Journal Archive - July, 2008

flying to nyc from the uk again.
when i was growing up we were very poor, so air travel was something
that happened maybe every 5 years or so, and only then when one
of my grandparents was paying.
growing up in connecticut i remember having a relatively wealthy girlfriend when i was 19. she
flew back and forth to france and california a lot, and i remember being
sorely envious of the fact that she flew on planes at least 2 or 3 times a year, which seemed like obscene excess to me at the time.
i was picking her up at the airport one time and i was amazed
that it was 5pm and she was in new york, but that earlier in the day she'd
been in paris.
it seemed like a magic trick, and even though i understood the idea and logistics of international
jet travel i was still kind of baffled by the fact that someone could start the day
on one continent and finish the day on a completely different continent.
it almost seemed like a form of alchemy, turning humans into sub-atomic particles and shuttling them across thousands of miles during the same 12 hour period.
and now i'm a jaded world traveller.
i'm ashamed to say that(the jaded part), but it's true. and i'm not looking for sympathy or understanding, for
who in their right mind would extend sympathy to a guy who travels around the world
and gets to play music?
if i worked at arby's cleaning the grease traps i'd be looking for sympathy.
but i'm not deserving of sympathy, nor am i looking for it.
i'm just commenting on how odd it is that when i was growing up i saw international travel
and airports and hotels and airplanes and other languages and other countries as being
inherently and unspeakably glamorous.
sort of like when homer wins a trip for the family to any of the 48 states. marge doesn't
want to go, and homer says, basically, 'i want to watch the news on a different channel,
i'm tired of foot long sandwiches, i want to eat hoagies and subs and heroes. why won't
you let me live, marge?'
that's sort of how i felt when i was growing up, that channel 2 news in connecticut was mundane, but channel 6 news
in sacramento was glamorous. or to watch tv news in the uk? or france? unspeakably glamorous,
almost terrifyingly glamorous.
i remember my first trip to france(my first trip to europe). it was 1987 and my girlfriend at the time
and i were going to live in paris for the summer.
i was excited for about a year beforehand. i got a bunch of french stickers and put them on
common things around the house('fenetre', 'toillette', etc). and when we finally got to paris
i had panic attacks because everything was so different and so foreign and i had never left
the united states and i was convinced that i would be found out as a hayseed/rube/hick from the u.s and a. i remember seeing the champs-elysees the morning we arrived
and i couldn't believe how foreign and ancient and terrifying it seemed.
once the panic abated the champs-elysees no longer seemed foreign and ancient and terrifying, but
at first it was the embodiement of everything i hadn't grown up with, not to mention everything that seemed wealthier and more sophisticated and older and deeper and more interesting than anything i'd ever had access to.
the champs-elysees(and all of paris) seemed like the worlds most sophisticated club, and i was just some dirty pissant american there to sully it with my ignorant provincialism.
the irony in all of this was that i spent a lot of my childhood in manhattan in the 70's and 80's.
and manhattan in the 70's and 80's was truly dangerous and truly terrifying. but the danger
and terror of manhattan were familiar entities, whereas the newness and foreignness
of france(or the uk, or germany, my 2nd and 3rd trips out of the country)were terrifying in
their unfamiliarity.
and now i'm a jaded world traveller. maybe 'jaded' is the wrong word. i still love
certain things about travelling. i'm still in awe when i see paris in the morning, at how beautiful
it is.
i'm still amazed when i look up at edinburgh castle and arthur's seat.
i'm still amazed by gigantic mountains and thunderstorms from 35,000 feet and dinosaur sized bats in australia and the hermitage and rome and etc and etc.
travel can still stun me with it's beauty, but rarely with it's foreign-ness.
and now you're wondering, if you've read this far, what i'm leading to.
and i'm sorry to disappoint you, but i'm not leading to anything.
i'm just commenting(to myself, at this point, i'm guessing)on how strange it is to be a fairly
jaded world-traveller who once was a terrified, provincial, and poverty stricken kid from connecticut.
it's a weird dichotomy, and i still haven't made sense of it, even after 18 years of fairly constant
travel.
ok, that's it. time to go be a jaded traveller and drink o.j and read a f. paul wilson book and watch '30 rock' while flying past reykjavik.
thanks for listening.
moby

just heading to edinburgh now, to dj at the liquid rooms.
and then, in theory, i'm heading back to nyc for 2 days before
going to california to perform at the kcrw event.
i'm flying back to nyc on sunday and i'm hoping that barack will
invite me to fly on his plane.
well, no, i'm not hoping that, as i haven't met obama and it might
be a bit awkward to say, 'we haven't actually met, but can i fly on your plane from london
to the states and we could eat cashews and play gin rummy?'
last night at global gathering was great, thanks to everyone who was there.
and the night before at sankey's in manchester was insane.
rammed and hot and sweaty and everyone going mental.
i'm still not sure why the sound system stopped working for 10 minutes, probably
because it was so hot.
ok, off to the airport now.
hopefully see you soon,
moby

here's a caveat, this journal entry is going to be sort of bourgeoisie.
caveat 2: i still don't know how to spell 'bourgeoisie'.
it's about hotels.
and what they do right and what they do wrong.
i'm writing this because:
a-i stay in a lot of hotels
b-i have insomnia and i'm bored
c-i'm hoping that some hoteliers will read this and make nicer hotels for me to stay in.

ok, here goes:

a-the rooms should be quiet. really quiet. painfully quiet. thick windows and curtains
that keep out all sound. if you want noise you go outside and stand in traffic.

b-the rooms should be able to be made pitch black. not sort of dark, but pitch black. if you want
light you open the curtains. you want to sleep you close them and it's pitch
black. not to state the obvious, but hotel rooms are for sleeping.

c-internet. i know, i'm a whiney yuppie, but hotels should have easy to access
internet. and give it away for free. paying $10 for internet just seems petty.

d-smell. hotel rooms shouldn't smell of anything. not smoke. not hooker perfume.
not dead cats. nothing.

e-pillows. goldilocks pillows. not too soft, not too firm, just normal. and maybe even
a few options to choose from. and no designer pillows that are weird. sleep should
never involve the words 'designer', 'modern', 'cutting edge', or 'avant-garde'.
no one want's a cutting edge, avant garde sleep experience.

f-sheets. no one apart from old dusty grandmothers likes tucked in sheets. tucked in sheets are what they use in hospitals to keep sick people from falling on the floor.
an untucked duvet/comforter works just fine and is normal and good.

g-do not disturb. do not disturb should mean 'do not fucking disturb me or i will throw
a fucking brick at your head and the police will not put me in jail because they know that if you disturb someone who is sleeping they are legally allowed to throw a brick at your head.'
this goes for the phone and the door. there is never a single reason that the front desk
should call a hotel guest unless the hotel is on fire or there is the sound of people
having sex with goats coming from within the room.

h-movies. i know, a bit esoteric, but they have this fantastic new technology that converts
information into binary code. it even works for movies, and it allows people to store hundreds
of movies on one, cheap storage device. this storage device can then be accessed by bored
hotel guests who will happily pay obscene amounts of money to stave off the soul
crushing despair and loneliness that comes from frequent travel.

i-heat and air-conditioning. it cuts both ways. it gets cold in san diego sometimes and sometimes
it even gets hot in aberdeen. every hotel room should have hot and cold running heat and cooling, even if you're 5 minutes from the equator or the arctic circle. and, not to be too demanding, but
the heat and a/c should actually work. if they don't work i'm allowed to throw a small brick
at someone. again, that's the law.

j-modern. some modern is ok. and some modern is like being trapped in an i-pod that doubles
as an insane asylum. contemporary is nice as long as it works and is comfortable. but if you've built a hotel that consists of cold, hard floors and molded plastic furniture and a color scheme of: off-white and nothing else, you should probably be put in prison for crimes against humanity and your stupid
modern hotel should be burned to the ground, like frankensteins castle.
nothing wrong with some nice design, but it should be comfortable and nice, not cold
and soul destroying. too many hotels have been built that are the hotel equivalent of a trendy magazine. again, sleep should never be trendy or cutting edge. you can close a magazine, you actually have to sleep in a hotel.

k-complicated. don't make the systems complicated. light switches should turn the lights on and off.
the remote control should turn the tv on and off. the air conditioning should have 2 things: temperature and fan speed. don't get clever. no one likes clever when they're trying to sleep.
no one is impressed with your remote control that turns on the hot water and lowers the blinds and controls the heating and calls the front desk and makes disco monkeys drop out of the ceiling.
ok, i'd be impressed with the disco monkeys, but everything else should be simple. in other words: don't reinvent the wheel. there's nothing wrong with a good old fashioned light switch.

l-the mini bar should have a ton of things in it. liquor, water, juice, condoms, food, sunglasses,
ear plugs, candles, etc. the more the better. make a mini-closet and fill it with everything a traveller could ever want.

m-i-pod players in every room are great. thank you for including them. but don't make
them too loud cos all of a sudden you're trying to sleep, and the attorney and his new lady
friend are having a coke and tequila party next door at 5 a.m and listening to the new raconteurs
record and you're trying to sleep and you're reaching for your bag of bricks because surely it must
be legal to throw a brick at a loud, coked up attorney at 5 a.m who is interrupting your sleep.

n-and the usual. give me a desk and a chair. give me lights in normal places. give me a couch.
give me carpeting(wood floors at home are nice, in hotels they're cold and creepy).
just give me normal, nice stuff that will keep the wolves of travel despair at the door just long
enough for me to finally get some sleep and go home.

ok, thanks for indulging my 6 a.m insomniac hotel rant.
moby

ah(or, ach), it's been a busy couple of days.
yesterday in glasgow was really fun.
acoustic show, record signing, dj'ing at subclub.
and today we(joy and i)did a very fun and messy and chaotic acoustic
show at ruby's in manchester.
and tomorrow is another acoustic show and 2 dj events.
oh, the dj gig at sankey's is a bit on the late side.
they open at 9, but i think i go on around 12:30 or so.
and at global gathering i think i go on around 12:30 or so.
and, for consistency, at the liquid rooms saturday night i think i go on around
12:30 or so.
i love doing acoustic shows with joy, as she's really talented and she
also doesn't mind that we invent songs on the spot and do songs
that we haven't rehearsed.
i also like that i'll have email exchanges with my managers along
the likes of 'are we doing the show with joy?'
'yes, we're doing it with joy.'
nice double meaning.
ok, see you soon.
moby

brief political update.
in the last week john mccain has made a few, uh, mistakes.
1-he talked about the country of czechoslovakia(which hasn't actually been
a country since 1993)
2-he talked about the iraqii - pakistani border(only problem being that iraq
and pakistan don't actually share a border)
3-he talked about his opposition to gay couples adopting children, stating
that children need a mom and a dad(even though senator mccain divorced
his first wife)

i mean, everyone makes mistakes, but i think that our standards for a presidential
contender should be a bit higher.
i mean, maybe, just maybe, we need a president who doesn't refer to countries
that are no longer countries and who knows the basic geography of 2 countries
in the middle east where tens of thousands of u.s troops are stationed?
eh, just a thought.
moby

i just arrived in glasgow.
i was talking to a journalist and they asked me why i'm doing some very
tiny events(dj'ing small venues, acoustic shows in small venues, etc)while
i'm here.
(although, at the other end of the spectrum global gathering on friday will be 50,000 people, so i guess
that doesn't qualify as tiny).
the reason is, simply, that it's fun.
i don't know if that sounds disingenuous. but playing small venues and being
able to meet people and talk to them is, again simply, fun.
i love playing big festivals, but i also really love dj'ing small clubs or doing small
acoustic shows.
you can look people in the eye and talk to them and have a beer with them and
the shows tend to be more spontaneous and improvisational and, again, fun.
so that's why i'm here, for a nice combination of the very small and the very
large.
global gathering should be a big, exciting spectacle.
but playing a few acoustic songs in a cafe with my friend joy should be intimate
and fun.
now i'm going to watch an old star trek movie and eat warmed up indian food.
yes, i really do put the glamour in rock and roll touring.
-moby

p.s-to be clear, i don't put the glamour in rock and roll touring. i was being facetious.
i'm about as glamorous as a sponge.

it's been a busy few days.
on friday i flew to germany, and then saturday dj'ed at the love parade.
i believe that there were...1,300,000 people there?
perhaps all of those zeroes are confusing, or maybe they look like a typo.
allow me to abbreviate: there were 1.3 million people at the love parade?
that's a lot of people.
i'm posting a picture from the stage, and you can't really see all 1.3 million people, but
if you look close you can see people stretching to the horizon.
which, again, is a lot of people.
and then later that night i dj'ed in dortmund at a little club called vrstck.
i think that's what it's called.
no vowels, like a city in the balkans.
it ended up being a very late and very fun night(although i think i confused
the people at the club when i played 'paradise city'. eh, guns n roses + beer=make fun party
time in dortmund).
then this morning(well, 3pm) i woke up and went to the circle of love festival and dj'ed there(it was a fun
festival, although the rain dampened things a bit, literally and figuratively).
then hopped in a car(sorry i couldn't stay longer)and drove 3 hours to the netherlands
and dj'ed on the beach with fedde le grand.
now i'm finally back at the hotel in amsterdam, getting ready to watch 10 more episodes
of 30 rock.
and tomorrow i go to scotland.
and then manchester.
and then global gathering.
and then edinburgh.
and then london.
and then nyc.
and then l.a.
and etc.
sometimes 'etc' is my lazy way of not having to continue with a list, and other times 'etc'
is my way of sparing you having to read my schedule.
i'm sorry i'm not more insightful right now, but i'm tired to the core of my being.
ok, i hope you had a good weekend.
moby

i just got back from talking to the dalai lama in philadelphia.
it's not every day i get to start an update/journal entry/blog(i hate that word) with that sentence.
in fact, well, just today.
to begin: i went to philadelphia last night with serj from system of a down and kt tunstall and joss stone to meet
up with the dalai lama today and hang out and talk informally.
well, 'informally' insofar as 'informally' involves bomb sniffing dogs and secret service agents and camera crews and attendants.
but i'm getting ahead of myself.
we arrived in philly last night and had dinner at horizons(which is fantastic, even if the name 'horizons' sounds
kind of new-age-y and vague).
and then last night after dinner i was asking myself, 'ok, you're meeting h.h dalai lama in the morning, what
do you want to talk about with him?'
and i was kind of stumped.
a part of me wanted to ask fun and lighthearted questions, like 'if you were a breakdancer what would
you want for your breakdancing name?' or 'if you could go on vacation anywhere, where would you go and what would you do?'
or 'do you prefer pantera or slayer?'
and another part of me wanted to ask more serious questions about dharma and meditation and politics and quantum mechanics.
but then i thought that he probably gets asked serious questions all the time, so maybe he'd like
the more lighthearted questions.
then i thought that maybe the lighthearted questions would be deemed offensive or irreverent.
and then it was morning.
serj and kt and joss and i met for breakfast and drank too much coffee and talked about what we'd
talk about with h.h.d.l.
we were shuffled into a small conference room. we met some very nice tibetan people and some nice
mongolian people and some nice los angeleno people and some nice secret service people and nice
camera crews and so on.
and then it started to get odd.
i went upstairs to go to the giftshop to see if i could buy a blank cd, cos i had this idea that i'd
burn a cd for the dalai lama, maybe some relaxing music he could listen to on long flights.
they didn't have blank cd's in the gift shop, but snoop dogg and his posse were leaving the hotel
just as the dalai lama was arriving.
postmodernism reared it's messy head, and the dogg pound posed for pictures with h.h. dalai lama.
this, needless to say, was entertaining.
then h.h.d.l had some lunch.
then h.h.d.l came downstairs for his informal meeting with us.
he walked into the room(preceded by security people).
he smiled at us.
he played with serj's beard.
he shook our hands and smiled some more.
then we sat down for the meeting.
kt tunstall played a song for him(it was a very nice song, a new song inspired by 'the giving tree'.).
hhdl closed his eyes and listened and then we talked about meditation(well, he talked, we listened).
i asked him if he could do any job for a week other than being the dalai lama what would it be?
at first he said that he'd like to do something to protect the environment.
then i asked, 'but what if you could be completely selfish for a week, what would you do?'
'sleep.' he said.
'so you'd be a professional sleeper?' i asked.
and he laughed and laughed.
and boy, when the dalai lama laughs at one of your jokes(even if it's not such a good joke) you feel pretty good.
serj asked him about spirituality and justice. joss asked him about the situation with tibet and china.
we chatted informally(under the watchful eye of secret service and camera crews and attendants and translators
and well-trained monkeys...ok, no monkeys. but monkeys would've been good, as everyone seems to like monkeys).
we took a whole bunch of pictures, we said our goodbyes, and he left to further spread the causes of peace and compassion to
the good people of philadelphia.
hopefully at some point i'll get the pictures back so that you'll know i wasn't just hallucinating.
or was i? was i actually having an ambien inspired hallucination?
nope, cos i have the commemorative t-shirt. unless hallucinations can produce commemorative t-shirts, which i don't
think they can.
and how would i describe h.h dalai lama?
mainly i was struck by his intellect. he might be the brightest person i've ever met.
secondly i was struck by his sense of humor. whenever he got the chance to make a little joke he made a little joke, and he
genuinely laughed whenever anything funny(or even quasi-funny, like my quips)was said.
thirdly i was kind of in awe, so i didn't have the perspective from which to objectively assess the situation or the man.
ok, so that was my day. now i'm headed out to a barbecue with mayor corey booker, who is a remarkable politician
and might be president someday.
some days are way more interesting than other days.
this was a way more interesting day than most.
thanks,
moby

this is from a friend of mine at hsus about proposition 2 in california.
please do what you can to help the $20/20 campaign.
thanks,
moby

I'm hoping you can help us help 20 million farm animals in California.

As you know, we're in full support of Proposition 2 (www.YesOnProp2.org), a measure that will appear on this November's ballot in California that, if passed, will ban the cruelest and most inhumane confinement of 20 million farm animals in the state--hens in battery cages, breeding pigs in gestation crates, and calves in veal crates.

This historic effort will hopefully be the beginning of the end of factory farming confinement practices in the country!

Unfortunately, corporate agribusiness interests have put in more than $1million to defeat this measure over the past two weeks alone, and they plan to pump in millions more. To counter this big money, I'm calling on all my friends to help.

Can you help spread the word about the $20/20 Campaign? If everyone we know gives just $20 (or more!) to help these 20 million animals who are so intensively confined in battery cages, gestation crates and veal crates that they cannot even fully extend their limbs and many can't even turn around, we can raise the much-needed funds to combat agribusiness's funnelling of extraordinary amounts of money into defeating this measure that would so significantly and positively impact animals.

Donations are accepted at https://secure.hsus.org/01/chf_2020

some politics and etc:

1-john mccain's top economic advisor today called americans 'a nation of whiners' because americans were upset about their economic problems.
mccain's top economic advisor, phil gramm, has basically said that america's economic problems
are 'mental', as in they're all in people's heads.
huh. that might be hard to explain to people who are unemployed, can't pay for their kids medical bills, and have
just had their house foreclosed on.
oh, john mccain said that he stands by what his economic advisor said.
what a well run campaign...

2-jesse jackson said that he'd like to 'cut his(obama's)nuts off'. sour grapes? sorry, that was a bad pun.
i mean, isn't it just possible that jesse jackson, an african-american politician who ran for president about 18,000 times,
is bummed out that obama will be the nations first african-american politician?
maybe jesse should start wearing a ball-gag when he appears in public. in addition to being practical(in that it would
keep him from speaking when people might be listening)it would also show his solidarity with the b&d community.

3-have you ever taken ambien? i was on a flight recently and i was sitting next to a very professional business woman.
i'm guessing she was 48 years old, very affluent and successful and poised. 15 minutes into the flight she took an ambien
and went to sleep. 90 minutes later she woke up, looked at me and said 'i like your glasses'. she took my glasses and tried them
on. she then sat for a second, farted very loudly, and went back to sleep.
when she woke up later i could tell that she had absolutely no recollection of waking up and taking my glasses and farting
loudly.
i love that ambien makes people crazy. it's like a 2-in-1 drug. it helps people to sleep and it makes them crazy, like
the simpsons episode where homer becomes a zombie and bart uses him as his personal zombie slave.
my caveat to people: if you're flying and you want to sleep you might want to think twice about what sleep drugs
you're taking. some sleep drugs probably should be reconsidered at 38,000 feet in the company of complete strangers.

i guess that's all for now.
i hope you're having a good summer(or winter if you're in the southern hemisphere, like patagonia. i've always
wanted to go to patagonia. probably in the summer. our winter. their summer. just to be clear), and hopefully i'll
see you soon.
moby

the kind people at my management company got tired of me being ignorant, so they sent me a list
of all of the upcoming live and dj events that i have:

Upcoming events:
Jul 19 Loveparade Dortmund, Germany
Jul 20 Circle Of Love [dj set] Dortmund, Germany
Jul 20 Flamingo Night [DJ Set] Bloemendaal, The Netherlands
Jul 22 Avalanche Records [DJ Set] Glasgow, UK
Jul 22 Mono [Acoustic] Glasgow, UK
Jul 24 Cup [Acoustic] Manchester, UK
Jul 24 TBA [DJ Set] Manchester, UK
Jul 25 Global Gathering [Live:Remixed] Stratford-Upon-Avon, UK
Jul 26 The Liquid Room [DJ Set] Edinburgh, UK
Aug 2 Vision [DJ set] Chicago, Illinois
Aug 8 SonneMondSterne [Live:Remixed] Saalberg, Germany
Aug 10 Virgin Festival [DJ Set] Baltimore, Maryland

more stuff will be added, but this is the list of everything i'm doing this summer.
hopefully see you soon,
moby

just got back from performing for 60,000 people at werchter.
oops, i forgot the 'i'.
i just got back from performing at werchter.
supposively it was my 7th time playing there?
really?
is that possible?
well, in any case it was really fun and the audience was fantastic.
there are few things more exciting than seeing 60,000 people
jumping up and down in unison.
in other news:
saturday(today), i'm dj'ing at a little club in paris. i don't know if
it's an unannounced dj gig or not. well, i guess now it's announced.
i think it's at the showcase club.
and, being ignorant, i don't know when i go on. late?
midnight?
midnight's not so late.
and then playing live at belfort sunday night and then dj'ing VERY LATE at
kaufleuten in zurich at 3 a.m sunday(which is, technically, monday).
i have some other upcoming live and dj things, but i don't know what they
are, exactly, so i'll hold off in writing about them.
i'm going to go and eat spaghetti now and lament the fact that when i come
to europe i'm crippled by insomnia.
have a good weekend, and see you soon.
moby

just got back from dj'ing at edc in l.a.
kind of amazing, in that it was essentially an underground party for 70,000 people...
without question one of the best and most impressive dance events i've ever
been to, and i really hope that everyone who went had as much fun as i did.
thanks to everyone who came to the edc and made it a really amazing night.
i might need to sleep for a long time now.
moby