TROUSER PRESS Magazine

Note: This record has never been com-
mercially released. We obtained it as a
limited edition demonstration record. How-
ever, we understand that it may become
available more generally in the near future,
so we thought our readers might like to
hear about it.

Somewhere in Nashville, Tennessee sits
(in a bathtub) a young chap by the name of
Stevie Moore. In his living room, two tape
decks are set up. Microphones and wires
are strewn everywhere. Over the space of
several years (1974-1976), our hero sits
down with his tape recorders and (all by his
lonesome) puts down a heap of tracks
featuring many of his multiple musical
talents. This record is an edited distillation
of a few of those, intermixed with some chit
chat and narration by the venerable Mr.
Moore. The result is an outrageous collec-
tion of musical brain spewage that sounds,
at times, like Thunderclap Newman, Todd
Rundgren, and the Bonzo Dog Band. The
sound quality isn't exactly spectacular, but
you get the idea, and listening is a lot of
fun, as the entire TP staff can attest. The
better tracks (in case you want to call up
your local dj and request them) are called
"Goodbye Piano," "I Wish I Could Sing,"
"She Don't Know What To Do With
Herself", and a little ditty entitled "Theme
From A.G." "AG" turns out to be Andy
Griffith, and the track is simply a multi-
guitared reading of that fabulous whistling
tomboy music from the old show. A true
slash of genius, and the killer cut of the
record. Don't rush out looking for Phono-
graphy. It'll find you.

•Ira A. Robbins, NYC
•Trouser Press magazine
•December 1977
•Page 36


IMAGES:
-> TP24 front cover (12/77)
-> The Review
-> H.P. advert #1
-> TP25 front cover (1/78)
-> H.P. advert #2
-> 1st RSM-designed advert (6/78)
-> TP36 H.P. advert 2/79
-> TP36 H.P. advert #2 2/79
-> Full page RSM-designed advert (5/79)
-> Another RSM-designed advert (79)

One of the most unique albums of the 1970s, R. Stevie Moore's debut long-player is an uncategorizable mess that somehow keeps from falling apart completely, kind of like a one-man band version of the Beatles' White Album cross-pollinated with late-1960s Frank Zappa at his most antic. Yet just as the album seems hopelessly self-indulgent and bizarre, Moore suddenly veers into some of the sweetest and catchiest pop songs of the pre-punk '70s. That dichotomy is what makes Phonography special. Recorded in bits and pieces over the course of two years of living room sessions, with Moore playing and singing every part, barring the tambourine on the Soft Machine-like opening instrumental "Melbourne," the album shares much with such one-man band predecessors as McCartney, Todd Rundgren's Something/Anything?, and Roy Wood's Boulders. However, having been made on a cheap four-track with one microphone, a borrowed guitar, and no mixing deck, Phonography also has a funky lo-fi charm that anticipates post-grunge D.I.Y. savants like Guided By Voices and Pavement. (Also, the wordless vocals and skittering analogue synths in the middle section of the lovely closing track, "Moons," sound uncannily like Stereolab would over a decade and a half later.) The album is split down the middle between quirky but capable pop songs and strange interludes. Of the former, "Goodbye Piano," a falsetto music hall ditty that suggests a major Bonzo Dog Band fixation, is among Moore's most famous tracks, but it's the more serious tunes, like the beautiful Brian Wilson-inspired ballad "I've Begun to Fall in Love," the bouncily Beatlesque "I Want You In My Life" and the trippy "Showing Shadows," that are more indicative of the artist's estimable skills as a songsmith. The spoken word interludes are uniformly surreal, with the Harold Pinter-like talk show parody "The Lariat Wressed Posing Hour" a particular highlight, but the album is organized to such an off-the-wall blueprint that it's impossible to imagine it without even its most inexplicable elements. Originally released in 1976 in an edition of 100 copies, Phonography was reissued in 1978 and again in 1998 on a limited-edition CD featuring eight bonus tracks recorded during the same 1974-76 sessions. S.M.

From
PRICE GUIDE For Record Collectors
by Nick Hamlyn
Music Master (UK) 1991, 1993
Paperback; 829 pages; 38,000 entries

MOORE, R. STEVIE
R. Stevie Moore is one of rock music's eccentrics, preferring to issue his records through his own mail order scheme than to tangle with record companies who would doubtless attempt to compromise Moore`s quirky approach. The original issue of his first album Phonography was produced in an edition of just 99 copies and long ago sold out. Frank Zappa has one and so does UK collector Michael Gerzon, whose copy is likely to be the only one in the country.

Phonography; LP; Private issue; Vital US 0001; 1976; Value £200.00

book cover - rsm entry - nick - gerzon - 2