Moby: fierce vegan, former punk, rave guru and the ideal of elder-statesman serenity in a dance music scene obsessed with excess. At Ultra Music Festival, Moby delivered a thunderous DJ set melding the best of his own productions with thumping house and disco synths. He even occasionally jumped up on his DJing table to further incite the crowd. Music editor Aaron Gonsher spoke with Moby shortly before his set to try to figure out how Moby reached his current stature and level of respect.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
I was obsessed with science fiction, specifically "Star Trek," so I decided I wanted to be a scientist. I would see Spock on the bridge of the Enterprise, and he had all these cool oscilloscopes and buttons, and I wanted to do any job that involved oscilloscopes and buttons. It is not surprising, then, that I got involved in electronic music, because making electronic music is like being a scientist for college dropouts.
What was the experience or the moment when you knew that you were going to be making music for a career?
Well, I had a weird background, because I grew up playing classical music and then I played in punk rock bands. I started DJing in 1984 at this crummy little bar in Port Chester, N.Y. I DJed Monday nights, and there would maybe be 10 people there, and I'd DJ for eight hours a night and I got paid $20. And I remember one Monday night I was playing a Ministry record into Donna Summer and the beats matched. All of a sudden, that was the moment where I was, like, "Oh. I can do this." And then I had to figure out how I had matched the beats, so I DJed obsessively, always trying to become a better DJ. This was back in the days of vinyl and Numark mixers that had no EQ on them. It was really primitive by today's standards.
What's the best piece of advice you were ever given?
MOBY: I'm trying to think ... This might sound a little vague or esoteric, but the best piece of advice I've been given is a friend of mine going on this long-winded spiritual rant. And at the end of it he realized he'd just gone on a long-winded spiritual rant, and he said, "You know, it all boils down to this: Do a little bit more of what works and a little bit less of what doesn't."
That's a good one.
So then it's up to the individual to figure out what works and what doesn't. I think in most of our lives we can pretty quickly figure out if something's working or not, and if it's working and healthy do a little more if it, if it's not working and it's unhealthy maybe do a little less of it.
What was your most prized possession when you were a child? I'm assuming it might have had something to do with Spock or Star Trek.
I grew up quite poor, so I didn't really have much in the way of possessions. Honestly, my most prized possession was a copy of "Lord of the Rings" that had been given to me for Christmas when I was eight years old. So I would read it over and over. I'd start with "The Hobbit" and then read "Lord of the Rings," then go back to "The Hobbit," and I read them over and over and over again.
What can't you live without in your life now, or in terms of your music? Is there any specific piece of gear or something like that?
This is either good or tragic, but the one thing I can't ... well, that I need to make music these days is unfortunately the computer. Having a guitar is really nice, having a piano is really nice, having a drum set or radial drum machine or synthesizer is all really nice. It's a very unromantic answer, but probably the computer.
Do you think reliance on computers or technology has degraded the art of DJing at all?
Well, it's funny in that the ye olden days of the early '90s, making electronic music was so difficult because you'd have to get all your equipment to talk. Like, you'd have a drum machine and a synth, and they all cost a lot of money, and they would either talk to each other with MIDI, or Digisync, or ways in which one piece of gear would trigger another piece of gear. And you'd have to mix things with a mixer that you'd save up money to buy. And now, it's so easy to make really good dance music, but I don't think that's a bad thing. I just think the danger is in people getting comfortable with things being good and not pushing themselves to make things that are great. The other danger is that if everybody uses the same software everybody ends up with records that sound very similar. In the old days, like, you'd hear a Derrick May record from 1989, and it sounded so different sonically from, like, a Todd Terry record, because they were using different equipment and approached everything very differently. Now everybody uses Ableton or Reason or Cubase to end up with very good but very similar-sounding records where it's hard to tell artists apart.
Who are your musical heroes?
Donna Summer. I still think "I Feel Love" is just about the greatest piece of electronic music ever made. So Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder. George Gershwin, because I think "Rhapsody In Blue" is just one of the greatest pieces of music ever written. Let me think ... Mushroom from Massive Attack! I really love the first three Massive Attack records, because they had such a melodic, feminine quality to them. At the time a lot of people were making electronic music that was very hard and masculine, and I really liked those first few Massive Attack records because they had, they were coming from a much more interesting and soulful place. Brian Eno, from being in Roxy Music to producing Devo and the Talking Heads, to producing U2, making his own ambient records. Those are probably my biggest musical heroes.
