Friday, March 1, 2013
R. Stevie Moore single on Sweaters & Pearls Records
A few years ago I didn't even know who R. Stevie was.
My friend Travis in high school was always the one introducing me to amazing stuff. He moved to our small town school sometime my freshman year and blew minds with Eraserhead, Zappa and "Bob", in the days before the internet, plastering flyers in the hallways and busses until anything with a pipe and quotes was completely banned as a cult by the principal.
A few years ago we started using 7inches (and buckflix) as an excuse to talk about music and movies and one of those conversations (maybe even this one) ended up with me talking up Ariel Pink's Oddities... to him and Travis telling me I had to check out this guy R. Stevie Moore.
I picked up the "I hate people" single, (because god forbid I buy a whole album) and it was amazing, the 4-track style of Lou Barlow with the experimental pop weirdness of Ariel. A lightbulb went off. I could literally hear the straight line from Stevie through Pink, who I was so crazy about.
Fast forward to six months or so ago I ordered that Ku Klux Glam single from R. Stevie's site and Mike over at PIAPTK was just starting his Saturday singles series and I was inspired to try to send an email direct to R. himself.
Does he even check email? What about facebook? Was some entity posting on his behalf? Nope. He got back to me right away and seemed willing...hell, even excited to work with two nobodies on a new single. We were thrilled and emailed back and forth with Stevie to figure out which songs he'd want to get together on a tiny record from the archives. He sent a couple of photos to use for the sleeve, which I went ahead and rephotographed and glitched up. (I've been obsessed with Instagram and how pointless it is making digital files look like old photo processes when digital images have their OWN special ways of looking insane and nostalgic, thanks to decim8) Which R. was totally cool with. My friend Matt wrote the track text out when he was visiting from Boston while Travis had been doing a bunch of silk screening and I asked him to come up with something awesome for the first 50 cardboard matchbook sleeves.
The insert is handwritten tabs of "Traded my Heart for Your Parts" with some credits RSM requested and I copied them at work from ripped up legal pads and pressed it on red because I love color vinyl. That's it. 300 copies available from Sweatersandpearls.com and from R. Stevie on tour and maybe his site in the future.
The first 50 or so get the Travis cover which is a serious labor of love... This whole thing is really. We can die happy.
Pick this up over at my very own Sweaters & Pearls Records site, 5 bucks plus shipping. Obviously if you live outside the US, email jason at sweatersandpearls dot calm because USPS wants to make up for their incompetence by charging extra to ship overseas...sorry guys.
I really appreciate it. Oh and the tracks are really great, obviously.
Very cool. I will be buying this from you soon.
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