Moby’s eMusic Picks

My mom is my biggest influence — which, in print, is probably the least cool thing anyone has ever said. When I was bored I would take her records and go through them. I must've been 13 or so when I first heard John Lee Hooker. There's some music that, when I first heard it, didn't make sense to me and years later made sense to me, but the first thing I... heard was "Boom Boom," and the immediate visceral appeal even made sense to me when I was 12 years old. Later, I started hearing blues in different circumstances and contexts, [and] I started appreciating the austerity of it.

I picked Greatest Hits because it would be really hard to pick one individual Neil Young album. Harvest, or — where would you even start? I read an interview with Neil Young, and he said that when he was compiling his Greatest Hits he didn't let his ego get in the way. He actually picked the songs that people wanted to hear. Some greatest-hits — and I'm guilty of this — you... tack on a few records that you hope people will listen to, even though they technically aren't hits. Whereas Neil Young's Greatest Hits, it really is just the most phenomenal collection of iconic, remarkable songs. His comfort with simplicity I find really inspiring; also that he writes very emotional music that almost always stops short of being too autobiographical. The songs are personal, but enigmatic at the same time.

My first real good job was working in a record store called Johnny's — the counterculture store of Darien, Conneticut. One day I was working and [the owner] was playing Nick Drake. I fell in love, and he almost forced me to buy it — to take six dollars out of my paycheck and get my discount version of Bryter Layter. I became a Nick Drake evangelist, because at the time I... didn't know anyone who knew Nick Drake. It took quite a while — it wasn't until "Pink Moon" got used in that Volkswagen commercial that people became more aware of him. It made me happy, because he made so much remarkable music and it always was baffling to me [he] languished in obscurity. I like that he had a posthumous career.

When I was nine or 10 years old I'd listen to Casey Kasem's Top 40 religiously. One of the highlights of my life professionally when I was on a panel and he was the moderator. Hearing my name said by Casey Kasem was just amazing. From nine, ten, I'd listen to Casey Kasem's [American] Top 40 — this would've been 1974-75, so it was Donna Summer and Kiss and Abba and Queen.... You couldn't turn on a radio in the mid 70's without hearing Donna Summer. "I Feel Love" is the greatest piece of electronic dance music ever made, hands down, bar none.

At [the L.A. restaurant] Soho House, I was having dinner, and someone I knew was at the table next to me. They said, "By the way Moby, this is Giorgio Moroder." I was like, "Really? How is this possible?" It's probably one of the best things about being a quasi-public figure — getting to meet your heroes.

I bought it in 1980 as a cut-out — you remember cut-outs? — at Johnny's, the record store. At the time I was cutting lawns. The big ones would drive you insane, because it would take three or four hours; it's 90 degrees and you're getting stung by bugs. The whole time I was thinking, "When this woman gives me the $10, I'm going to go to Johnny's and by the cut-out... version of the Suicide album."

I used to go to CBGB all the time. New York in the late '70s and early '80s, checking IDs never happened. The drinking age was 18, and New York was just an amazing disaster. It never even dawned on us we were 15 and 16 going to clubs. I went to go see Depeche Mode at the Ritz, and that's the only time anyone ever checked my ID. I was 16 and the guy just looked at my ID and let me in. It was just such a lawless time. We'd go to CBs and get really drunk and see Bad Brains and whoever was playing.

Electronic music in the early and mid '70s — the phenomena of it meant that you were exposed to it more than you would imagine. Especially audiophiles, the guys who have these $5,000 stereos, loved Tangerine Dream and Jean-Michel Jarre, and Kraftwerk fit into that. If you would go over to someone's house and their dad would have this amazing stereo, so they'd buy electronic music just to showcase the stereo. I... would go to stereo stores and salivate over the Macintosh pre amps. But I was broke.

"Neon Lights" — the fact that it lets itself be so drawn out and pastoral and pretty, that really inspired me. Also, there was this recurring criticism of electronic music that it was cold and unemotional. I remember just being generally nonplussed because I would listen to something like "Neon Lights" that was so warm, so melodic, and so emotional, that when people would say that electronic music is cold, I was just baffled. I've never understood that criticism of it, that it lacks warmth or humanity.

The way I heard albums back then was, my friends and I had this understanding about who was going to buy which album. One person would buy it and the rest of us would tape it. It was piracy based on necessity, because we were all broke. My friend Dave bought Miami. I remember when I heard early Gun Club I thought it was really fun, and then I heard Miami and... it had this emotional depth and breadth to it that the first album didn't have.

It was one of those records where you'd look at the Peter Saville cover and listen to it and just knowing their history — not just the music was perfect, but the presentation, the history, the context. It's just perfect.

This [was] when I first started DJing. You couldn't DJ in 1984 and not have every [New Order] 12-inch: "Blue Monday" and "Confusion" and "Ceremony" and "Temptation." Most nights I'd play both of... those records at least twice, [at] a nightclub called the Beat in Port Chester, New York, that held 50 people. My first job was on a Monday night DJing from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m., getting paid $25. New Order was one of those bands — almost everything they did was guaranteed to make people dance.

What a perfect record — beautiful and non-ironic and disconcerting and strange and conventional all at the same time. I'd been an obsessive David Lynch fan since I first saw Eraserhead. I can't think of a filmmaker even remotely similar to him in terms of creativity and the uniqueness of his output. You didn't go to see a David Lynch movie because of the subject matter; you went because it was a... David Lynch movie. The Elephant Man and Blue Velvet are strong narrative movies, but you went because you wanted to spend time with David Lynch's creative vision. And when Twin Peaks came out of course every single person in the western world became justifiably obsessed with it.

One of the things that I loved about dance music in the '80s into the '90s was its femininity and multiculturalism. I'd go out to nightclubs in '88 and '89 and listen to DJs like Larry Levan playing very feminine gay disco. As a straight white guy from the suburbs I found it really compelling and emancipating, in a way. Then, in the early '90s dance music became whiter and less feminine... and tougher. Sometimes that was great; sometimes tough-white-guy dance music sounded really cool. But I really missed disco femininity. What I really loved about Massive Attack was that they really channeled that early R&B, feminine, disco sensibility, those first two albums, especially. Massive Attack made really thoughtful, atmospheric, interesting, dance-inspired music. Especially the song "Protection," with Tracey Thorn — part of my criteria for evaluating a lot of music is what the musician has excluded. That song "Protection," there's no bass line. By not including that, it actually plays up the sparseness and vulnerability of the song.