Foods For Life - People. Interviews with Healthy Vegan Role Models.
Moby - Musician and Workaholic.
Moby the vegan workaholic?
In a recent interview with the UK Big Issue Magazine Vegan Society patron Moby admitted that he finds difficulty in relaxing doing anything other than working. When music is your life it seems to take over, but this is just the tip of the moby bald headed iceberg. A committed vegan foodie his New York café TeaNY run by his vegetarian friend Kelly Tisdale (where he's sometimes seen clearing tables) has now spawned a vegan soft drinks company and a new cookbook is promised. He is also a keen artist and we wonder how long it will be before he follows in fellow vegan Andre Benjamin's footsteps and gets into fashion too.
He is an active campaigner with well-voiced views on politics, human rights as well as vegan issues. A staunch democrat he taught presidential candidate Senator John Kerry how to play guitar. His music has not just been used on hundreds of adverts but freely available to hundreds of good causes from videos by The Vegetarian Society and Vegan Society to backing track for recordings highlighting problems of homeless people by The Big Issue.
He writes nearly everyday in his journal at www.moby.com and has even won MTV awards for his website.
Interview with Johnathan Wingate of UK's Big Issue ("Working not Begging" magazine) March 7 2005
This September moby hits the big 4-0 and like most other people, it's something that's got him thinking about his priorities more than ever before.
" I hope to be making music 'til the day I die, and I love playing concerts but at some point I have to curtail that lifestyle"
"I have too much of a work ethic. I think that it is another thing I need to address at some point. I used to take great pride in the fact that I was a workaholic, but now it's got to a point where I'm almost incapable of enjoying something that isn't work. Everything that's not actually work seems like a fairly shallow pursuit, and I know that is not the case- especially if you're trying to have a relationship where you build a family.
"I don't know…long term it just doesn't seem to be very healthy"
" I tend to work about 12 hours a day, seven days a week. I go to TeaNY almost every day…sometimetimes two or three times a day. I usually go there to eat, but I occasionally bus tables if it gets really busy, mainly because I'm sort of servile by nature. Give me a task and I'm happy to do it"
MOBY LINKS
www.worldveganday.org
- Interview with Tony
Tony - What would you do if you were responsible for The Vegan Society? (apart from move to a bigger office) What do you think would be most likely to encourage more people to be vegan?
Moby - "We should all be happy and relaxed in our efforts to get people to accept and embrace veganism. no one likes a miserable, strident, didactic vegan. veganism should be a happy thing, not a miserable one. and we shouldn't make people feel bad or guilty for their lifestyle choices, even if they reject veganism."
Definitely Moby - Observer / Guardian
'I was a rigid punk rock Marxist. Then I was a rigid vegan dance music Christian.' Today, he's loosened up and become one of the world's hottest pop stars. Andrew Smith finds out what makes Moby go Moby Online.com
First of all, I just wanted to say it's an honour for me to talk to you, because I was a vegetarian and I read the notes on your last album, Everything Is Wrong, and was persuaded to go vegan. Your essays changed my whole outlook on everything.
www.contactmusic.com/mobyinterview
"Hotel' is a reflection of the new wave scene and the albums influences are pulled from the late 70's and early 80's". There is a strong revival of this sound at the moment currently largely encouraged by people like Zane Lowe and those at MTV2. Bands like the Killers, Franz Ferdinand and The Kaiser Chiefs are part of the new wave and owe a lot to the artists of that time, especially to bands like Joy Division.
www.contactmusic.com/new/artist.nsf/artistnames/moby
Richard Melville Hall, the great-great-grand-nephew of Moby Dick author Herman Melville, was born on September 11, 1965 in New York City. Nicknamed 'Moby' since infancy, he was raised in Darien, CT. Moby's father died when he was only two. Subsequently he was brought up by his mother, an open-minded woman who encouraged Moby to pursue whatever creative avenues appealed to him. By the time Moby was ten he was actively learning classical guitar, something which held him in good stead for the punk explosion which attracted him in his teens. By his twenties he had been involved in bands as disparate as punk kids The Vatican Commandos, anarchist noise combo Flipper and critically acclaimed 4AD band Ultra Vivid Scene.
www.mixonline.com - moby - moby picture
He's done remixes for Michael Jackson, Pet Shop Boys, Erasure and others. His last two major tours, dubbed Area:One and Area:Two, were as eclectic as he is, with the artist topping bills including David Bowie, The Roots, Paul Oakenfold, OutKast, Incubus, Nelly Furtado, D.J. Tiesto and Busta Rhymes. He's been criticized for wearing his politics on his sleeve - what Moby article would be complete without mentioning that he's an outspoken left-wing vegan Christian peacenik animal rights activist? And don't forget the complaints about him selling every track on Play to various commercial interests - how dare he?
Moby is not one to shy away from alternative ways of marketing his music. In fact, he embraces them.
"For a long time, that was the only way I could get my music heard," he says while sitting in his T-shirt/design shop, the Little Idiot.
Moby points to his 1999 release "Play" as an example. "When
that album was first released, there was no radio support," he recalls.
"Only music supervisors supported the record." Indeed, every
track on the album ended up being licensed - some more than once - for
use in commercials, TV shows and film soundtracks. "Play" has
sold 2.6 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
