Recorded July-Dec 1985
The Sanctuary, Caldwell NJ
Engineered by Vito Capurso
Guest Drummers: Lee Miller (7, 8, 11, 12), Mark Cudnik (3) & James Price (15)

Special Thanks to:
Patrick Mathe, Chris Bolger, Frank Balesteri & Tony Brower
Photos by Jim Price
Cover by Philippe Huart & P. Cholley

Words and Music: R. Stevie Moore
except:
3-Public Domain
10-Floyd Tillman
12-Tandyn Almer

ORIGINAL LP LINER NOTES:


THE IMPOSSIBLE HAS HAPPENED!

I'm standing there ignoring the parade, but there in attendance for anyways, and just feeling mixtures of Carol Doda, Roy Byrd, Narc Mopfler, and just those three for the moment of. And then I say no I must be mistaken. Yes I know I am. I never write.

When I am away, just like everyone else Ivan The Terrible tells me, practically forces me, to look forward to eventually going home, that efforts have been made by people to contact me. The basket of mail and the telephone answering appliance. There may even be, he suggesstss, an in-person appearance waiting at my door.

I am convinced that no souls have superiors to deal with. They may believe otherwise, what with watching the news lately. Have you got into watching the news lately? I mean, for enetrtainment only. And it's all true. Someone soft prepares me a Coke float. Yet in the bitter cold freezed outdoors, blowtorches are brought by bringers, the same gentlemen who write reviews about themselves reviewing artists' current product. And we rejoice. They are the same.

Aztec anthropology is a naked name-of-group. Some of those inferior souls do choose to accept surpassing their limitations. It's too much. Cups runneth over. And I have to clean it up. Or else my guests judge me wrongly. And I pay dearly. Don't you? Lee's ears danced against the association of guilt and shaking steven the god composer. WHAAAT? is scrawled, and I mean Scrawled, on the wall of my plane on London (not Deram) so I'm stuck there and nobody will give me good bed.

Unkempt Man of Clifton Boulevard always stops in when clouds gather, you've seen it happen, mark my words to a T. I would not want to be successful unless deceased, as Satie. Nelson. Tubb. Bangs. Ripperton. Look up and at how they have created a new Marketability, very good new video possibilities and increased revenoo. No matter that their undergrounded teeth never get touched by brush (who could do it? The mouths AND coffins are tightly shut). My name dropping clouds zolve.

Radios on the radiators will play this record for you if you choose not to purchase it yesterday. In New York there's this guy named how weird (!) sterns who slices the most succulent radio plate ever a tempted. Someone will tell him on a cloudy day about this liner note, but will he react? Mark my words to a tee, he's dressed. A canary in the sky whooshed down, as if in dance, and pecked the wax out of my ears and said O O Zero, h.s. favorite song is not Holy. But he played it, or rather Robin played it, 3 straight times.

Father makes believe there really is no genius. Ok, well said. My chris must be bass fishing concurrent to the association of guilt. Another name pops intohead: Victor Lovera. I could not have made that one up. All of the southern states' senators saw me at the Apollo theater, me the godfather of soul! My singing was on key.

Lost on the willow bridge, recalled drinking much more milk years ago than now. The drifting cowboy picked up 9-volts on his way to gig I headlined. Prices are insane/she gasped that I was not hers only. Prices ray's. Write this down. I am better than everyone else. Proof exists, but the tree weeps, watch it weep. Ignore it.

Graduating high school at 70, Jello Biafrica thought he met George Jones, but that was never on the news, so I doubt it happent. Jon's child dropped the name Roger. That made me sit up & wonder.

I wondered out loud. "Mama, why does Rhino Litchy think he can write the strange over and over again in vary us styles, and even worse the idiot public embraces it???" Some old ladies in buckskin pillbox-hats are asking for his newest 45/u here Jim guide 2 sticks grandiose. And these visions of johna. Was it which decade?

Psychic energy powered the tape-making machine, and we were thus able to demo over 600 songs in one arrogant week. All were released on bond. Sis cunningham still owns the 8-track carts. Then Ivan made another pizza, Frank pulled the knife, and we pleaded... First with tea smoked tears, then loudshouts: "Please let us go back to North America, pleases let us remain there, please don't pull us out ever again!" I decided to begin name dropping again, and I would not stop. It drove the terrorists crazy. Pierced ears bled. I smiled.

Tony Brower. Terry Burrows. A large crowd, increasing. Buddy Holly wearing a James Taylor badge. He was thrown out. Andy Partridge, from way across the room. Miss Margaux spotted his large presence and ran to greet. What a party (like father never threw)! Terrifying treble in the quaddafi synthesizer bounced tracks/counterfeited from Sinatra on Columbia perhaps any of his 78 issues, but never on later LP release. These philosophies on this moody night at Madison gym, with THIS flu...I was proud to finally be "up and coming." Chewing cudnik rolls and crashes all of the problems and novels (M. Witmark?). You think I knew.

Rosco Gordon drives us to the druggist, but it's closed. Me in the backseat with Linda & Gary, I punched myself in the face with my fist. The car slowed. There was that graveyard molar, under which Edith Piaf hid in the bunker. January shocked. Should I leave them by your gate?

Oral Roberta Stephanie lends you this rare recording, of that collection of sound. Assuming you and your brothers are totally fed up with ands, bands, and more bands...Bands with names for every phrase in every thesaurus, bands who tell themselves that they too can write songs... THIS IS NO TIME FOR FOOLISHNESS!! Welcome to relief, clive.

Time for sleep now. Cannot wait to wake up tomorrow morning with Maddox bros & Rose, and tape this disc on compact film. Do you know it's RSM's sixth (6th) album, but first truly big studio project?

Set that alarm clock. Fix mr. Coffee in advance. The Great sayings have all been said. Now we gotta accept what the New youth think. Oh no! Glory to be for TDK and Joel Whitburn, hour savior accounts. Hey men.

LET'S BE upfront about this:
with its spoof sleeve pastiche
of The Beatles' "Hard Day's
Night" cover, "Glad Music" is
Stevie's first proper studio
project to date. Up until now,
so far as I can recall, his
albums have been splattered
with the low-tech efforts that
he puts out by the hundreds
via his cassette club.

The charm, irritation,
humour, honesty and sheer
oddballness of Mr. Moore is
crucially enhanced by the
intimacy of his cassette
concoctions. You want a song
written just for you? Stevie
will provide one along with
noise, conversation, stories,
shouts, cries and whatever
else enters his head at the
time.

These oxide confessionals,
streaked with flashes of
spontaneous genius and
gross over-indulgence, are a
big step over the line of
weird. They comprise an
aural autobiography for the
voyeur and are everything
but boring.

But as Stevie gradually
comes out of his closet and
roams into the "professional"
arena, this essential intimacy
is cancelled. On "Glad Music,"
there are none of the loopy
idiosyncracies which make
Mr. Moore endearing. instead,
we get trad songs and
instrumentals.

I once said that Stevie was
the Black Hole of pop music,
and that holds true on this
album which traipses through
metal, country, psychedelia
and what have you. I also
once said that Mr. Moore
should be bigger than The
Beatles. That was a joke.

THERE'S A droll indication of R.
Stevie Moore's personality
halfway through the second
side of this quite dazzling LP,
when he has the faith, guts and
sheer temerity to do a song
praising the oft-overlooked vir-
tues of the '60s--- "Everybody
had fun, everybody was hot (sic)...
Anything different was better"
--- and the good humour and
self-deprecation to close it with
the lunkhead hick proclamation
"We were far out!"

When he then follows "Sha-
kin' In The Sixties" with a jubi-
lant, ethereal version of The
Association's "Along Comes
Mary", you realise he has a
point: it's fun, it's hot, it's diffe-
rent, and that's happened since.
It's also a vocal tour-de-force,
Moore overdubbing all the lead
and harmony parts just as he
overdubs all the instrumental
parts (apart from the occasional
drum) on all his records.

Moore obviously has a thing
about the 60's: "Glad Music"
comes dressed in a gentle
parody of the cover to "A Hard
Day's Night", right down to the
inscription "Songs from the
record" on the back; its liner
notes are a witty pastiche of
those which graced "Bringing It
All Back Home"; and its music
achieves, at times, the quiet
intensity of "Pet Sounds", intro-
version couched in multi-fa-
ceted musical dexterity. It's to
his credit that Moore's versions
do him no shame at the side of
the original sleeve, notes and
music.

"Glad Music" is the first time
Moore's indulged in a major,
big-studio project, and it's
worked wonders with his stub-
born individualism, heretofore
rather undermined by an en-
gaging amateurism; he's al-
ways had a very good ear, but
now we can hear it the better
too. As he flits from the yearn-
ing, anthemic "Don't Let Me Go
To The Dogs" to the uptempo
guitar attack of "He's Nuts" to
the cod country of Floyd Till-
man's "I Love You So Much It
Hurts" to the restrained
psychedelia of "Colliding Cir-
cles", he demonstrates a rare,
chameleonic ability to locate
the essence of a particular style
and throw it into sharp relief.

But he's not simply a trusty
pasticheur; his talent put-
ting these threads and memor-
ies in new settings is as protean
as his instrumental expertise.
So while there are nods to all
manner of (American) musics,
they're not fawning, adulatory
bows to superior influences,
they're nods and winks in a
variety of new and different
directions.

Moore's voice, too, is as indi-
vidual as his talent. On the
opening "Norway" it resembles
the plummy tones of Kevin
Ayers, but for the most part he
sings confidently in a clear
falsetto which contributes an
enchanting fragility to several
of the songs.

"Glad Music" has convinced
me that R. Stevie Moore is a
genius of a rare order, with the
ability to marshall a bewilder-
ing diversity of styles and influ-
ences and mould them into
something quite peculiarly his
own. He's one of the few practi-
tioners of post-modernist
cross-pollination with the wit
and sheer taste to produce a
worthy hybrid. Buy this record
and make him a tax exile.

As the homage to A Hard Day's Night on its cover makes clear, 1986's Glad Music is R. Stevie Moore's attempt at making a straightforward pop album, or at least as close to straightforward as this Nashville-born, New Jersey-based quirk pop innovator is capable of getting. And on its own idiosyncratic terms, Glad Music succeeds brilliantly. After nearly two decades of compiling lo-fi four-track bedroom recordings for his self-released cassettes, Glad Music is the first album Moore recorded in a proper studio. The difference is startling. Given a whopping 16 tracks, Moore adds subtle and inventive touches like the snippets of backwards tape that color the throbbing "Don't Let Me Go to the Dogs" and the four-beat electronic tom-tom fill that becomes a key hook in the amazingly catchy "Part of the Problem," besides self-overdubbing some richly delicate harmonies, like a one-man Beach Boys, on the achingly pretty acoustic opener "Norway." And the songs themselves are just outstanding. Besides the abovementioned tunes, three of Moore's all-time greats, Glad Music includes the Kinks-like "I Like to Stay Home," the smart-alecky power popper "Why Should I Love You" and the positively giddy "Shakin' in the Sixties," a tongue-in-cheek ode to the aesthetic Austin Powers would later claim. Perhaps the album's best-known track is the dreamy "Colliding Circles," an original song with a title cribbed from what was at the time thought to be a legendary lost Beatles outtake. Of course, Glad Music is an R. Stevie Moore album, so it has its share of oddities, including the Chipmunks-go-Ramones "He's Nuts" and a quirky trio of covers, including the Association's "Along Comes Mary," a surprisingly straight overdubbed a cappella version of the traditional gospel tune "I Wouldn't Mind Dyin'," and Floyd Tillman's country weeper "I Love You So Much It Hurts" (performed with an almost venomous satirical edge). All four tracks are funny and listenable interludes on an album that otherwise mostly plays by the pop rules. Glad Music is R. Stevie Moore at his most accessible. S.M.

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