Punk on Ecstasy

Rock is, as 1997 made abundantly clear, dead. The biggest tour of the year was the Rolling Stones. The radio spewed out second-rate schlock. The Pixies, once college radio's greatest hope, were finally interred with a greatest hits album. The kids who listened to the Sex Pistols and the Clash in '77 are now pushing 40.

Richard Melville Hall, more commonly known as Moby, seems to have missed all of this. When his stripped-down band plunged into a cover of "That's When I Reach For My Revolver," it could have been Clint Conley and Mission of Burma playing the song in '83. Mission of Burma covers are nothing new, but when the band follows up one by ripping through a cover of the "James Bond Theme," sounding just as serious, something strange is going on. And when the performer is best known for producing euphoric house music, you know it's not an ordinary show.

Moby has always been profoundly out of sync with what's going on in the music world--and that's a good thing. The massively eclectic Everything is Wrong, moving easily from reggae chants to diva vocals to galloping jungle, came out when everyone was looking for Pearl Jam derivatives. Animal Rights, Moby's follow up, disappointed newly techno-hungry critics by being an almost frightening marriage of ambient and punk. While releasing excellent remixes of Brian Eno, Jam and Spoon and Orbital, he's been sneered for remixing Ozzy Ozbourne, Soundgarden and Metallica. Moby plays on all levels and nowhere is this more apparent than in his live shows.

Opening with a menacing remix of the ordinarily lovely "Hymn," Moby proceeded to dive into his back catalog of early '90s house tracks, accompanied by two drummers and a live bass player, a la Squarepusher. The shirtless Mr. Hall himself bounced all over the stage, becoming an occasional third drummer and pounding on keyboards from time to time. "Ah Ah" and "Bring Back My Happiness" were played for speed, a fact appreciated by the crowds. The rave classic "Move," stretched to eight minutes, was far too short. Euphoria was the order of the night as Moby repeatedly plunged into the writhing crowd.

In Moby's mind, though, nothing mixes so well with the ecstasy culture as punk. As he plunged into "That's When I Reach For My Revolver," the dancers began to pogo. While an odd mix, it worked; the following Bond theme progressed from speed metal to pounding funked-up house. Not content with this excursion into rock, Moby decided that the show needed a guitar solo, and noodled for a couple of minutes. The crowd was variously amused and disgusted; some were upset that they'd been tricked into watching Def Leppard-style musical onanism. The pounding techno soon resumed, though, with an almost unrecognizably jungly reinterpretation of "Everytime You Touch Me."

The highlight of the show came near the end, with the performance of the bouncily beautiful "Feeling So Real." The crowd almost religiously attacked the stage, wanting to be close to the man. Moby, sweaty and smiling, took in the apotheosis, finally reprised in "Thousand," the final number of the second encore. As the drum machines raced towards a thousand beats per minute, Moby assumed a crucifixion pose, standing on an amp, stretching out his arms and looking up. The crowd cried for more, but the show was over.

From a technical stance, one could argue the merits of the show. Moby really made very little musical contribution to the music; except for the punk intervals, much of the music came from pre-recorded DATs, which the musicians played over. Technical skill, however, is not how the virtue of Moby's music should be judged. Moby operates on a more directly emotional level. His goal is simply to induce euphoria, which he does with ease by putting a very human spin on the music.

While he'll never have the subfle beauty of bands like Autechre or the technical virtuosity of Squarepusher, Moby succeeds resoundingly in making techno immediately accessible to an American audience, falling into the same category as the Chemical Brothers or the Prodigy. Unlike the one-trick-pony Chems, however, Moby is an a multi-faceted musician; his upbeat optimism has very little in common with the misogyny and Goebbels-inspired aesthetic of the Prodigy.

Ecstasy and punk, it turns out, mix surprisingly well.