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
