30 YEAR ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION
R. STEVIE MOORE '77 .. SWING AND A MISS
"Stance"
12" 45 rspm extended play
H. P. Music HPS-30733
limited pressing September 1978
ALL MUSIC GUIDE review (2001)
by Stewart Mason
A three-song 12" EP, 1978's Stance was R. Stevie Moore's first release after moving from his native Nashville to the more artistically favorable climes of northern New Jersey. Side one, or the "night side," features two of Moore's best pop songs of the period, "Dance Man" and "Manufacturers," both of which had originally appeared on Moore's self-released 1977 cassette A Swing and a Miss. This version of "Manufacturers" is a new recording, slightly faster than the original cassette release, missing the extended intrumental vamp at the end, and featuring Moore singing in a different, higher timbre than the Beefheart-like growl he'd employed on the original. A minor new wave classic, "Manufacturers" quickly became one of Moore's most popular songs, getting a lot of local airplay on the more adventurous radio stations in the New York region and ending up on a big-selling compilation Trouser Press magazine released on the cassette-only ROIR label in the early '80s. "Dance Man" is another of Moore's catchiest tunes, a sarcastic but sympathetic portrait of a disco dandy that, like "Manufacturers," is set to a mix of blazing rock guitar and percolating disco synths that was several years ahead of its time. The more experimental flip, the "day side," consists of one eight-minute instrumental, "Ist or Mas." Described in the liner notes as a piece designed to accompany facing the morning with a hangover, "Ist or Mas" is an ambient set of overdubbed and heavily processed guitars that drift and eddy in an appropriately soothing fashion. Not at all unlike the calmer moments of Brian Eno and Robert Fripp's collaborations, "Ist or Mas" shows Moore's facility with more adventurous styles of music. S.M.
