Sound Check — Geoff Carter: Up close and personal with Moby

Friday, Aug. 13, 1999 | 8:59 a.m.

Geoff Carter's music column appears Fridays. Reach him at carter@vegas.com

Techno pioneer, deep thinker, maestro, irreverent guy with a shaved head: Moby is all of these and the proverbial bag o' chips. Touring in support of his hot new album "Play" -- a groundbreaking synthesis of current dance beats and classic black spirituals that is as uplifting as it is insanely funky -- Moby took exactly fifteen minutes off to answer a few questions about his beliefs, his unrequited lust for pizza and his killer sound, coming live to the Hard Rock Joint tonight at 8. Be there.

Question: I'm relieved to hear you're OK; the last time I saw you, Space Ghost was eating your head (on Cartoon Network's subversive animated talk show "Space Ghost Coast to Coast"). Any lingering effects?

Answer: (chuckles) I haven't seen it yet. I remember doing it, but I don't have cable.

Q: Did they tell you to look stricken? 'Cause that's how you looked.

A: Hmm ... Maybe I just naturally look stricken.

Q: Could be the reaction to "Play." It's shaping up to be your most successful album, isn't it?

A: In the States, certainly.

Q: Did you know that while making it?

A: Nope! I had no idea. When I make records, it's pretty much me doing everything by myself, so I have no objectivity. I only respond to the songs on an intuitive, emotional level; I can't think about their commercial viability because I have no idea. It was a complicated process (making "Play"). Sometimes it was really satisfying; sometimes it was very distressing. In fact, a lot of times it was really distressing, because I wasn't happy with the way things were going.

The big part of making a record, for me, is the satisfying nuts-and-bolts work. The inspirational part is actually writing the songs, but then I'll spend months fine-tuning things. When it comes to the actual mixing of the record -- that's the part that I hate, because I do everything by myself, and when things don't go well, I have no one else to blame. And I'm never happy. Every song on "Play" was probably mixed, oh, 10 or 12 times.

Q: More than one critic has called you an influential artist. What do you think?

A: If it's true, it's very flattering; I just don't know if it's true! I mean, I know I have a lot of -- I don't wanna sound immodest -- musician fans; Brian Eno, David Bowie, John Lydon, the guys in Metallica, Bono, Axl Rose. It kinda freaks me out.

Q: You know Axl's last whereabouts?

A: Oh yeah -- actually, he asked me to produce (Guns 'n' Roses') next record. I went out to Los Angeles a couple of times and met with him, oh, I guess about a year and a half ago.

Q: He look all right?

A: He wore a hat the whole time, but yeah, he looked healthy. We had a nice time together -- he's very down-to-earth, a very nice guy.

Q: There are essays on vegetarianism and civil rights in the liner notes to "Play," but very little politics come through the music itself. Was that a conscious effort on your part?

A: No, it's just the most natural way for me to make records. My politics are pretty nonspecific, really... I've been often portrayed in the media as didactic and dogmatic, but the truth is, my understanding of the world is actually pretty flexible.

Q: As a vegan, are you ever tempted? By chocolate, for example?

A: But there's plenty of vegan chocolate, and it's really quite good! The only thing that would tempt me away from veganism -- apart from starvation -- is New York-style flat-crust pizza. I reeeeealy miss that. When my friends get some, it's painful for me -- it's like being a monk on the set of a porno film.

Q: Speaking of -- any soundtrack work in the offing?

A: Not at present. We may license a few songs from this album.

Q: I loved the way your music was used in (Michael Mann's) "Heat."

A: Of all the movies I've worked on, that's the one I'm most proud of. It's a fascinating movie. To take the conventional trope of an L.A. cops and robbers movie, then invest it with all these overarching neoclassical themes ... it was really interesting.

Q: What's your listening of the moment?

A: I've been listening to Mazzy Star, which is great as long as you don't listen to the lyrics, which are pretty dumb. John Coltrane, George Gershwin, Massive Attack, early Bad Brains, the first few Roxy Music records.

Q: I'm looking at this picture of you standing on your head, and I gotta ask -- can you breakdance?

A: Um, no. We were in a room at the Chelsea Hotel, taking pictures ... and luckily, thanks to flash technology, they took the picture. I was only on my head for, like, an eighth of a second.

Q: What's next for you?

A: No idea. Come January, when this tour ends, I might wanna rush back in the studio and start making music, I might wanna go to New Zealand and tend sheep, I might wanna go to the South Pole and look at whales.

Q: Or, you could make your millennial statement.

A: Ah, but the millennium doesn't start until January 1, 2001.

Q: So we've got a little time.

A: Yeah. But a thousand years on a planet that's five billion years old -- that doesn't hold all that much significance for me. There are a lot of things that happen in my day-to-day life that have a lot more significance than the passage from 11:59 to 12:00 on one specific day.