Moby for Tuesday morning. Recorded live in Dublin on June 16, 1999 and broadcast via RTÉ-FM.
Moby; Producer, DJ, activist, Singer-Songwriter, entrepreneur and podcaster is one of those artists who have achieved a certain everywhere/all-the-time reputation the past 20 or so years. It wasn’t always that way. There were fits and starts and his audience was having a hard time to try and figure out who he was and what he was all about during those formative years.
What he was all about was innovation and sometimes that’s a tough road to take, especially when you’re trying something new. His transition from Punk to EDM, and on top of that, taking what he was doing and presenting it in a way that would serve as crossover to the potential mainstream was hard for long-time fans to take.
But, as is always the case – trying something new requires a bit of faith that all works out in the end. And for Moby, the end result was straddling both worlds and bringing a level of understanding along with it. Hence, Moby has become a vital and influential force in the area of Electronic and Independent music, not to mention a very visible figure in the area of activism and human rights.
In this 1999 concert, performed around the time of the release of his fifth album, Play, released by Mute and V2 Records in May of 1999. The project originated when a music journalist introduced Moby to the field recordings of Alan Lomax from the compilation album Sounds of the South: A Musical Journey From the Georgia Sea Islands to the Mississippi Delta. Moby took an interest in the songs and formed samples from various tracks which he used to base new tracks of his own. Upon release in May 1999, Play had moderate sales but eventually sold over 10 million copies worldwide. Moby toured worldwide in support of the album, which lasted 22 months. Every track on Play was licensed to various films, advertisements, and television shows, as well as independent films and non-profit groups.The move was criticized and led to some to consider that Moby had become a sellout, but he later maintained that the licenses were granted mostly to independent films and non-profit projects, and agreed to them due to the difficulty of getting his music heard on the radio and television in the past. In 2007, The Washington Post published an article about a mathematical equation dubbed the “Moby quotient” that determined to what degree had a musical artist sold out. It was named in reference to his decision to license music from Play.
But aside from all that is the concert – and 1999 was not a bad year, considering – press play, calm down and have a listen.
