I wonder how many people on this list would do thew same if they were in his
shoes?
How many people on this list are reading from corporate accounts? You sell
you personal time like he sells his music. Are you any better than he is? Is
he better paid than you are, who is the sucker?
moby can retire tomorrow from the royalties and licencing fees he recived
from that last record, can you afford to quit your job?
mt
From: Charles Prince <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 313@hyperreal.org
Subject: [313] Oh Lordy...
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 12:56:24 -0500
I've been thinking about some of the parallels between Moby's career and
that
of his ancestor, the great 19th-century literary innovator, Herman
Melville.
Melville achieved phenomenal success with his first novel, 'Typee' (a 'true
life' account of living on a Polynesian island), yet virtually everything
else he wrote for the rest of his life died a commercial death with the
public. Despite this, works like 'Moby Dick', 'Pierre', and 'Clarel'
rapidly attained a cult, underground following before he was finally
recognized last century as a key figure in the American literary
renaissance (i.e. canonized by critics/the academy).
Moby, on the other hand, enjoyed some underground success before the
electronica floodgates briefly opened and he attained mass public exposure
(I've heard A. Oldham praise his work). But overall, and in inverse
proportion to his commercial success, his modicum of prestige in
underground circles has seen steady decline.
While Melville wrote wilfully-challenging masterpieces that got him
ignored in his lifetime by all but a clued-up few, Moby writes wilfully-
accessible pop music that is universally adored by the masses, and will
almost certainly never be canonized by the techno sister/brotherhood in
this life or the next.
From one perspective, 'Play' can be looked upon as Moby's sonic version of
'The Confidence Man', a Melville novel that involves a trickster
hoodwinking a
steamboatful of travellers (i.e the general public). The album simply
re-poses the age-old question: are _you_ being played? And Moby's deck is
surely stacked... ;-)
Wes
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
