Rising Swiftly to the Surface

Choler chases down electronica leviathan Moby at the 1999 Coachella Festival

By Sean Flinn | November 15, 1999 Moby rocks bodies on Day 2 of the 1999 Coachella Valley Festival Buy Moby's music Visit Moby's Web site Visit Moby's Label V2 Records True story -- a confession, if you will: Prior to interviewing Moby, I knew very little about the man. I mean, I’ve read the occasional article about him, knew he was a born-again Christian, a descendant of Herman Melville (hence his moniker) and a vegetarian. I knew as well that he made electronic music but occasionally lapsed into fits of punk rock (as on his album Animal Rights) and movie soundtracks, e.g., I Like to Score. What’s more, I didn’t know I would have an opportunity to interview him until the evening before I was to chat with him. V2, his record label, approached me in the media tent at the Coachella Festival while I awaited an audience with Rick Smith of Underworld and told me I could speak with Moby on Day 2, if I so chose. Ignorant but not idiotic, I seized the opportunity. With 24 hours to prepare myself, I took advantage of the Tower Records booth set up on site at the festival and purchased his most recent album, Play, which was released in June. Coachella’s fine media relations folks had provided journalists with a packet of bio information on the artists on the bill, so I figured I could use that and the album to bring myself at least partially up to speed on my subject. Except ... guess whose bio the packet didn’t include. Bingo. Moby. And I would’ve gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddling kids, I thought to myself. Tense but not entirely panicked, I figured Play and the festival itself would give me enough to talk about to spark some sort of dialogue. That much I foresaw accurately. I didn’t anticipate Moby’s magnetic personality. Mild mannered and articulate, Moby also conveys the impression that he has a hard time sitting still. He doesn’t exactly fidget. He just exudes an energy that seems wasted on conversation; he belongs, I found out later, while watching him perform, on stage. Sean Flinn: My first set of questions have to do with the Festival. How much time have you been able to spend here? What are your general impressions of the way things are going? Moby: I just arrived this morning, so I haven’t seen that much. But what I have seen leads me to believe that this is probably the nicest festival I have ever been involved in. Really? I’ve been playing festivals for at least the last eight or nine years in Europe, and I did Lollapalooza. I’ve done Woodstock. I’ve done tons of festivals in my life, and this is a really special event. It feels really good. Last night had a good vibe to it. Are there any bands in particular that you’re interested in seeing at all or interacting with? It’s interesting for me that, when I look at the lineup, every single artist I like. Either I like [them], or I have respect for [them]. I’m kind of floored. I’ve never done a festival like that. Like, when I did Woodstock, I found half of the acts to be -- either I wasn’t interested in them, or I found them distasteful. Like, at Woodstock, I loved being on the same bill as Willie Nelson. But all the sort of generic alternative-rock stuff, the sort of testosterone-driven macho rock ... The sport metal ... Yeah, I hate that stuff. I mean, sometimes it’s kind of like -- it’s cool if there’s a snowboarding commercial and you hear that kind of music underneath. That can be cool. But it doesn’t do anything for me. Do you think the bands and the way they chose the lineup at that festival contributed to some of the problems they had? I understand that, for Woodstock, they were trying to attract as many people as possible, so they had to appeal to the lowest common denominator. So they had a lot of aggressive, macho rock bands. But the problem is, when you have a lot of aggressive, macho rock bands, you attract a lot of aggressive, macho rock people -- fans. And I think all the problems at Woodstock were the result of the bands that they had there. Exclusively. I mean, like, you can blame $4 waters, you can blame the weather, but if you didn’t have Insane Clown Posse, Limp Bizkit, Korn, etc. -- all these aggressive, macho rock bands -- you wouldn’t have had so much aggression. To change track a little bit, I wanted to make sure we could get some time in to talk about Play, specifically some of the inspirations that you found for composing the different tracks on that -- especially the more gospel- and blues-tinged tracks. My only inspiration when making a record is to make music that I like and that, hopefully, other people will like as well. I wasn’t thinking about anything else. I just wanted to make nice music. I wasn’t thinking about whether it incorporated old elements or new elements; I was just trying to make something nice. | Next Note: This article originally appeared on RadioSpy.