From one of the most interesting and iconic musicians of our time, a piercingly tender, funny, and harrowing account of the path from suburban poverty and alienation to a life of beauty, squalor, and unlikely success out of the New York City club scene of the late 1980s and 90s.
There were many reasons Moby was never going to make it as a DJ and musician in the New York club scene of the late 1980s and early 90s. This was the New York of Palladium, of Mars, Limelight, and Twilo, an era when dance music was still a largely underground phenomenon, popular chiefly among working-class African Americans and Latinos. And then there was Moby-not just a poor, skinny white kid from deepest Connecticut, but a devout Christian, a vegan, and a teetotaler, in a scene that was known for its unchecked drug-fueled hedonism. He would learn what it was to be spat on, literally and figuratively. And to live on almost nothing. But it was perhaps the last good time for an artist to live on nothing in New York City ...
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A week ago I was kicking myself for forgetting to bring a book with me on my flight to Sydney. A last minute decision to purchase Moby's autobiography Porcelain was the best one I've made in a while. A provokingly raw and honest account of his rise to fame from the poverty of Connecticut, the squalor of the meat packing district of New York and ending abruptly right before the pinnacle record of his career Play.
Even without the account of what is ultimately his most celebrated work Moby take's you for a ride through the coming of age of a genre cemented firmly at the forefront of the 90's till now.
Porcelain is about making it, losing it, loving it and hating it. It's about finding your people, and your place, thinking you've lost them both, and then, finally, somehow, creating something sublime. - Melanie - Melanie (QBD)
Guest, 11/03/2017
