R. Stevie Moore

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.