Moby

Last night, I went to a Moby concert. I'm not a huge Moby fan by any means, but EVERYBODY likes his stuff. You can't not. So when my friend badgered me to go see him, I acquiesed, thinking I would at least get to dance.

What. A. Show.

Probably the best I've seen in Montreal...although the Jazz Fest shows from this summer definitely are up there. The best way to describe it is probably half rave, half rock show. Most of it was a live band show: Moby on guitar (he's a great guitarist, btw...who knew?), a mostly female backing band, and this big black lady backup singer with an absolutely phenomenal voice. She handled singing most of the samples ("Why does my heart....feel so bad?"), especially the ones he took from old Alan Lomax folk recordings. The rest were handled by his keyboardist/opening act/probably at least part-time lover, this woman from Brooklyn who, despite being a little white girl with hipster bangs, just about blew the roof off the damn place when she started singing.

The live stuff was suprisingly rock-y. Lots of crunchy guitar riffs and pounding drums, and a few suprises that seemed to hint at Moby's underlying love for funk, blues and classic rock--an oddly straightforward cover of Neil Young's "Helpless" and a raw, bluesy version of "Honey" (with guitar replacing piano) that turned into a big jam with the band launching into badass covers of both "Whole Lotta Love" and "War Pigs" (!).

This was, of course, supplemented with some decidedly more dance-oriented stuff. Although I'm decidedly more of a rocker than a raver, there's something pretty amazing about a sweaty room packed full of bodies, flashing lights, and pulsating bass. Plus, who doesn't love dancing?

Possibly the most surprising (although not so much in retrospect) is how much of a nerd Moby is. His onstage banter consisted of some horribly butchered "merci beaucoup"s after every song (which nonetheless got huge cheers from the mostly Francophone crowd) and decidedly un-rock-star-like asides like a five-minute ramble about the new effects pedals he bought for his guitar, ending with his admission that "sorry, you probably don't want to hear some middle aged guy talk about his guitar equipment." Despite the fact that his music had the audience in the palm of his hand for a couple hours, he seemed like the kind of guy who needed to speak through that medium--as a person, he would probably be a lot more happy sitting at home with his sampler and turntables. His stage banter wasn't his voice. That honor belonged to his beats.