I pride myself on being, shall I say, ready for anything when it comes to the contents of the tapes/LPs/CDs I get in the mail. You never know what you’ll get, believe-you-me (the other day a grunge record came in, no shit), and it’s part of the charm of working in the experimental underground realm I find myself overseeing these days. R. Stevie Moore, of course, is a legend in some circles, but to way too many he’s but a shadow, and I’ve sensed a renewed urgency to get his music out there to those who need it this year (peep jspicer’s review of another RSM cassette recently in Cerberus). Nobody Pays Me Much Mind Until I’m Gone, which btw is a title that makes my eyes rain, is so daffy it makes other so-called twisted geniuses seem quaint and gutless in comparison. Heavy on synths that splash across the canvass in bright pinks and blues, NPMMMUIG (a mouthful even as an acronym!) won’t disappoint those of us who already feast on Moore’s moldy mind, and its edges, at least those that reveal themselves on the opening side of this 19-track cassette, become sharp and jagged enough to snag the uneducated ear. That said, the saga on the flipside should be enough on its own to hook newcomers, its new-age grandeur eclipsed only by the underlying smirk that tells us Moore isn’t going to let us off this easy. And even on the ‘calm’ side, you get a cut buttressed by angry mobs and hard-chopped synth that shakes its fist in your ear, as if to warn you: Get ready. Then a mellow-yellow clarinet riff cools calmly like a pie on a windowsill, floating like incense smoke in a sun-sparked room. And that’s all completely contrary to the sick-ass action elsewhere, which employs a much more traditional rock setup (bass, drums, guitars) to go with the glittery synths Moore so treasures. The contrast is jarring to say the least. That’s the charm of Nobody Pays Me Much Mind Until I’m Gone though, a 19-track opus that offers enough feeling/range to work in the winter, spring, summer, OR fall of your emotional calendar, with Side A providing the boundary-pushing, crazy-ranting side of Moore and B proffering a spiritual trip that connects, to me, on more levels. But hey, you can’t have one without the other, and why would you want to? It’s two albums in one, both with full artistic arc and rise/ripple. Moore’s been shining a flashlight into the eyes of convention since before most of you were born, and he’s only getting better with age. One-hundred-and-thirty-five copies, soon to disappear into dust…
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