nicole_powers

During his 16-year career of DJing and producing electronic music, Moby (born Richard Melville Hall) has emerged as a confident social and political voice in a largely faceless scene. He's worked tirelessly to benefit causes ranging from the Humane Society (which receives the proceeds from his MobyGratis.com Web site) to the political action committee MoveOn.org, with whom he's worked on several campaigns.

But Moby's true charm lies in his ability to balance the serious with the lighthearted, to work hard and play hard. We caught up with him to discuss his feelings about November 4, why the death of the music business rocks, and his patronage of an emerging cinematic genre: Spaghetti porn.

Tamara Palmer: How did you arrive at the decision to endorse Barack Obama?

Moby: It was difficult because I've known Hillary [Clinton] for a long time and I really wanted to be a Hillary supporter, but one of the ways that Obama sort of won me over was he ran such a good campaign. And what we've seen with the Bush administration is - like in a weird way, I could almost forgive them for being so ideologically driven if they were competent. But like the Bush administration, they're the worst of all possible worlds, where they were complete ideologues and they were arrogant and incompetent at the same time. When I look at Barack Obama, apart from the fact that on a policy level I agree with just about all of his initiatives, he seems really capable. He ran a way better campaign than Hillary, he's run an amazingly better campaign than John McCain.

If this was 10 years ago, I wouldn't vote for John McCain, but I wouldn't be too troubled at the thought of him being President. But now, John McCain 2008 - I don't even know who this person is. The Economist had a cover that was like, "Will the real John McCain stand up?" Because, in the old days, he was moderate and he was bipartisan - he crafted McCain/Feingold, he worked with Ted Kennedy. But now, he just seems like an angry, crazy lunatic. And to pick Sarah Palin as his running mate, it's probably the most irresponsible thing he's done in his entire life. So when I vote in the election, I'll be voting enthusiastically for Obama and Joe Biden. But I'll be voting just as enthusiastically and motivated by fear of Sarah Palin as President of the United States. I don't think anyone who's ever run for President is less qualified.

As Governor of Wasilla - they keep talking about how she had experience as Governor of Wasilla - the Governor of Wasilla does nothing. The Governor of Wasilla has a staff meeting and signs checks. They don't oversee the police department, they don't oversee the fire department, they don't oversee the schools. As the Governor of - I'm sorry, the Mayor of Wasilla - she had no real responsibilities. The thought of her being V.P. or being President terrifies me.

TP: Now, do you think that there's a danger that we can become too cocky and sure of an outcome? That's what I'm afraid of, that people will think that Obama's got it in the bag and maybe they think they don't need to make the effort.

RMH: The polls look good, but the polls are also confusing and misleading. Polling has always been a very inexact science, but it was a lot easier when everyone had landlines and everyone came home after 7 o'clock at night. So now, there's general election polling, there's polling of likely voters, there's polling based on past voting habits and voting records. But now, the majority of people between the ages of 18 and 32 don't have landlines, or at least a significant percentage of people between the ages of 18 and 32. And you can't do blind polling calls to cell phones, at least as far as I know. So there's a whole demographic who are not being included in these statistical samples.

So the fact that Obama is ahead in most of the polls is either very encouraging or irrelevant. Polls are fun and they're interesting to pay attention to and they're good to an extent. Like, because Obama was polling so well in Michigan, McCain closed down his campaign offices in Michigan. But I can't see how any Democrat at this point could be complacent. I mean, there's no guarantee that Obama will win, because there's no guarantee what people will do when they get into the voting booths.

Who knows what's going to happen? Obama might win Pennsylvania, he might win Ohio, he might win Florida, he might win Virginia. He might have this remarkable sweep. We might wake up the next day and see that basically Obama has had more electoral votes than anyone since Reagan. Or we might wake up the next day and realize that we've lost the election and we have to spend the next four years with a 72-year-old Alzheimer's patient and a crazy woman who believes that dinosaurs and humans co-existed running the country.

TP: That alone is so frightening. People always joke about moving to another country if they win, but. . .

RMH: See, McCain as President would be bad. Palin as President would be disastrous. My fear in criticizing her is that I don't want to make it seem that I am in any way misogynist. There's so many people that he could have picked who were qualified and he chose this woman who he had met once for 45 minutes. I don't play basketball for the simple reason that I'm no good at basketball. I'm not qualified to be a basketball player. The same reason I don't play football. I'm not tall, I'm not big, so I know I shouldn't be playing basketball or football. I have a relatively objective understanding of my strengths and weaknesses.

I know I shouldn't be Vice President of the United States because I've never held elected office and I don't know enough. The arrogance behind Sarah Palin believing that she could be the President of the United States - anyone else in her position, when asked to run as the running mate, would have said no. She should have said, "I'm flattered, but I'm a first term Governor." She's only left the country twice. That arrogance, that hubris that somehow has led her to think that she's capable of being President of the United States is what terrifies me the most.

I feel like she's been caught up in the fame making and how they've created her into this Republican pinup lady. And in all honesty, I'd much rather have you as the Vice President or the President any day of the week. Even though you might not think you're quite as capable, you're far more capable than she is intellectually and as a human relating to other people.

It's sad. The majority of people I know are more qualified to be Vice President than Sarah Palin. You would almost be hard pressed in any big city to find someone less qualified than Sarah Palin to be Vice President. I think you'd have to start trolling the ranks of junior high schools and elementary schools to find people less qualified than her to be Vice President.

TP: Do you have any specific plans for "Super Tuesday?"

RMH: Well, everybody I know is hosting election parties. The last election party I went to in 2004, I went with a bunch of people who worked at the DNC, people who work for MoveOn and people who worked for the Kerry campaign and it was so depressing. It was like a wake. We sat there, we watched the results come in and when they declared Florida for Bush, everyone just started drinking and drinking and drinking and it was just a big, drunken, sad mess. There were people in the corner, sort of rocking themselves back and forth, not able to believe that America had re-elected George Bush. So I'm a little bit wary of going to election night parties and maybe I'll just take a handful of Xanax and go to sleep for 12 hours and wake up and see what happened.

TP: That's not a bad plan. I feel like it's going to be so tense that I might not want to be at a bar or big public gathering either.

RMH: I did the same thing in 2000. If you remember, in 2000 at first they called Florida for Gore, so everyone I know was cheering like, "We won! We won!" And then all of a sudden, they said, "No, it's too close to call." And so we had this moment of euphoria followed by this moment of fear followed by three weeks of dangling chads and recounts.

TP: I do feel like people are expecting to get some sort of instant gratification on that day, when we may very well have no idea. . .

RMH: That's the thing. The biggest variable in the election is voter registration. If we wake up after election night and we've won, it will be because Obama ran a great campaign, he raised tons of money. But also, we have all these groups - whether it's the AFL-CIO or MoveOn or the National Organization for Women - have registered so many voters. And already, they're looking at the returns that have come in for early voting and Democrats are voting almost twice as much as Republicans.

TP: That's really a new trend, isn't it?

RMH: Yes, early voters were always Republicans, like the 75-year-old people that would go to the senior center and vote. And now we're seeing African-Americans and Latinos and college students all voting early, which I find really encouraging but again, we won't know until the day after the election.

TP: Times are tough in the music biz, do you feel the pinch when it comes to making your own albums?

RMH: If you talk to people in the music business, everyone talks about the death of the album, which I guess to an extent is true. But the demise of the record business in some ways I find sort of emancipating. Now, there isn't as much commercial pressure. In the old days, you had to sell a ton of records just to keep the record company interested. And now, nobody sells tons of records. What I think is really nice is that the artists who are actually doing well now are the artists who are making great music. Now, musicians have to be able to play live and they have to be able to write good songs and I find that really encouraging. People are selling fewer records, but the records themselves are getting better. I see the death of the album in that no one is selling 10 million albums anymore. But I still think the album can be a really remarkable, cohesive art form.

TP: You are releasing a remix album of your most current album Last Night right now, but are you working on a new album, too?

RMH: Yes.

TP: What's that shaping up to sound like? Do you have a concept?

RMH: I want to make a really emotional, beautiful record. I don't know if I will succeed, but my goal is to make something very personal, very melodic, very beautiful. And hopefully interesting at the same time, because sometimes, when people try to make beautiful art, it can kind of come off as sort of saccharine-y, and so I have to figure out how to make something that's emotional and beautiful that will affect people emotionally without it being too sugary.

TP: Well, as we know well here at Suicide Girls, there's a lot to be said for dark beauty!

RMH: Yes, it's a very mournful record. But hopefully uplifting mournfulness, where it's beautiful and melancholy at the same time.

TP: You recently had a contest for anyone to create a video for your song "Ooh Yeah," and you chose this Italian-looking porno-type video as the winner. Is it true that it had to be heavily edited for general consumption?

RMH: I don't know which version you saw?

TP: What I saw was clean, but super suggestive.

RMH: There was never really an X-Rated version, but now what's really nice about making a video is that 99% of people will see it on YouTube, so it doesn't have to be [clean]. The last video for my song "Disco Lies" involved a giant chicken killing and eating a person. It was really funny - I hope it was funny - but it was really gory. In the old days, you couldn't do that. That's the same way with this one; even the clean version is pretty dirty.

TP: Do you know anything about the fellow whose video you selected?

RMH: No, I know he's Italian and lives in Italy. One of the things I found so endearing about the video is that it's sort of this fake '70s American porn, but it's so Italian. You've got the pizza boy walking down what is so clearly an old Italian street. The only thing I wanted is that I wanted all the text to be in Italian, because I thought that made it funnier, but he didn't understand because he's Italian and to him, Italian text-there's nothing funny about it. It's almost like spaghetti porn. You know when they'd shoot spaghetti westerns in Italy? This is spaghetti porn.


Click HERE to view a video of our interview.