Boulder’s e-town radio show welcomed Moby at its Sunday session. Photos by Nathan Rist.
If you’re going to be a rock star, or maintain any significant celebrity status in the world today, an agenda seems to be a de facto requirement. Political, spiritual or otherwise, itap obvious that the masses look to these heroes for direction, hope and, way too often, a sort of worship. In that light, it was refreshing to spend some fairly intimate time (along with some 850 other people) in the last Sunday night with electronic/ambient musician — and mild mannered (but incredibly effective) activist — , as he was interviewed for a taping of the locally produced public radio show .
Moby is an erudite speaker, full of easy wit and loads of charm. He seemed thoroughly at home as he and host Nick Forster talked about things as provocatively disparate as religion, politics and climate change. When asked about his Christian beliefs — something Moby has been repeatedly chided about over years past — he retorted that “the agenda of the Christian right has almost nothing to do with the actual teachings of Christ.”
As Forster turned the conversation toward less divisive subjects such as politics in music, Moby uttered one of the evening’s most salient points: “I’ve found that I need to compartmentalize… My focus in music has always been on its effect once the sound leaves the speakers, or instruments. Whenever I write politically, it ends up being didactic. My music is very personal, and I save politics for interviews,” he pointed out, a comment that was met with laughter and applause.
Of course, they also talked about music, and Moby played a few tunes, beautifully unplugged. The evening started out with two songs from his 2009 record, “Wait For Me.” The first song, “Pale Horses,” was a sad, sparse composition with lyrics describing multigenerational tragedy and loss, played on an acoustic guitar and accompanied by a few of the E-Tones (the show’s resident band). He followed that with “Mistake,” as much a soliloquy as a plea for rescue, sung in his characteristically desperate near-monotone, before stopping for the interview.
Later, Moby sat behind the grand piano onstage and played accompaniment to a friend’s vocals for a version of “Jltf” with the E-Tones. The song’s beauty came dangerously close to eclipsing the recorded version. The execution belied something Moby had uttered earlier, when discussing production of “Wait For Me,” as he pointed out that he had grown “tired of big studio productions,” and had instead recorded this album “in bedroom, on old, broken down equipment.”
These circumstances alone attest to the artistry of Moby. His easy charm and wit, so quick and nascent, prove that he exists just where he needs to, and all of it sets a somewhat higher bar for celebrity culture, one that begs for achievement.
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Billy Thieme is a Denver-based writer, an old-school punk and a huge follower of Denver’s vibrant local music scene. Follow Billy’s explorations at , and his giglist at .
is a freelance photographer and a regular Reverb contributor. He hails from the mountains of Telluride, but he’s currently studying at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
