everything is wrong

APOPTYGMA BERZERK!

A lot of the Moby criticism has been really unfair, I think, especially calling _Play_ the techno _Rattle And Hum_. Then again I would say this because I love _Play_ and think that _Rattle And Hum_ is one of the worst records I've ever heard. I think the difference for me lies largely in approach; any/all blues appropriation that Moby did was applied towards doing something different with the source material, whereas U2 seemed to be to intent on wanking over the material they were covering to remember to do something interesting with it.

(was going to follow that with a pusillanimous "but that's OK, I really love you guys" kind of thing, but fuck it, it stands.)

I think a lot of dismissal comes from having an easily (and cripplingly) identifiable sonic style--you can spot a Moby track a mile off, same four-chord sequence, same piano style (ravey or trancey), same faux-naive orgasmic rush--and instead of toughening or altering it to dancefloor/mainstream standards, he's never strayed from it. ("Bodyrock" was obviously "Moby doing Fatboy Slim" without actually getting near FBS's sonic crunch, for instance; the beats don't kick as hard, the sonix don't bite as hard.) In a sense, he makes the dance audience come to him rather than the other way around (the mainstream is another thing). also, having been proferred as "techno's face" for so long had a serious backlash effect: he was so outspoken for so long (especially when he became vocally dismissive of rave culture around '94-6, a period when it was busy consolidating its gains) that folks dismissed him as a jerk the way they do with Bono.

anyway, I love him, unabashedly--or have loved him, anyway--and still think he was the best artist of the '90s. certainly he made as many if not more good-to-great singles than anyone else that decade. EIW is a record I was obsessed with for about a year after it came out. let us not forget the EIW: DJ Mix Album disc that followed it, two mostly terrific discs of DJ'ed remixed of EIW and Move trax. the new one's not so good, but eh....

How about Marshall Jefferson and Robert Owens? Moby was hardly the first to drop a soul vocal over a beat, but everyone acted like those tracks on Play were a brilliant act of detournement.

what about all those previous uses of mooning goth-divas, screaming gospel singers and ragamuffin toasters as the holy source of emotion in music, Tom? was he just kidding then or were you just not paying attention?

I am soul is where you find it anyway, if you get something out of "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?" then great and there's no gainsaying that but it does fuck all for me.

(Some of the blues tracks are the best on Play - "Honey" and "Run On" cos they do the recontextualisation thing a lot better, but damn how much better would they be if Moby would come up with more compelling beats!)

Yes, my friend.

Everything Is Wrong was actually the last Moby I actually actively sought out -- nothing has compelled me since then, a track record he is now maintaining excellently. It is worthy for two things in particular, "Feel So Real," which is just ridiculously over the top and wonderful, and "When It's Cold I Want to Die," though I admit that's more for Mimi Goese than anything else. "God Moving..." is overblown, attractive enough at the time but now totally ham-handed tosh at this stage for me -- In the Nursery work this vein eight million times more effectively.

Forget U2 (and how I wish we all could). Moby is more accurately the Marc Bolan of his time -- an initially cult-level appreciated figure who made some notable records in an underground scene after earlier attempts at musical success elsewhere. When he went overground, a fair amount of the original fans dismissed him as idiocy multiplied, the worst kind of sellout etc. Though the difference between Bolan and Moby is that, as was cannily noted regarding his need to find every new trend, Moby's Bolan thinking he's Bowie, ergo reinventing with the verve and need of Madonna (who is so obviously a candidate for a vocal appearance on a Moby song that I'm figuring they're waiting for her next movie so she can get another Oscar).

It's an amusing enough game but the problem with me is that I don't like the results as of late. Because otherwise the game is pretty nutty, even if the stitches show. "Moby! He rocks! Er, wait, no. Moby! He uses old blues recordings! Um, let me think again. Moby! He collaborates with everyone on the goddamn planet!" Etc. etc.

This is kind of what I mean by transatlantic perspective - the trippy melodic trancey rave thing held on a lot longer in the States, and the same media urges to find an 'artist' in the morass of great music applied, so America got Moby much better.

Ned: Yeah, for about two songs. Bolan = most overrated pop figure evah, surely?

Heh heh heh. I'm going to let Sean read this and explode. As it is, Prince owes his career to T. Rex as much as Funkadelic.

As in performing ability or songwriter or...? Because he wasn't a great guitarist per se, he just worked with what he had, bless 'im.

Which album was "Bring Back My Happiness" on? That's another older Moby track that's just sheer bloody brilliance.

I'm trying to think of how to adequately defend _Play_ here. It seems that a lot is being made of how Moby used old blues/soul records as a shortcut to inject emotion into the album (ignoring for the moment that people in his genre have been using old blues/soul records in the manner for decades and it's kind of unfair to single Moby out for it if you show some sort of appreciation for everyone else doing it), but A) he doesn't do it on every track, and many of the tracks where he doesn't are really stunning ("Southside", "Machete", "Down Slow"); B) the tracks where he gets it right he really gets right ("Honey", "Run On", "Natural Blues", and I don't care what anyone else says, "Bodyrock" is flat-out fun).

I'm sure all of this can be easily countered by anyone who's listened to the album recently, but I still think that there's some criticism going on here that addresses Moby's persona more than his music.

anyway, in the middle of this quite hardcore emotional-political stuff (inc, TC being v. self-searching about HOW WEIRD IS IT THAT DYKEY ME WANTS TO DIE A BRAVE MALE SOLDIER 90 YEARS AGO IN MISERABLE TERROR AND SQUALOR blah blah), she justs taps in the scene-setting descriptive that she and her driving companion were playing moby on the car tapedeck... for this reader, it was like an ilm decompression chamber, stepping outside this doxa into, well, i couldn't work out what (in academic terms, TC = cool chiXoR, not least because she presents herself as flailing doofus in weird waters)

Not coincidentally, it's the same abject cutesy-pandering and total lack of quality control that renders his music such garbage, too.

I'm not going to mention what I think about his music (he's due up for more listening), but why does he get flak about his personality?! Moby has a great personality. He's cute and quiet and unassuming, yet not afraid to show you his dick. He's too naive to be pretentious. I just want to rub his cute little pate all over! (Is it really inappropriate for a hetero male like me to be having paroxysms of cuteness overdose over another guy like this? The way I think of it, kitties are mind-bogglingly cute too, but I don't want to fuck them)

Well, since this did start with Everything Is Wrong, when was the last time you read the liner notes -- even if you agreed with just about all he said -- and thought, "Gosh, what a fun person to be around"?

DJ Icey-Smokebelch II-David Holmes mix.

Fatboy Slims remix of X-Press 2 Lazy is a bit old skooley and ravey.

I will think of more once you all remember that Holmers mix of the DJ Icey track is ESSENTIAL LISTENING.

Is it not nifty?

Saying Nitsuh's posts read like a Moby screed is an insult to Nitsuh and I won't countenance it.

Doesn't "Go" heavily sample the synths from Angelo Badalamenti's "Laura Palmer's Theme" off of the very choice Twin Peaks soundtrack?

Cheesy = defending ultra-marketed pop on an internet forum.

I knew we had to address all those commercials eventually. I used to really have a problem with artists lending their music to commercials, but then I realized that what's wrong with capitalism is exploitation, and who's being (directly) exploited here? I'm liberal enough that it gives me a funny little (bad) feeling in the pit of my tummy whenever anyone makes money off of anything in any way, but I like the idea of Moby having lots of money (didn't someone mention that his episode of Cribs showed his apartment as really spartan?)a lot better than fuckin' Ford, or whoever else made those commercials still having that money. And (and this is another great thing about ILM), I'm not so sure I believe in such a thing as "selling out" anymore. Like, at all.

Re. adverts - really the only thing you can judge an ad-track on is how good it sounds in the advert and after, in this Moby is not a very smart operator as he flogs his sounds to some pretty annoying adverts (that awful Ford one!).

A caveat: Moby's a FANTASTIC live act. Another caveat: the videos for "Porcelain" and "We Are All Made of Stars" are VILE.

everythinmg is wrong is a pretty cool album.

sounds great to me. sorry--I'm not going along with your logic here, Moby and the Beasties are both great.

People who look for "emotional beauty" in dance instrumentals = new agers (eg P.Glass!)

so what was Discovery doing at the top of your 2001 list, then, Tom? you got some sort of emotional beauty out of that, right? or are your standards (once again) flip-flopping around on us?

Given that it's Moby, I would be surprised to learn that he didn't donate some money to PETA.

OK what I was annoyed about was that "emotional beauty" is a bit of a thread-killer, it's a very easy claim to make about a piece of music and generally when it gets made there's little examination of what actual emotions are being conjured/played with, it just sits there, a dead phrase suggesting that if you don't like the music there's something about you that's spiritually awry.

Moby and the Beastie Boys? Again I didn't say the Beasties are bad, I'm drawing a comparison based on their places in their respective styles of music. Actually I think both artists have a similar career arc of vital and entertaining initial work and then increasingly blah later music but that wasn't exactly what I was getting at.

"Distaste" is too strong though; I think it's hard to hate Play as an album in and of itself, but very very easy to be frustrated by its ubiquity, and what that means for Moby as an artist, for dance music, for society in general. Which is maybe a tad unfair on the music itself (eg. I can't give Norah Jones a free pass because I don't care about the status of jazz and then turn around and be ultra-nasty to Moby, esp. when I like Moby more than Norah Jones).