Speaker 1: Pushkin. Moby maybe one of the most highly recognizable dance
Speaker 1: music artists of all time, but he's also a talented
Speaker 1: multi hyphen it whose unconventional thirty year career includes massive
Speaker 1: success as a producer and DJ and notoriety as an
Speaker 1: animal rights activist. Moby's latest project, Raprise, is the greatest
Speaker 1: Hits album that revisits the highlights of his extensive catalog.
Speaker 1: The songs are rerecorded with the Budapest Art Orchestra and
Speaker 1: various vocalists like Jim James. Moby's most well known electronic
Speaker 1: songs are reimagined on Raprise into sparse, soul stirring compositions.
Speaker 1: On today's episode, we'll hear Rick Rubin and Moby reminisce
Speaker 1: about their early punk rock days in New York City
Speaker 1: and the first time Moby ever heard house music while
Speaker 1: dancing in a club basement next to Prince. Moby also
Speaker 1: talks about what it was like to be buddies with
Speaker 1: David Bowie, getting sober, and why he decided to sell
Speaker 1: the big fancy castle he lived in all by himself.
Speaker 1: This is broken record liner notes for the digital age.
Speaker 1: I'm justin Richmonds. Here's a Rick rubin with Moby. I
Speaker 1: can tell from the window behind you that you're not
Speaker 1: in the house that I last visited you in. No
Speaker 1: I had this. I think of it like a Jay
Speaker 1: Gatsby epiphany. I was in this huge, crazy castle by myself,
Speaker 1: and I at one point asked myself, like, why do
Speaker 1: I live by myself in a giant castle? So I
Speaker 1: sold the big crazy castle and moved to this much simpler,
Speaker 1: prettier house in Los Felis, right by the observatory. Cool.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about the experience of recognizing
Speaker 1: that moment. What was the moment like and did it
Speaker 1: happen at once? I mean, that's the thing with epiphanies.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if this has been your experience,
Speaker 1: but a lot of the epiphanies I've had have taken
Speaker 1: a long time to sort of come to fruition, and
Speaker 1: when I finally have them, they're so self evident, so's
Speaker 1: it builds for a long time, and then once you
Speaker 1: notice it, it's like, how did it take so long
Speaker 1: for me to see the elephant in the room? Essentially, yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of like you drop a brick on your foot
Speaker 1: three hundred times, and after the three hundredth time you
Speaker 1: think to yourself, maybe I should stop dropping a brick
Speaker 1: on my foot. So this time I was sitting at
Speaker 1: my kitchen table in the Crazy Castle, and I was,
Speaker 1: I don't know, checking Facebook or looking at CNN on
Speaker 1: my laptop, and I thought to myself, why do I
Speaker 1: need this giant castle to sit at my kitchen table
Speaker 1: and do emails? Because I don't have a family. I'm
Speaker 1: just one person. I was like, so why do I
Speaker 1: need a bunch of empty rooms that occasionally I go
Speaker 1: in and vacuum. So it's just a very a very
Speaker 1: self evident rational epiphany that said, I really liked that house,
Speaker 1: that that crazy castle was a really cool crazy castle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it amazes me a little bit that somehow I was
Speaker 1: ever able to live in a crazy cool castle. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you did. Actually feel like I feel like
Speaker 1: if anyone gets to live in a crazy cool castle,
Speaker 1: it might as well be you. And then I had
Speaker 1: a really an odd experience with the crazy cool Castle.
Speaker 1: After I lived in the crazy cool Castle is the
Speaker 1: man I sold it to had a brunch and invited
Speaker 1: me to the brunch. And this has some very funny
Speaker 1: name dropping in it, and So I went to this
Speaker 1: brunch and Robert Downey Junior was at the brunch. So
Speaker 1: Robert Downey Jr. And I had been best friends when
Speaker 1: we were nine years old? Is that true? And I
Speaker 1: hadn't seen him since nineteen seventy four. And so by
Speaker 1: my selling the Giant Crazy Castle and then getting getting
Speaker 1: invited back to this brunch, I somehow got reunited with
Speaker 1: my childhood best friend from nineteen seventy four. For some reason,
Speaker 1: I thought you grew up on the East Coast. I
Speaker 1: did in Connecticut. Oh? Is he from Connecticut? For two years?
Speaker 1: He lived in Darien, Connecticut, and then his family moved
Speaker 1: to Essex, and I guess they might have moved back here.
Speaker 1: But we lost touch in nineteen seventy four, nineteen seventy five, amazing.
Speaker 1: Do you have any idea what year it was that
Speaker 1: we first ran into each other? Oh, I remember it exactly.
Speaker 1: When was that? It would have been June of nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three in Stamford, Connecticut at the Anthrax. Believable, And
Speaker 1: I remember it clearly because it was like a sort
Speaker 1: of daytime show at the Anthrax. They had graffiti artists
Speaker 1: outside and there was this strange show and Hoes were
Speaker 1: the headliners, and my band was one of the earlier bands.
Speaker 1: And I remember Brian and Sean, who ran the Anthrax,
Speaker 1: came to me and asked if you could borrow my amp.
Speaker 1: I remember that, I remember, I remember borrowing your amp.
Speaker 1: That's the moment that I remember. But I didn't remember
Speaker 1: the name of the club, and I wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: able to figure out when it was, just because I'm
Speaker 1: not good with dates. But that's amazing that you remember that.
Speaker 1: I feel like we both came from we're birth from
Speaker 1: the same scene, and we've both had interesting journeys from
Speaker 1: that start, maybe not the most obvious journeys. I've always
Speaker 1: felt a kinship, like we're very much cut from the
Speaker 1: same cloth. Well, I mean, if you think about it,
Speaker 1: from the Anthrax was a completely illeite go punk rock
Speaker 1: club in Stamford, Connecticut. And Stamford, Connecticut has now become
Speaker 1: this global center of finance, but back then it was
Speaker 1: sort of like just a burned out rough neighborhood and
Speaker 1: it was a storefront and they had a little stage
Speaker 1: in the basement. So people might be thinking that this
Speaker 1: was some sort of big, slightly more glamorous, legitimate place like. No,
Speaker 1: it was an anarcho syndicant punk rock club and it
Speaker 1: was a tiny little basement as I recall, Oh, it
Speaker 1: was minuscule. Yeah, And then I remember you went to
Speaker 1: NYU with my friends Lindsay Anderson and John Farnsworth. Yes,
Speaker 1: And here's a really funny memory I have. It would
Speaker 1: have been I guess nineteen eighty four at some point, Lindsay,
Speaker 1: because I had just started djaying, and Lindsay came to
Speaker 1: me and asked if I knew anyone who could help
Speaker 1: her friend Rick get a djaying job. Really, yeah, she
Speaker 1: said that. She said her friend Rick was looking for
Speaker 1: DJ gigs and did I know anyone who was looking
Speaker 1: for DJs? Wow? Amazing, Like maybe that was autumn of eight,
Speaker 1: I don't know, at some point in nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: and then I think the next time I ran into
Speaker 1: was at Angelica's kitchen buying vegan food. Yeah, And there
Speaker 1: were a few there were a few other sightings over
Speaker 1: the years. Yeah. I remember when I really got into
Speaker 1: the initial surge of rave music, when it was going
Speaker 1: on and feeling like the energy of the raves that
Speaker 1: I was going to these like illegal weekend raves with
Speaker 1: tons of people out in the desert, feeling like the
Speaker 1: energy was the first new energy that I was excited
Speaker 1: by since hip hop music. And after going to many
Speaker 1: of these things and realizing that from my perspective, which
Speaker 1: is very much music rooted in a personality, whether it
Speaker 1: be the personality of a band or the personality of
Speaker 1: person that was for the most part of faceless movement.
Speaker 1: And then I saw you perform in that, bringing a
Speaker 1: punk rock state of theatrical performance into the rave dance world,
Speaker 1: and it was so exciting for me and it made sense.
Speaker 1: And I've also found over the years that the people
Speaker 1: who made the most interesting dance music were the people
Speaker 1: who started by making other kinds of music and then
Speaker 1: found their way into dance music, as opposed to people
Speaker 1: who started in dance music, which historically there are less
Speaker 1: cases where I find that that music interesting. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it was strange coming from a sort of punk
Speaker 1: rock new wave background. And then similar to you, in
Speaker 1: the early eighties, I got really excited by hip hop,
Speaker 1: you know, listening to mixtapes from BLS and then I
Speaker 1: started djaying and I was playing all this eclectic music,
Speaker 1: you know, from hip hop to Johnny Cash to Nitzereb
Speaker 1: to just you know, all over the place, and house
Speaker 1: music started and it excited me in a way that
Speaker 1: dance music never had, you know, I mean dance music,
Speaker 1: to be honest with you, I viewed it very suspiciously
Speaker 1: up until the mid eighties, you know, and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden I realized, oh, part of my suspicion
Speaker 1: about it, part of my apprehension around dance music was
Speaker 1: actually cultural that it represented like cultural morais and approaches
Speaker 1: to music that were just very for a white kid
Speaker 1: from the suburbs. They were just really foreign to me.
Speaker 1: But then I realized just because they were foreign, it
Speaker 1: didn't mean that I had to have the suspicion around them.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if this is you found this
Speaker 1: to be the case, but I think that dance Atterria
Speaker 1: played a big role in turning me from like a
Speaker 1: suburban white kid who just wanted to listen to Black
Speaker 1: Flag and joy Division into someone who was open to
Speaker 1: so many different musical idioms, you know, because I would
Speaker 1: go to dance Ateria to see the Bad Brains or
Speaker 1: to see Mission of Burma, or even like the place
Speaker 1: like the Peppermint Lounge, and then the DJ beforehand would
Speaker 1: be playing hip hop and the DJ afterwards would be
Speaker 1: playing gay disco, and I was like, well, I revere
Speaker 1: this scene so clearly I need to learn from what
Speaker 1: they're doing. You know. The incubator of Lower Manhattan in
Speaker 1: the early eighties into the mid eighties really was I
Speaker 1: don't know. I feel like in a way that that
Speaker 1: that saved me from just being a cliched white kid
Speaker 1: from the suburbs who only wanted to listen to guitar
Speaker 1: rock from Athens, Georgia. So you're going to danceteria, you're
Speaker 1: exposed to dance music in a way that's relatable to you.
Speaker 1: Can you remember, like your gateway drug, what was the
Speaker 1: first dance oriented artists that you felt like this is
Speaker 1: for me. That's a wonderful question, because there was the
Speaker 1: sort of dance adjacent stuff that I liked, but I
Speaker 1: hadn't even registered that it was dance music, you know.
Speaker 1: I remember, like one of the best record buying days
Speaker 1: of my entire life was in nineteen eighty two. I
Speaker 1: was in a record store in DC and I bought
Speaker 1: the Message and Minor Threat out of Step. Good day.
Speaker 1: That's a good day. But it hadn't even registered to
Speaker 1: me that the message was quote unquote dance music. I
Speaker 1: was just like I'd heard it on a Mister Magic
Speaker 1: mixtape and I was like, wow, I really liked I
Speaker 1: loved the lyrics. I really love this. But the first
Speaker 1: dance track do you know what it might have been?
Speaker 1: And part of it was because it didn't make any
Speaker 1: sense to me until I fell in love with it.
Speaker 1: Do you remember the song set it off by Strafe?
Speaker 1: Of course incredible And I remember like my friend Diana
Speaker 1: brought it to me when I was DJing. She said,
Speaker 1: you need to play this and I was like, it's
Speaker 1: nine minutes long, no one knows it and it was
Speaker 1: so poorly recorded and so poorly mixed. Yeah, but it
Speaker 1: was flawless. And I think that was the record where
Speaker 1: I was like, Oh, something is happening here that I
Speaker 1: need to be aware of because this is you know,
Speaker 1: at the time, I was also listening to, you know,
Speaker 1: like nice indie rock like Aztec Camera, really pleasant guitar music.
Speaker 1: But I heard this and I was like, this is special.
Speaker 1: You know, the guitar music I'm listening to is very
Speaker 1: well made and it's good, but it's not this, Like
Speaker 1: this is this is different and fascinating, amazing. I knew
Speaker 1: exactly what you're talking about. There was this moment in
Speaker 1: New York where there was a new form of dance
Speaker 1: music being created. I don't know what it's referred to,
Speaker 1: the subgenre, I don't know what we call it, but
Speaker 1: Strafe is a key piece of this eighties New York
Speaker 1: club music. It was going on on a parallel trip
Speaker 1: of hip hop. I don't know which was influencing which
Speaker 1: it was very rooted in the hip hop language, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't rap music. But the beats might be interchangeable
Speaker 1: between the New York club music and the early hip
Speaker 1: hop music. And it was a really exciting time for
Speaker 1: dance music. Yeah, and then you would have these hits
Speaker 1: that were only hits in geographically tiny parts of the world,
Speaker 1: you know, Like you could play set it Off by
Speaker 1: Streife and an entire room full of people would scream
Speaker 1: at the top of their lungs in Lower Manhattan, and
Speaker 1: you'd go ten miles away from Lower Manhattan, no one
Speaker 1: has heard this song. Yeah, it was so regional and fascinating.
Speaker 1: Early house music was a little bit like that. Like
Speaker 1: there were some songs like like break for Love, by Rays.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you ever knew that it was
Speaker 1: an early seminal house track that was a massive hit
Speaker 1: in the house music world in New York City. Outside
Speaker 1: of that, no one, No one knew what it was.
Speaker 1: What's interesting also about the Strafe song. It was as
Speaker 1: big of a club song as there's ever been in
Speaker 1: New York and for as big of a hit as
Speaker 1: it was, I'm guessing almost no one owned the record
Speaker 1: except DJs who would play it at the club. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no one had that record. You know, they were not fans,
Speaker 1: didn't have that record because that was not the nature
Speaker 1: of that culture. You went to the club and you
Speaker 1: heard that there because that's where it was, you know,
Speaker 1: that's where that was. It wasn't meant to be listened
Speaker 1: to in your bedroom. Yeah, it was like or you
Speaker 1: heard it on Hot ninety seven on a Friday night, yeah,
Speaker 1: or Kiss or BLS. But yeah, you're absolutely right. And
Speaker 1: I mean that's one of the things with dance music
Speaker 1: in general, because I was growing up, I was used
Speaker 1: to music that lived everywhere. You know, like you could
Speaker 1: listen to LEDs Eppelin at a party. You could also
Speaker 1: listen to led Zeppelin in the morning while you were
Speaker 1: making breakfast, whereas a lot of electronic music was so
Speaker 1: in a way site specific, like even to this day,
Speaker 1: like there's there's club music that I love at a
Speaker 1: big event with fifty thousand people that I would never
Speaker 1: in a million years want to take into my home. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm now I'm really curious about You're right because
Speaker 1: that genre it was basically dance music. It was like
Speaker 1: post disco, prehouse music. Yes, and it didn't know what
Speaker 1: it was. It didn't have any like there was no
Speaker 1: conformity to certain bpms or anything. It was just this
Speaker 1: free floating, slightly nebulous dance music and it was a
Speaker 1: really fascinating time. It was a lot more experimental because
Speaker 1: there was freestyle. If you remember freestyle, you know, which
Speaker 1: was great, but freestyle was a very specific, regimented BPM
Speaker 1: in genre. Yeah, but this would have like this. This
Speaker 1: was also the music that Madonna really blossomed out of,
Speaker 1: like she was part of that culture and then transcended it.
Speaker 1: But that was really the early Madonna fit really into
Speaker 1: that New York dance club mode as well as like
Speaker 1: AEIOU or Evelyn Champagne King or Lisa Lisa. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: haven't thought. I haven't thought of Lisa Lisa and such
Speaker 1: a Lisa Lisa and the cult jam because it was
Speaker 1: like she had roughly the same acronym as LLL cool J.
Speaker 1: But it's funny that you mentioned Aeiou by Ebanosen because
Speaker 1: I just recently rediscovered that song and video. If you're bored,
Speaker 1: go take a look at it and read the lyrics.
Speaker 1: I would posit the strangest song in Western pop music history.
Speaker 1: Like the lyrics are so phenomenal and they make absolutely
Speaker 1: no sense. It's like a grad student dissertation on semiotic
Speaker 1: while a guys talking about trying to pick up a
Speaker 1: girl at a cafe. Amazing. I had completely forgotten about
Speaker 1: that song. It's just it's but that you're right that
Speaker 1: that weird incubator of New York that's so much, so
Speaker 1: much music, so much art, so much culture came out
Speaker 1: of because it was just everybody was influencing everybody else,
Speaker 1: and it was kind of like everyone was open to everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was breakdancing music before rap music. That was the
Speaker 1: music that would people would break dance with. I want
Speaker 1: to say with because you didn't really break dance to
Speaker 1: music you break dance with music. Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean think of Blondie, you know, coming out of that
Speaker 1: scene as well, going back a little bit more into
Speaker 1: the late seventies. But yeah, I'm really grateful that I
Speaker 1: grew up within driving distance of New York and I
Speaker 1: could be exposed to that or also within radio distance.
Speaker 1: It's also interesting that another thing that we share is
Speaker 1: that we're both suburban kids who had access to New
Speaker 1: York City, which is really different than kids who grew
Speaker 1: up in New York City because the kids who grew
Speaker 1: up in New York City didn't have that suburban experience
Speaker 1: that's more rooted in America. Like our experience is much
Speaker 1: closer to what the American experiences than kids who grew
Speaker 1: up in New York City. Yeah. And I was born
Speaker 1: in New York, but I grew up in Connecticut, and
Speaker 1: I would meet people who grew up in the city
Speaker 1: and I would just be amazed, like they were a
Speaker 1: different species. I was like, you were born like so
Speaker 1: far up the cool ladder than I will ever attain to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it just seemed like the idea that they would
Speaker 1: do normal things, especially in the seventies, you know, in
Speaker 1: the most dangerous, darkest place in the world. They would
Speaker 1: be going to elementary school, they would be having sleepovers,
Speaker 1: they would be buying ice cream, And I was like,
Speaker 1: you did that in New York? Like, how did people
Speaker 1: manage to have childhoods in New York City? You know,
Speaker 1: when you're like dodging muggers and addicts and crazy people.
Speaker 1: And from a musical perspective, something like being able to
Speaker 1: like led Zeppelin was essentially a suburban thing. Like led
Speaker 1: Zeppelin wasn't cool enough to listen to if you grew
Speaker 1: up in Manhattan. It was just a different taste. It
Speaker 1: was too mainstream from Manhattan. Yeah, I mean I do
Speaker 1: remember meeting people who like, by the time they were eighteen,
Speaker 1: if they'd grown up in the city, they were done.
Speaker 1: They were jaded. Yeah, Like they've been going to clubs
Speaker 1: since they were thirteen. They had gone to rehab when
Speaker 1: they were fifteen. You know, they had started their first
Speaker 1: band when they're sixteen and broken up and gotten their
Speaker 1: first record deal at seventeen. So by eighteen they were
Speaker 1: like ready to move to New Mexico and RETIREE. What
Speaker 1: was the first punk show you ever saw? Oh? So
Speaker 1: this is I made some good choices early on My
Speaker 1: first real concert was Yes at Madison Square Garden in
Speaker 1: seventy eight, and I love Yes unapologetically. Maybe less so
Speaker 1: with the Trevor Horn era, but like early, like close
Speaker 1: to the edge. Yes, I just still think it's flawless.
Speaker 1: My first punk rock show and I got really lucky
Speaker 1: was Fear at the Mud Club. Wow, that's a great one.
Speaker 1: I think I was there. I think I was fifteen,
Speaker 1: or maybe it just turned sixteen yea, and yeah it was.
Speaker 1: It was phenomenal. And then after that we discovered great
Speaker 1: Guilder Sleeves. We discovered A seven because my friends and
Speaker 1: I were from the suburbs and we knew nothing, so
Speaker 1: we thought A seven was a concert venue. And again
Speaker 1: to put it in perspective for anyone listening, A seven
Speaker 1: was another. It was a hole in the wall dive.
Speaker 1: It was a bar with a little stage, and we
Speaker 1: went there to see one of my favorite punk rock bands, Krout. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so we thought, okay, Krout and maybe the Cromags
Speaker 1: or Burfie's Law or someone was playing at A seven,
Speaker 1: to like, We're gonna go to A seven and see
Speaker 1: this show. We got there at nine. Bar wasn't even
Speaker 1: open yet, Finally the doors opened nine thirty or ten.
Speaker 1: We go in and we ask the bartender do you
Speaker 1: know when Kraut are playing? And he said, well, that's
Speaker 1: my band. Turns out Dougie, the guitar players also the bartender,
Speaker 1: and he says, and we're probably gonna go on around two.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, we're sixteen year old kids from the suburbs.
Speaker 1: We didn't even know two am existed, like two am.
Speaker 1: No one was ever awake at two am, like, let
Speaker 1: alone playing a show. But we stayed up and we waited,
Speaker 1: and we saw Krout at A seven with a bunch
Speaker 1: of other bands I don't remember. Amazing, yeah, a seven.
Speaker 1: I saw the Swans at a seven. That was really good.
Speaker 1: We could go down so many rabbit holes about genres,
Speaker 1: but that mid to late eighties noise genre in New York.
Speaker 1: You know, diamonda Glass and the Swans and the Birthday Party.
Speaker 1: And I got to see the Birthday Party play at
Speaker 1: the club called the Underground. Do you remember the Underground?
Speaker 1: I remember the name, but I never went there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was it was. There would be no reason for
Speaker 1: you to go, it would. They've had very few acts
Speaker 1: that we would ever go to see but the Birthday
Speaker 1: Party happened to be playing there, so I went and
Speaker 1: I was one of maybe twelve people in the room
Speaker 1: to see the show, and the plug got pulled on
Speaker 1: them after the second song. I love them like Prayers
Speaker 1: on Fire. I think it's just one of the most
Speaker 1: flawless records. Beautiful. But I actually went back and re
Speaker 1: listened to it and it's still great. But I don't
Speaker 1: know how they came to be because they're from Australia,
Speaker 1: and Australia is a wonderful place. But Australia is like
Speaker 1: sunshine and blonde people and happiness, and you just wonder, like,
Speaker 1: what in Australia created the birthday party? I'm glad it happened. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Have you spent much chime in Australia, Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: to say so. I got sober about thirteen years ago,
Speaker 1: pre sobriety. Australia was absolutely my favorite place in the world,
Speaker 1: Like as far as a place to go out and
Speaker 1: just be a carefree, happy, go lucky alcoholic, Australia was
Speaker 1: pretty special. When we come back, Mobi talks to Rick
Speaker 1: Rubin about getting sober. We're back with more of Rick
Speaker 1: Rubin's conversation with Mobby, tell me the story of getting sober.
Speaker 1: It's similar to what we were talking about at the beginning.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like the self evident epiphany that just
Speaker 1: takes you a very long time to realize. So I'd
Speaker 1: started drinking and doing drugs when I was ten. My
Speaker 1: mom and her boyfriends used to do a lot of drugs,
Speaker 1: so I'd steal drugs from them, and then I started
Speaker 1: drinking and had bouts of sobriety, but kept drinking and
Speaker 1: doing drugs up until thirteen years ago. And honestly, like
Speaker 1: the consequences of drinking and doing drugs just kept getting
Speaker 1: worse when you're sixteen years old. In fact, you might
Speaker 1: think this is funny. The first celebrity I ever met
Speaker 1: was Ian mackay at Great Gilder Sleeves. Ian mackay from
Speaker 1: Fugazi and Minor Threat, and I was so excited to
Speaker 1: meet him. I ran up to him and introduced myself.
Speaker 1: I was like, I said, my name's Moby, Mister McKay
Speaker 1: just loved your band and shook his hand. I was
Speaker 1: blind drunk at the time. And Ian McKay is the
Speaker 1: man who invented straight edge. Yes, so I just kept
Speaker 1: drinking and doing more drugs and occasionally experimenting with sobriety.
Speaker 1: And then, finally, thirteen years ago, after years of waking
Speaker 1: up at five in the afternoon on a daily basis
Speaker 1: hung over and sick and despondent, I finally realized that
Speaker 1: it was time to stop. You know, I realized being
Speaker 1: sick and despondent and miserable day after day after day
Speaker 1: after day was not a good thing, which, in hindsight,
Speaker 1: is the most self evident realization any one could have. Like, normally,
Speaker 1: you only have to eat rotten food a few times
Speaker 1: to decide you'd no longer want to eat rotten food.
Speaker 1: I had to be sick and hung over thousands of times,
Speaker 1: thousands upon thousands of times to finally accept that being
Speaker 1: hungover and miserable was not a good way to live.
Speaker 1: I'm happy you found peace without that that method. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's I mean, and obviously getting sobers challenging
Speaker 1: because drinking and doing drugs becomes your soul reliable organizing principle.
Speaker 1: You know, it delivers misery, but before that, it delivers
Speaker 1: controlled happiness. So it's a very hard thing to give up.
Speaker 1: The familiar, even if the familiar is destroying you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I am thrilled for so many reasons to no
Speaker 1: longer be a sad, embarrassing, miserable alcoholic drug addict. Would
Speaker 1: you say that you drugs and drinking to escape? I
Speaker 1: used drugs and drinking because and this is something about
Speaker 1: the physiology of an alcoholic or the neurochemistry of an
Speaker 1: alcoholic alcohol I love drugs a lot, like I did
Speaker 1: any drug that was put in front of me. But
Speaker 1: really my drug of choice was alcohol. And it's sort
Speaker 1: of interesting. Half my family is white Anglo Saxon Protestant
Speaker 1: and the other half of my family is Jewish. And
Speaker 1: what's funny is in my family, the white Anglo Saxon
Speaker 1: Protestants were all alcoholics, and the Jews in my family
Speaker 1: have no issue with drinking whatsoever and don't and for
Speaker 1: the life of them, can't understand why the Wasps can't
Speaker 1: just drink in moderation. But for me, alcohol did everything.
Speaker 1: Was this magical drug where it calmed me down and
Speaker 1: it woke me up. Yeah, you know, it excited me,
Speaker 1: it relaxed me, It kept me awake when I needed
Speaker 1: to be awake, and helped me fall asleep when I
Speaker 1: needed to fall asleep. It gave me confidence, but it
Speaker 1: also helped me access the surreal parts of my brain,
Speaker 1: like there was nothing it couldn't do. But then, ultimately, obviously,
Speaker 1: when you rely on anything outside of yourself, it goes wrong.
Speaker 1: How has it been coming to meet yourself after all
Speaker 1: this time? What's it like? It's very challenging, And I
Speaker 1: would say, like anybody meeting themselves in an honest way,
Speaker 1: it's hard. And one of the hardest things that I
Speaker 1: was actually just thinking about recently, like one of my
Speaker 1: pandemic projects for myself, and it's gonna sound fancier than
Speaker 1: it is because I haven't actually finished any of the books,
Speaker 1: was to go back and reread a lot of the
Speaker 1: books that I started reading in university because I was
Speaker 1: a philosophy major and I'd never finished any of the
Speaker 1: books I was reading. So I got like Wittgenstein, like
Speaker 1: the Tractatis and the Brown and Blue books. I was
Speaker 1: reading some Schopenhauer and reading Young and about the sort
Speaker 1: of the schism between Young and Freud, and obviously Young
Speaker 1: and I'm grossly paraphrasing, but he writes a lot about
Speaker 1: the idea of a shadow self. And I don't know
Speaker 1: about you, but when I was growing up, I thought
Speaker 1: that the shadow self was evil. I thought that the
Speaker 1: shadow self was like this, you know, the Nietzsche quote
Speaker 1: of like don't stare too long into the void because
Speaker 1: the void might stare back into you, and like it
Speaker 1: seems so menacing for me. What I think I've realized
Speaker 1: is my shadow self is actually just embarrassing, Like it's
Speaker 1: the part of it. Like it's not some menacing Dexter
Speaker 1: style serial killer. It's just it's like an awkward adolescent.
Speaker 1: And one of the hardest things, Like if I had
Speaker 1: a buried psychopath in me, I could probably make peace
Speaker 1: with that easier than I can make peace with the
Speaker 1: awkward lescent in me, you know, like the vulnerable human, awkward,
Speaker 1: frail part of me. That's the like coming to terms
Speaker 1: with that and learning to like that part of yourself.
Speaker 1: I found that to be a real challenge because I
Speaker 1: always wanted to be cool and not awkward and you know,
Speaker 1: confident and recognizing like, okay, no, I'm not those things.
Speaker 1: And I can't have an honest assessment of self without
Speaker 1: looking at that. And before would drinking and drugs would
Speaker 1: just hide that away. You wouldn't have to face it,
Speaker 1: you would never have to acknowledge it was there. Is
Speaker 1: that great? Oh yeah, it was like the Jim Carrey
Speaker 1: movie The Mask, Like all of a sudden you just
Speaker 1: became the most ideal version of yourself, at least as
Speaker 1: far as how I perceived myself. Other people were like, oh,
Speaker 1: who's that sad asshole? Like what, like he's gross? But
Speaker 1: in my mind I was like confident and you know, powerful,
Speaker 1: even if outside people are looking at me like I
Speaker 1: was just some sort of like tragic, aging bald musician,
Speaker 1: you know, But in my mind, I was like Johnny
Speaker 1: Depp meets Orlando Bloom and the outside, you know, the
Speaker 1: outside world saw me as a little bit more like
Speaker 1: Wally Sewn in The Princess Bride. How did drugs affect
Speaker 1: music making over the course of your life. Well, the
Speaker 1: funny thing is, and I still don't know how this
Speaker 1: was possible. I never once performed drunk or high wow,
Speaker 1: And I never drank or did drugs when I was
Speaker 1: working on music. Interesting, like, these were the only parts
Speaker 1: of my life that were carved out. Like if I
Speaker 1: was on tour, I would drink and do drugs the
Speaker 1: moment I stepped off stage. But I think there was
Speaker 1: some little part of my brain that said, no, Like
Speaker 1: you can destroy everything else. You can destroy relationships, you
Speaker 1: can destroy your health, but music is this sort of
Speaker 1: slightly sacred space. You cannot corrupt it beautiful. Although there
Speaker 1: was one time, and part of it was based on experience.
Speaker 1: One time, I remember being out and I thought, like,
Speaker 1: you know what, a lot of great artists have made
Speaker 1: great drunken records. And so I remember coming home from
Speaker 1: a bar four in the morning and I thought, I'm
Speaker 1: going to write and record a song drunk, because I've
Speaker 1: never done this before. And in the morning I listened
Speaker 1: to it and it was just bad. Not interesting, bad,
Speaker 1: not exciting bad, just garbage bad, you know. Like so
Speaker 1: that that also helped me to never drink or do
Speaker 1: drugs when making music. How has your relationship to music
Speaker 1: changed from when you started till now? I love that
Speaker 1: question because it is actually gone to a place of
Speaker 1: this wonderful purity. Meaning in the early days, everything about
Speaker 1: the world of music was exciting. Record labels seemed exciting,
Speaker 1: music magazines were exciting. Everything even tangentially related to the
Speaker 1: world of music was like so phenomenally exciting. And then
Speaker 1: when I got involved in the music business, as I'm
Speaker 1: sure you can relate to its a lot of people can,
Speaker 1: there was that sort of the straddling of you, how
Speaker 1: do you maintain and learn from and respond to the
Speaker 1: like the dynamic or dialectic between art and commerce. And
Speaker 1: then once I had a degree of success, I found
Speaker 1: myself loving success, and I found myself ashamedly and sort
Speaker 1: of and very sadly making compromises to try and further success.
Speaker 1: I wasn't very good at it luck, And then I
Speaker 1: had this epiphany, helped by David Lynch. I went to
Speaker 1: go see see David Lynch speak at BAFTA in the UK,
Speaker 1: and he said something so simple. He was on stage
Speaker 1: being interviewed and he said, creativity is beautiful. My direct
Speaker 1: quote from David Lynch, and it just struck me, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I realized, Oh, he's right. Like
Speaker 1: the marketplace is okay, record labels are fine, there's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with them, you know, like marketing, campaign selling. Sure,
Speaker 1: that's fine. But music has the potential to be sublime.
Speaker 1: And I'm not even talking about my music, I'm talking
Speaker 1: about just music in general. If you think about it,
Speaker 1: the fact that music on a corporeal physical level has
Speaker 1: never existed. You know, all it is, And forgive me
Speaker 1: how I'm really stating the obvious. All it is is
Speaker 1: air molecules hit us a little bit differently, you know.
Speaker 1: And somehow, these air molecules touching us differently, it makes
Speaker 1: us cry, makes us get tattoos, it makes us jump
Speaker 1: up and down in a field with one hundred thousand people.
Speaker 1: It's just air moving a little bit differently. And so
Speaker 1: my long rambling answer to your question, I've found myself
Speaker 1: returned to this place of like almost purity and spirituality
Speaker 1: around music, like the love of music for the sake
Speaker 1: of music. And if it has commercial viability, fine, but
Speaker 1: that's not the goal or the utility of it. It's
Speaker 1: that ability to somehow communicate emotion through moving air molecules.
Speaker 1: Like what better way for us to spend our lives
Speaker 1: than in service of that. Yes, it's unbelievable that we
Speaker 1: get to do it. I feel very blessed and lucky
Speaker 1: to get to have that be the the thing I
Speaker 1: get to spend my time doing. And it is miraculous
Speaker 1: and it's magic, and I think it must always be
Speaker 1: approached with humility because it's so much bigger than we are.
Speaker 1: You know, really, it really is a tremendous You described
Speaker 1: it in a very ephemeral way that said, it's this
Speaker 1: huge power that's really beyond us, beyond our understanding, and
Speaker 1: the fact that we get to dance around the edges
Speaker 1: of it is just a beautiful, so lucky that we
Speaker 1: get to do that. Yeah, I would say that. I mean,
Speaker 1: even my broader spiritual understanding is sort of what you
Speaker 1: just described, is like dancing around things that we will
Speaker 1: never understand. Yeah, whether it's nature, whether it's science, whether
Speaker 1: it's music, whether it's people at their best, but just
Speaker 1: somehow getting glimpses of what, for lack of a better word,
Speaker 1: I guess we could call the divine. Yes, you know,
Speaker 1: and I don't know when I say divine. I know
Speaker 1: that such an I had. I had dinner with um
Speaker 1: Sam Harris, and I think I really offended him because
Speaker 1: I was talking about the divine, and I realized in hindsight, like, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe not such a good idea to talk about the
Speaker 1: divine with one of the world's most famous atheists. But
Speaker 1: I don't know how else to describe it. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what what you just described then the unquantifiable that
Speaker 1: is somehow a trillion times bigger than we are, but
Speaker 1: somehow we're involved in it. Like if there's a better
Speaker 1: word than divine, I don't know what it like, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. It's like it doesn't matter what label you
Speaker 1: decide to use. I know exactly what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: and so did Sam. He was still kind of I
Speaker 1: could tell he and his wife were a little a
Speaker 1: little peeved that I would use that works. I also
Speaker 1: made the mistake with them of using the word God,
Speaker 1: And in hindsight, this was my fault because, like I
Speaker 1: think they even said, like, why would you use that word?
Speaker 1: And I thought about it, I was like, oh, you're right, Like,
Speaker 1: if ever there has a more corrupted word in human history,
Speaker 1: it's God. And if I use the word God to
Speaker 1: mean these elements, I don't understand everything we just described. Clearly,
Speaker 1: that's not what most people in human history have used
Speaker 1: the word God to describe. So I'm trying to back
Speaker 1: away from that word because it's so triggering understandably for
Speaker 1: so many people. I don't know that the word is
Speaker 1: triggering so much as the concept is triggering and though
Speaker 1: you could label it differently, to someone who would be
Speaker 1: triggered by the word, what you're talking about would still
Speaker 1: be a foreign, foreign and perhaps offensive concept. And that's okay,
Speaker 1: because we all have our own experience of life, and
Speaker 1: you know, we're allowed to like some things and other
Speaker 1: people don't like them, and that's you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't like punk rock. We happen to like
Speaker 1: punk rock. You know, I like disco music, not a
Speaker 1: lot of you know, many people don't like disco music.
Speaker 1: It's okay. So speaking of punk rock, I'm wondering because
Speaker 1: there aren't too many people. And if you were not
Speaker 1: going to join me in this club, that's fine. Is
Speaker 1: one of the things I've done in the Pandemics, I've
Speaker 1: gone down this weird rabbit hole of the loudest, noisiest,
Speaker 1: dishybrid of punk rock and speed metal, and I love
Speaker 1: it so much, and I cannot find anybody else on
Speaker 1: the planet who likes it. Even my punk rock friends
Speaker 1: don't like it. Like there's this one band ac x
Speaker 1: DC spelled exactly the same as a CDC, but it's
Speaker 1: there they for them, it stands for Antichrist Demon Corps
Speaker 1: and they're these wonderful Latino vegans who live in the valley,
Speaker 1: and the music they make is so oh. It's takes
Speaker 1: the hardcore we grew up with, take Slayer yeah, and
Speaker 1: then make it faster and harder. So much so I
Speaker 1: sent it to Daryl from The Bad Brains and he
Speaker 1: was like, I will not listen to this ship, Like,
Speaker 1: please do not corrupt me with this. And some of
Speaker 1: the stuff I've gotten into reminds is starting to remind
Speaker 1: me of that where it's like everybody in my life
Speaker 1: thinks it's unlistenable and I love it. We have to
Speaker 1: pause for a quick break, but we'll be right back
Speaker 1: with more from Moby. We're back with the rest of
Speaker 1: Rick Rubens conversation with Moby. What have you been listening
Speaker 1: too lately? Besides speed punk the most eclectic stuff, I
Speaker 1: listened to a lot of classical music, although my interest
Speaker 1: in classical music is pretty pedestrian, like I like classical
Speaker 1: music when it's very pretty, but also a lot and
Speaker 1: I'm also little bit ashamed because none of this is new.
Speaker 1: But a lot of old new wave from like seventy
Speaker 1: eight until about eighty four, you know, from early Devo
Speaker 1: to early Robin Hitchcock Blondie. I've been rediscovering one band
Speaker 1: I'd forgotten about completely who I've realized I love and
Speaker 1: I also feel like they were performance artists. Was the Cars?
Speaker 1: I want to reference something recent. I don't want to
Speaker 1: just be another like just an old guy on Spotify
Speaker 1: listening to music from childhood. But the truth is I'm
Speaker 1: an old guy from on Spotify listening music from my childhood. Usually.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the cars for a minute, because as
Speaker 1: you talk about them, I think about the vocal style
Speaker 1: of the Cars that was different than music that had
Speaker 1: come before it. Do you have any idea what the
Speaker 1: lineage of that might have been? Not really, although the
Speaker 1: only thing I can think of is that they were
Speaker 1: from Boston, and I don't know if they were inspired
Speaker 1: by the Modern Lovers and Jonathan Richmond at all. That's interesting,
Speaker 1: But there is like you'd listened to, like the directness
Speaker 1: of a song like Pablo Picasso maybe influenced Rick Okasick
Speaker 1: in the Cars. I don't know. Yeah, I was. I
Speaker 1: was thinking maybe, and I never made the connection before
Speaker 1: this conversation, but I was thinking maybe Bowie. I mean,
Speaker 1: everybody who was smart enough to figure it out was
Speaker 1: influenced by Bowie. I feel like some people like Rick Okasick,
Speaker 1: who might have been like it wasn't a good enough
Speaker 1: singer to be David Bowie, but could still employ that
Speaker 1: sort of you know, the theatricality and the phrasing and
Speaker 1: maybe because a little bit of you know, Iggy pop,
Speaker 1: because there's a similar sort of like Midwestern drawl aspect
Speaker 1: to it. And I think Iggy was really often channeling
Speaker 1: Lou Read I think, like, I think that's the lineage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and I know that David Bowie was obsessed
Speaker 1: with the Velvet Underground, And in fact, I actually had
Speaker 1: dinner with David and Lou once. It was one of
Speaker 1: those moments that it still doesn't seem like it should
Speaker 1: have existed in the realm of possibility, like walking to
Speaker 1: David Bowie's apartment to have dinner with David and Lou incredible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: growing up listening to musicians who you know and deifying
Speaker 1: them and then time passes. I'm sure you've had this
Speaker 1: experience more than anyone. Becoming friends with and working with
Speaker 1: your heroes. I feel like at this point you've done
Speaker 1: that so many times you must be relatively comfortable with
Speaker 1: the process. Yes, and no, it's still I mean, it's
Speaker 1: still unbelievable anytime I'm lucky enough to be around anyone
Speaker 1: who makes something great. So it's exciting, And honestly, it's
Speaker 1: maybe more intimidating when you grew up listening to them,
Speaker 1: but it's equally exciting when it's a young artist, even
Speaker 1: making their first or second project. But you see that
Speaker 1: level of originality and sophistication and next level thinking in
Speaker 1: their work. Do you know what I'm saying? Like the
Speaker 1: excitement of being around really creative people, it's always thrilling.
Speaker 1: Can you I mean, I don't want to put you
Speaker 1: on the spot. Can you name names like people who
Speaker 1: stand out when you think of that? Well, I can
Speaker 1: tell you, like, in terms of people that I've been
Speaker 1: around where I feel intimidated, it'd be like, you know,
Speaker 1: Neil Young is intimidating to be around, even though there's
Speaker 1: nothing about him that's intimidating, but he's on such a
Speaker 1: high pedestal in my life that I'm on edge when
Speaker 1: I see him. Do you know it's funny? Sorry for interrupting,
Speaker 1: but I A few years ago, I was at a
Speaker 1: gallery event with Shepherd fairy and Shephard asked me, He said, oh,
Speaker 1: Neil Young is here. Do you want to meet him?
Speaker 1: And I actually said no, yeah, And I was like,
Speaker 1: the reason being is like, I'm sure that he's wonderful.
Speaker 1: I'm sure he's a delightful human being, but what if
Speaker 1: I catch him at a bad moment and what if
Speaker 1: for a brief second he's a dick to me? I
Speaker 1: was like, that compromises my ability to love after the
Speaker 1: gold Rush and Helpless And I was like, I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm not willing to potentially jeopardize those songs for me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so it's the one time I chose not to
Speaker 1: meet one of my heroes in the interest of making
Speaker 1: sure that I didn't compromise my ability to unconditionally love
Speaker 1: these songs. No, I understood. I mean, some people are
Speaker 1: so iconic, for better or worse, that it's hard to
Speaker 1: remember that they're real humans. Yeah. I had a similar
Speaker 1: weird experience. I played a fundraiser once and Paul McCartney
Speaker 1: playing on the bill and he was sound checking, and
Speaker 1: he sound checked with Hey Jude, and so it's just
Speaker 1: him at the piano playing Hey Jude, no band, nothing,
Speaker 1: And I sat ten feet away from that, and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh he wrote this, Like there was a
Speaker 1: day when in the morning this song didn't exist, and
Speaker 1: at some point during the day he wrote this song,
Speaker 1: this song which it seems like, I mean, a song
Speaker 1: like that so iconic that it seems like no one
Speaker 1: ever wrote it. It was just sort of like carved
Speaker 1: from granite at some point. Yes, forever it's been it's
Speaker 1: been here forever. Yeah, there's there was no world before that.
Speaker 1: And so being able to say, like, I can't believe
Speaker 1: that there is actually like a flesh and blood person
Speaker 1: attached to this. Obviously it's not even my favorite Beatles song,
Speaker 1: but it was just this moment of like the cognitive
Speaker 1: dissonance of oh, these some of these people are actually humans,
Speaker 1: Like they're not gods, they're not cartoon characters. Like I
Speaker 1: went on tour with David Bowie, and I remember the
Speaker 1: last night of the tour in we were at the
Speaker 1: Gorge outside Seattle, and he was backstage and he was
Speaker 1: so delightful and goofy, like we'd spent a ton of
Speaker 1: time together, but this was the first time I had
Speaker 1: seen him at his most unguarded, like he was sweaty,
Speaker 1: he'd just had a wonderful show, and he was human,
Speaker 1: almost going back to what we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: like the shadow self, Like this might have been like
Speaker 1: his shadow self, because it was childlike and delightful, you know,
Speaker 1: like maybe a part of him that he didn't want
Speaker 1: people to see that much. And it was so endearing
Speaker 1: and so lovely. And I was like, this is David Bowie,
Speaker 1: Like this is the greatest musician of all time, and
Speaker 1: he's acting like a super lovely, goofy fourteen year old
Speaker 1: right now. How did you come to meet him? Originally? Well,
Speaker 1: I actually met him for the first time at a
Speaker 1: nine inch Nails party, but we didn't really get to
Speaker 1: talk much. And then in nineteen ninety nine or two thousand,
Speaker 1: he emailed me and he said, Hi, it's David. I
Speaker 1: got your email address from someone at my record company.
Speaker 1: I'm moving into an apartment on Lafayette Street and I
Speaker 1: think we're going to be neighbors. And so we lived
Speaker 1: across the street from each other and we became friends.
Speaker 1: We would get coffee together, we spent holidays together, we
Speaker 1: worked on music together, we toured together. Can I tell
Speaker 1: you one of my favorite favorite David Bowie stories please, Okay.
Speaker 1: So we had agreed to play a fundraiser for Philip
Speaker 1: Glasses to Beth House, and so he came over to
Speaker 1: my apartment one morning. He stopped at Cafe Giton to
Speaker 1: get coffee, so he came over with coffee and we
Speaker 1: sat on my soa and I worked up all my
Speaker 1: courage and I said, what if we play an acoustic
Speaker 1: version of Heroes at this fundraiser? And I thought he
Speaker 1: was going to say no, no, how dare you suggest that?
Speaker 1: And instead he said sure, why not? So he sat
Speaker 1: on my sofa, just the two of us, and played
Speaker 1: this very slow, pretty quiet version of Heroes and it
Speaker 1: was like one of the most wonderful moments of my life.
Speaker 1: And then, afterwards, tying it back to lou Reid, David
Speaker 1: told me that Heroes was originally written as a cover
Speaker 1: version of Waiting for the Man. Wow Dun dun dun
Speaker 1: dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun un. I'm
Speaker 1: waiting for the man. We we would be, you know.
Speaker 1: So that was That's my favorite David Bowie story. Fantastic. Actually, no,
Speaker 1: I have a second favorite David Bowie story, but it's
Speaker 1: much let's hear it, it's more nuanced. Okay, let's let's
Speaker 1: hear it. I was at his apartment and he had
Speaker 1: a very small studio in his apartment, and he wanted
Speaker 1: to play me something and it's like, okay, great, he says.
Speaker 1: He said, it's a song I'm working on. I'd love
Speaker 1: your opinion. And I, first of all, just to put
Speaker 1: that in perspective, like I'm at David Bowie's apartment and
Speaker 1: he wants to play me a song to get my opinion.
Speaker 1: Like that's not right, that's not the way it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be. Like I'm supposed to be maybe like cleaning
Speaker 1: the toilets in the apartment adjacent to David Bowie's apartment,
Speaker 1: not in his apartment. But he plays me this song
Speaker 1: and it's the most beautiful David Bowie song ever. It's
Speaker 1: called slip Away and it's on the album Heathen, and
Speaker 1: it's I would say, the most personal song he's ever written.
Speaker 1: It's actually inspired by his love, like his love with
Speaker 1: Iggy Pop, like you know, friendship. Whether it was more
Speaker 1: than friendship, I don't really know, but like it's this
Speaker 1: beautiful love song and it is so emotional, and I
Speaker 1: that moment of just sitting in his studio where he
Speaker 1: played the CD the demo of this song for me,
Speaker 1: and he was nervous and it was done, and I
Speaker 1: was like, David, I said, that might be the most
Speaker 1: beautiful song you've ever written. How did he react to
Speaker 1: that comment? You know, it's funny because we never talked
Speaker 1: about music. If I remember, he responded a little formally
Speaker 1: and in a polite way, which is the same way
Speaker 1: I respond to people telling me about music. Like he
Speaker 1: almost like he took it in, but I could tell
Speaker 1: a sort of a wall came up. I think he
Speaker 1: felt exposed because it if you think about it, most
Speaker 1: of his music is not personal. It's beautiful, it's phenomenal,
Speaker 1: but rarely did he write personal songs. You know, they're
Speaker 1: very theatrical. I mean even Heroes. Heroes was written about
Speaker 1: Tony Visconti, and this song slip Away is so personal,
Speaker 1: and I think it I think I saw his defenses
Speaker 1: come down because he realized he was being perhaps a
Speaker 1: little too vulnerable. Yeah, what was the greatest dance music
Speaker 1: experience you've ever had out in the world. Okay, they're
Speaker 1: gonna be two of them. One was the first time
Speaker 1: I heard house music loud in a club. I think
Speaker 1: he would have been eighty eight or eighty nine. I
Speaker 1: was at Nels and I was in the basement. I
Speaker 1: was dancing next to Prince, the only time I ever
Speaker 1: saw Prince in person when he was dancing next to
Speaker 1: me in the basement of Nels, and the DJ, who
Speaker 1: I think was Frankie I Gleasias, played a Day in
Speaker 1: the Life and it sounded like the heavens opening up.
Speaker 1: The second was in about two thousand and seven, No,
Speaker 1: maybe two thousand and eight. I got asked to DJ
Speaker 1: at an Electric Daisy Carnival, and I had been sort
Speaker 1: of ignoring what I was like. I'd sort of been
Speaker 1: ignoring the dance music quote unquote underground for a while.
Speaker 1: So I was asked to DJ at this. What I
Speaker 1: thought was just like an outdoor, small, outdoor rave, and
Speaker 1: so much so that when my manager asked me about
Speaker 1: if I wanted to DJ at this, he said, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a rave in Los Angeles, do you want to
Speaker 1: DJ at it? And my response was they still have raves,
Speaker 1: and so I thought, I don't know, I'm going to
Speaker 1: feel there'll be a thousand people it was in the
Speaker 1: usc Stadium and there were seventy five thousand people, and
Speaker 1: I was so stunning, Like to expect nothing and to
Speaker 1: have an underground event with seventy five thousand people in
Speaker 1: a sports stadium and the level of joyful enthusiasm, Like
Speaker 1: there were just a couple of records that I played
Speaker 1: that were so euphoric, and to have seventy five thousand
Speaker 1: people responding in kind. I mean, that's happened to many times,
Speaker 1: but something about this was just really special amazing. Do
Speaker 1: you do any type of a spiritual practice? For most
Speaker 1: of my life I was a sort of I would think,
Speaker 1: if it's almost like a spiritual dilaton, sometimes out of curiosity,
Speaker 1: sometimes out of a desire to not piss off whatever
Speaker 1: deity might be out there. But for most of my
Speaker 1: life I realized that my spirituality was largely trying to
Speaker 1: figure out who I agreed with, like which spiritual tradition
Speaker 1: I agreed with, or which spiritual writer did I agree with?
Speaker 1: And then I had this another sort of epiphany, and
Speaker 1: it was a weirdly emotional epiphany, and I don't even
Speaker 1: I might even get emotional again. I was taking Amtrak
Speaker 1: from New York down to DC and it was one
Speaker 1: of those morning trains where like people are eating breakfast, etc.
Speaker 1: And I was looking around and there were all these
Speaker 1: unhealthy business people, like drinking coke, eating bacon, and I
Speaker 1: had this thought. I was like, Oh, nature, the universe
Speaker 1: cares about us so much. It's even trying to heal
Speaker 1: these people. Like these people who do nothing but punish themselves,
Speaker 1: these people who eat nothing but poison, the universe loves
Speaker 1: them like it's in and it's trying to heal them.
Speaker 1: And actually, sitting on Amtrak, I started crying with that thought.
Speaker 1: And I remember like going through the marshland, the meadowlands
Speaker 1: in New Jersey, looking out at the marsh, and I
Speaker 1: was like, it was similar to looking at the businessman.
Speaker 1: I was like, here's this marsh that we've done nothing
Speaker 1: but poor toxic chemicals into and life is still coming
Speaker 1: through it. So my spiritual practice is best described as
Speaker 1: trying to connect with whatever that source might be, trying
Speaker 1: to have an understanding of it, trying to recognize that
Speaker 1: it's will, Like I don't want to anthropomorphize it, but
Speaker 1: if it has a will, it probably has omniscience and
Speaker 1: perspective much greater than I do you know, I'm a
Speaker 1: short lived, flawed, weird, bald guy like I don't know anything.
Speaker 1: So if there is a universe with a will, it
Speaker 1: probably makes sense to seek its will rather than try
Speaker 1: and pose my will on it. Yes, beautiful, So that's
Speaker 1: my spiel. Tell me a little bit about the new album,
Speaker 1: or let me start by saying, I listened to it
Speaker 1: this morning as I was on my morning walk, and
Speaker 1: it really took my breath away. I think it's really
Speaker 1: a beautiful album, and I'm so glad you made it. Well. Thanks.
Speaker 1: So it's an orchestral greatest Hits album. I wouldn't else
Speaker 1: to describe it, and the selfish part of me wanted
Speaker 1: to make it because I'd never made a record in
Speaker 1: this way, you know, working with a string quartet, working
Speaker 1: with a gospel choir, working with an orchestra, working with
Speaker 1: you only live non for the most part, non electronic instruments.
Speaker 1: But the other part was just the love. And we
Speaker 1: were talking about Neil Young earlier, like the love of
Speaker 1: acoustic and orchestral music and how I don't know how
Speaker 1: effective not to be too clinical, but how effective orchestral
Speaker 1: and acoustic music can be delivering emotion, you know, because
Speaker 1: ultimately that's the utility of music, is delivering emotion, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to see what that was like to try
Speaker 1: and use these elements to create something that hopefully was Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's that was the reason behind it. And Yeah,
Speaker 1: and being able to get all these different performers. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: the person whose voice on the record I'm a Little
Speaker 1: I'm most in love with is Chris Christofferson. Yeah, similar
Speaker 1: to I've actually compared it to Johnny Cash's version of Hurt,
Speaker 1: where when you hear a voice that's the product of experience,
Speaker 1: you know, a voice that has lived experience, it makes
Speaker 1: you not want to listen to children anymore, you know.
Speaker 1: Like like after listening to this song from Chris Christofferson
Speaker 1: with Mark Lanigan, who also has a voice of experience,
Speaker 1: the idea of going and listening to nineteen year old
Speaker 1: pop singers just doesn't seem as compelling. Yeah, you were
Speaker 1: on Mute records for a long time. Yes, I still
Speaker 1: sort of am. I've been on Mute Records somewhere in
Speaker 1: some form for now almost thirty years. This record is
Speaker 1: on Deutsche Gramophone because it just they asked and it
Speaker 1: seemed like, if you're going to make a large like
Speaker 1: a record based around an orchestra, why not make it
Speaker 1: with the oldest, most venerated orchestral music label in the world. So,
Speaker 1: and I have to say, because when I was nineteen,
Speaker 1: I worked in a record store and I would unpack
Speaker 1: the boxes and there would be the records that had
Speaker 1: the Deutsche Gramophone logo on them, and I was like,
Speaker 1: this is so fancy, like this is from Europe, and
Speaker 1: they're like these this is wow, this is so much
Speaker 1: more legitimate than these other records. And I just recently
Speaker 1: got the vinyl of this album and I saw the
Speaker 1: Deutsche Gramophone logo on one of my records, and it
Speaker 1: just it definitely not what you expect as someone who
Speaker 1: used to play in a hardcore punk rock band in
Speaker 1: a basement of illegal anarchists clubs in Stanford, Connecticut. It's great,
Speaker 1: Thank you for doing this, amazing. Oh, this was so
Speaker 1: much fun. I had sort of even forgotten that we
Speaker 1: were recording this. Yeah, I feel like we have a
Speaker 1: million things to talk about forever. Thanks to Moby for
Speaker 1: sharing so many great stories from his career. To hear
Speaker 1: his new album, or Prise, and our favorite Moby tracks
Speaker 1: had a Broken Record Podcast dot he should have subscribe
Speaker 1: to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken
Speaker 1: Record Podcast. We can find all of our new episodes.
Speaker 1: You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken
Speaker 1: Record is produced with helpful Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chafee.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Mail LaBelle. Broken Record is a
Speaker 1: production of Pushkin Industries and if you like the show,
Speaker 1: please rememriders, share, rate, and review us on your podcast.
Speaker 1: Our theme mus explay Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond, h