own homemade reel-to-reel tapes. He would then send these tapes to New Jersey, into the welcoming hands of his uncle Harry Palmer. Palmer put together his favorite tracks from Moore’s reels to create the Phonography album.

During this time, he recorded several albums, including R. Stevie Moore Reforms the Beatles, an all-instrumental album of Beatles cover songs. Moore moved to New Jersey in 1978, got a job at Sam Goody and continued recording his wonderful, sonic experiments. Moore constantly recorded albums at home and was worked on making contacts in the music world, doing occasional performances, and appearing on public access shows—notably, The Uncle Floyd Show and The Scott and Gary Show.

In 1984, Moore’s friend Patrick Mathe released a compilation of the musician’s work on his record label, New Rose. Dubbed Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About R. Stevie Moore but We’re Afraid to Ask, it was the first of several New Rose albums.

Glad Music, Teenage Spectacular, and Warning followed. Another album, What’s the Point? was also released in 1984 on Cuneiform Records, that label’s first release. Like Zappa, the prolific Moore spent years meticulously recording, releasing, archiving, and cataloging his work. Unlike Zappa, Moore’s work is criminally neglected and relatively unknown, but well worth checking out. As Moore sardonically points out in the lead track from his Delicate Tension, he’s a cool daddio: a man busy making music while everyone else does whatever it is they do.

Through his “underground” career and do-it-yourself aesthetic, Moore would go on to receive acclaim for his work in several important music journals throughout the 70s and 80s, namely Trouser Press, but never seemed to attain the level of fame other, less prolific and dedicated artists had.

The Prolific Moore

There are approximately 400 albums in R. Stevie Moore’s discography, sound recordings and albums released between 1968 and 2017. In fact, he released two new albums during the writing of this article. The “400 albums” figure is derived from the entirety of his output, including his homemade Cassette Club releases and his officially released LPs/CDs. For the uninitiated, the arduous task of simply selecting an entry point can be daunting, so we’ve taken the time to curate a list of our favorites to help the new listener.

A collection of the author’s R. Stevie Moore memorabilia. (Image credit: David Buck)

The R. Stevie Moore Cassette Club

“My favorite customers were the returning ones,” Moore says in an interview for the upcoming documentary, Cool Daddio: The Second Youth of R. Stevie Moore. (If that’s true, I must be one of his favorites by this point!)

If one were to ask Moore what his favorite album is— encompassing his own work or otherwise—the reply would be one of nonchalance and dismissal. Moore states his stance on the concept of variety often. He doesn’t like to rank things and considers most of his work to be a free-form audio diary. Listening to his music reinforces this perspective constantly. As a DJ on New Jersey-based WFMU, he held true to this virtue between 1981 and 1985 and continues it in his work today.

In 1982, Moore established the R. Stevie Moore Cassette Club, which currently lives on as a Bandcamp page. This effectively catalogued and curated his music into easily obtained cassettes. The idea was simple: customers could send him a few dollars and he would send them a cassette. Moore kept busy running his own mail-order business for several decades, before abandoning the practice for the most part in recent years.

The Cassette Club ran concurrently with some of Moore’s “official” releases—the ones put out by labels for public consumption—so some of what consumers will find on say, Glad Music, is available on other releases, like Delicate Tension, Drumdrops, or Games and Groceries. Around 1997, Moore converted his catalog to CD-R and eventually, completely digital.

Lately, UK-based Cordelia Records is re-releasing many of the “official” albums. “Buy ’em,” Moore says.

For best results, new listeners should start with the albums Glad Music, Teenage Spectacular and Warning. I feel as if those are the most accessible, fun albums, that all weave together to give an accurate representation of Moore’s work. They may not be intentional examples of conceptual continuity—at least Moore says they’re not connected that way—but they’re thematically similar and invoke some of Zappa’s works in that aspect.

After thoroughly listening to those albums, checking out his website will yield hours upon hours of music, video, quirkiness, history, and trivia. Moore’s work is like a buffet for different tastes and there truly is something for everybody. What I find most interesting about Moore’s work is not the sheer quantity of it, but the way in which he curates and archives it.

(Image credit: David Buck)